Tesla Quoted $16,000 For A Repair Job An Independent Did For $700

The mechanical simplicity of electric cars is supposed to be one of their virtues. The fact that they have fewer moving parts should theoretically reduce the likelihood of the owner incurring big bills.

But that wasn’t the case for one Model 3 owner, who was quoted $16,000 by Tesla to fix damage to his car after he ran over some debris in the road. To put it into perspective, that’s almost half the entire cost of a brand new Model 3.

Fortunately, thanks to the ingenuity of an independent shop, what was shaping up to be the owner’s worst day ever turned out to be only mildly annoying. The indy got him and his Tesla back on the road for just $700.

The owner’s problems started when his Model 3 ran over some debris, damaging a flange on the battery pack and causing coolant to leak out onto the road.

Related: Model 3 Owner Was Stuck At Tesla Supercharger For 15 Hours

The car was recovered to a Tesla service center, where technicians declared that the car needed a brand new battery pack because the broken component was actually part of the main unit. Obviously Tesla’s warranty wouldn’t cover the incident because it it was the driver’s fault, and unfortunately for the owner, neither did his insurance, meaning he was staring down the barrel of a $16k bill to get back on the road.

YouTuber Rich Benoit and the guys at Electrified Garage obviously didn’t replace the battery, as you’ve probably guessed given the eventual bill. Instead, the team behind the world’s first V8-powered Tesla Model S cut the flange off and repaired the coolant hose connection using the kind of brass fitting readily available at home improvement stores. Because the coolant only runs at very low pressures, unlike in an ICE power unit, the repair should be safe.

Quite apart from the insanity of the battery pack being non-repairable from Tesla’s point of view, it’s stories of this kind that are fueling support for President Joe Biden’s proposed Right to Repair rules.

Biden signed an executive order last Friday aimed at promoting competition in the U.S. economy that could prevent manufactures of all kinds of goods from imposing restrictions on DIY and independent repairs. As for this Model 3 and its owner, it’s not clear yet if this repair might come back to bite him further down the line when Tesla discovers his alternate fix. While this car isn’t salvage, Tesla has a policy that salvage cars are not entitled to use its Supercharger network.