Body repair on an EV

[Anonymous]

I just scraped our brand new Ioniq 5. Can I just take it to a regular body shop or do I need an EV specific body shop. Sorry if this is a stupid question. I’ll call around tomorrow but I want to figure out who I need to call.

Thanks. I feel like crap enough.

[Anonymous]

Any body shop. A scrape is a scrape.

[Anonymous]

As long as its just cosmetic on the exterior panels, any body shop.

For anything more substantial, you'll want to take it to a Hyundai certified EV shop.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Any body shop. A scrape is a scrape.

That may be, but many shops won’t do ANY work on EV’s. I don’t. I won’t even allow EV’s on my lot, let alone inside our building. I do work on hybrids, but they stay in the lot when not in a bay being worked on.

They’re a liability for me. A fire in my shop could easily do a couple million dollars in damage just in facilities damage and tools and DE.

For one thing, I don’t have the charging infrastructure for EV’s. For another, EV’s would jack my insurance (due to fire risk from a car with a damaged battery from a “minor” crash going into thermal runaway, which happens with regularity). Thirdly, none of my service techs have the hazmat certification to deal with EV batteries, and I have no interest at all in subscribing to the crazy high expensive waste disposal services that handle EV battery packs.

So no, “just any shop” will not do service or bodywork on EV’s.

[Anonymous]

Gets worse - I got an estimate for a slight bumper on my Tesla. That took a month in the shop and close to $8K to resolve.

And a few turned me away - their parent web-site said Tesla Certified but that didn't mean all the branches are Tesla Certified.

Not sure why? but it is a rip-off. If the electronics are not touched why so expensive. An Infiniti Bumper was like $1200 to fix.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Gets worse - I got an estimate for a slight bumper on my Tesla. That took a month in the shop and close to $8K to resolve.

And a few turned me away - their parent web-site said Tesla Certified but that didn't mean all the branches are Tesla Certified.

Not sure why? but it is a rip-off. If the electronics are not touched why so expensive. An Infiniti Bumper was like $1200 to fix.

They turned you away for the same reason I would - because there’s no such thing as “just a scratch” with an EV. Not until I’ve pulled off the front or rear clips or fenders or underbody shielding and verified the battery casings aren’t damaged externally - but even then, you still can’t tell if any of the layers inside the cells themselves are damaged, so even then it’s a roll of the dice.

So the customer says “oh, it was just a very low speed impact” or “just a scratch”. Yeah, that means nothing to me. Customers lie about stuff like that as a matter of routine. If it happened 6 months ago and you’ve driven it 6,000 since then and charged it dozens of times since the event, ok, I’ll trust it a little more. But a EV with fresh body damage? Nope, not touching it. Get it off my lot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any body shop. A scrape is a scrape.

That may be, but many shops won’t do ANY work on EV’s. I don’t. I won’t even allow EV’s on my lot, let alone inside our building. I do work on hybrids, but they stay in the lot when not in a bay being worked on.

They’re a liability for me. A fire in my shop could easily do a couple million dollars in damage just in facilities damage and tools and DE.

For one thing, I don’t have the charging infrastructure for EV’s. For another, EV’s would jack my insurance (due to fire risk from a car with a damaged battery from a “minor” crash going into thermal runaway, which happens with regularity). Thirdly, none of my service techs have the hazmat certification to deal with EV batteries, and I have no interest at all in subscribing to the crazy high expensive waste disposal services that handle EV battery packs.

So no, “just any shop” will not do service or bodywork on EV’s.

What's the name of your shop so I can be sure never to go there? Talk about scare mongering.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any body shop. A scrape is a scrape.

That may be, but many shops won’t do ANY work on EV’s. I don’t. I won’t even allow EV’s on my lot, let alone inside our building. I do work on hybrids, but they stay in the lot when not in a bay being worked on.

They’re a liability for me. A fire in my shop could easily do a couple million dollars in damage just in facilities damage and tools and DE.

For one thing, I don’t have the charging infrastructure for EV’s. For another, EV’s would jack my insurance (due to fire risk from a car with a damaged battery from a “minor” crash going into thermal runaway, which happens with regularity). Thirdly, none of my service techs have the hazmat certification to deal with EV batteries, and I have no interest at all in subscribing to the crazy high expensive waste disposal services that handle EV battery packs.

So no, “just any shop” will not do service or bodywork on EV’s.

Thanks for sharing your perspective.

Could you say more about hybrids? Are you ok with working on them? Esp. newer ones?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any body shop. A scrape is a scrape.

That may be, but many shops won’t do ANY work on EV’s. I don’t. I won’t even allow EV’s on my lot, let alone inside our building. I do work on hybrids, but they stay in the lot when not in a bay being worked on.

They’re a liability for me. A fire in my shop could easily do a couple million dollars in damage just in facilities damage and tools and DE.

For one thing, I don’t have the charging infrastructure for EV’s. For another, EV’s would jack my insurance (due to fire risk from a car with a damaged battery from a “minor” crash going into thermal runaway, which happens with regularity). Thirdly, none of my service techs have the hazmat certification to deal with EV batteries, and I have no interest at all in subscribing to the crazy high expensive waste disposal services that handle EV battery packs.

So no, “just any shop” will not do service or bodywork on EV’s.

lol. What YouTube video did you get this from?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any body shop. A scrape is a scrape.

That may be, but many shops won’t do ANY work on EV’s. I don’t. I won’t even allow EV’s on my lot, let alone inside our building. I do work on hybrids, but they stay in the lot when not in a bay being worked on.

They’re a liability for me. A fire in my shop could easily do a couple million dollars in damage just in facilities damage and tools and DE.

For one thing, I don’t have the charging infrastructure for EV’s. For another, EV’s would jack my insurance (due to fire risk from a car with a damaged battery from a “minor” crash going into thermal runaway, which happens with regularity). Thirdly, none of my service techs have the hazmat certification to deal with EV batteries, and I have no interest at all in subscribing to the crazy high expensive waste disposal services that handle EV battery packs.

So no, “just any shop” will not do service or bodywork on EV’s.

What's the name of your shop so I can be sure never to go there? Talk about scare mongering.

Why? So you can leave a bunch of fake Yelp reviews? Get bent.