Toyota Will Adopt Tesla-Style Cast Bodies That Might Be Impossible to Fix

boem@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 402 points –
Toyota Will Adopt Tesla-Style Cast Bodies That Might Be Impossible to Fix
thedrive.com
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This article is misleading. If a car crash is bad enough that it damages the frame of a car, it's going to get totalled anyway. So either way it's going to go to a junk yard and get slowly parted out.

No. These cast parts take up a lot more area. They will get damaged much more frequently than a frame being damaged.

Not on unibody cars. There isn't a big increase in frame area in this car versus any other unibody out there. The difference here is the unibody isn't actually a unibody, it's a multipart unibody that is bolted together. A standard unibody, which is just about everything on the road today that isn't a pickup truck, is all three of those frame pieces you see in that picuture, but as one giant piece. That big piece of metal you are normally used to seeing in car assembly photos. There are no frame rails under it. The unibody being split into segments is the first real change to the unibody design since GM started using it in the 80's.

Lots of 'totaled' cars that still function fine get shipped to other countries with less picky used car markets too.

I once took a taxi in Addis Ababa that had slicks and a view of the road under the car. Very fancy.

Not necessarily. On some vehicles the exterior panels are part of the frame and you may only have cosmetic damage but fixing it would costs tens of thousands.

Not true. Some idiot t boned me and they had to replace the frame of my car. It cost her $7k and my car is worth about twice that today.

You can contest that you were not fully reimbursed for the expense/what you have received in not equivalent in value to what you had.