This Country is Stealing Our Cars and Destroying the Car Industry

ever wonder what happens to Teslas after they die I'm talking about wrecked EVS that get written off as totaled in America today's video will surprise most Americans we're looking at why crash Teslas are ending up in Ukraine of all places the hidden operation that's selling and shipping them over seas and why this will cause our car insurance here in America to increase astronomically in the near future by the way a lot of time and research was done to put this video together and I really want to know what you think so please comment below and express yourselves one random day this past summer a man in Vancouver cada got an eerie notification on his phone the alert told him that his model Tesla y was in Ukraine and needed his help but here's where things get strange this was the same Tesla Model y that the man had sent to the graveyard never to be heard from again except now he was hearing from it again you see earlier his EV had been in a serious Highway accident and the rotator cuff got torn in several pieces the wheels were ripped Beyond repair and the cooling chamber looked like it was leaking into the battery chamber short story things didn't look good but the long story is the man was a mechanic he knew that no auto shop would put a repair person at risk with that kind of damage remember EV stands for electric vehicle and when an electric vehicle is damaged to that extent you're looking at a serious risk of shocks fire and toxic fumes so the man spoke with his insurance both agreed it was time to put his Eevee out to pasture and so the man bid his final words to his beloved Eevee as it went off to the Salvage lot and that was that oh so he thought but then months later out of the blue he got a ping on his test lab telling him that his Tesla needed a software update at first he thought it was a mistake then he noticed that his Tesla Model y had an extra 100 plus miles on the odometer and it was also fully charged if you think that's crazy it gets crazier the man then noticed that the Eevee was sitting out parked in Ukraine and that's when he saw that his former Tesla had been renamed as Mike The Not So new and improved mik was later found on a Ukrainian car auction website the car was being marketed as having suffered a small blow in Canada but repaired with the original tesle parts but check this out it was now being sold at nearly the same price as a brand new Tesla here in the United States if you think that's bizarre now wait till you hear what happened to another guy this guy owned a model X after an accident the EV was declared as a write-off and sent off to the EV graveyard months later the man received a notification telling him that his Tesla Model X was online in an even weirder turn of events he saw that the Tesla was still connected using his login credentials so he was able to pinpoint its location in Ukraine my favorite part of the story has to be the next part Not only was his Tesla logged in with his credentials but the new owner of the Tesla was listening to music using his original owner's personal Spotify account anyway the original owner posted a bizarre story on social media and as you can imagine this post went viral I'm talking 20 plus million views in counting and of course the question on everyone's mind is how is this even possible well it turns out the car got put up on an auction site Copart with a salvage title it got bought on auction without his knowledge and shipped to Ukraine the man reached out to tesone was given step-by-step instructions how to remove his account from the model X the problem was that one of the steps required entering the new owner information which obviously the original owner did not have here's the third true story that plays out in a similar vein the third man's insurance policy deemed as Tesla total due to a combination of high Tesla auction sale prices and the insurance company's insistence of Tesla would require an entire new battery even though according to the original owner the battery was not damaged despite trying to sway his insurance company the company wouldn't budge so the man had to say goodbye to his Tesla then one day I'm sure you've already guessed the original owner got a notification in his Tesla lab it read software update complete that's when he realized this Tesla had been renamed after trying to locate the car he eventually found its location halfway between laviv and Kiev if you're wondering why and how all these total Teslas are being sent to Ukraine well believe it or not this isn't something new it's actually been happening for years after a North American mechanic deems the Tesla to be unrepairable or not worth the risk of repair the EV typically gets sent to a scrapyard but some scrapyards have figured out that they can make more money selling a crash DVS on an auction rather than selling the parts that's why many crash Teslas have made it across the pond to other countries Ukraine is a hot spot because while Ukrainian mechanics have no problem working on damaged EVS in fact this practice has become so common that some Ukrainian mechanics have' even made this their specialty this has partially helped increase the amount of new EVS in Ukrainian roads despite fact that the country is in the middle of a war if you don't believe me just look at the stats the thing is Ukraine has different laws and regulations about what's total versus not so an EV that's considered toal in the US isn't considered total in Ukraine right now very few car makers sell new EVS in Ukraine yet the amount of newly registered EVS is 9% across the country that sounds about the same percentage we have here in the states and that's double the amount of EV registrations in neighboring countries like Poland and Ceta in fact Studies have found that most of the refurbished EVS in Ukraine were sent straight over from North America Believe It or Not Ukraine is one of the top three destinations for used passenger vehicles the other two countries are Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates these countries have tons of professional car flippers in general it takes a damaged North American car between 1 to 5 months to reach a nearby port for Ukraine that used to be the port of Odessa on the Black Sea but due to the war right now many of the vehicles are entering through clapa which is the third largest city in Lithuania and sits on the Baltic Sea or coper on Slovenia on the Adriatic Sea once a vehicle arrives in these ports it then gets transported to Ukraine by truck once in Ukraine it goes to a repair shop and can come out looking as good as new and this can take anywhere from one week to a year depending on the extent of Damages and availability of parts Ivan malikowski is just one of many mechanics across Ukraine who isn't afraid to get his hands dirty and get damaged Teslas sent in from abroad to repair apparently he fixes about 100 Teslas a month that's almost three a day and some 20% of them come from overseas currently he's serving in Ukraine's Armed Forces so while he's away St have 6 to 10 people continue to work on EVS here's the thing about the EV battery it's a very complicated creation it's made up of thousands of unique in individual cells if these cells that store and release the energy an Eevee uses to drive but an eeve battery can be used to power much more than just an EV that's why when Ivan and his team receive an EV battery that's damaged B Repair they break it apart and repurpose the cell so now the EV battery that once powered your Tesla is now powering an electric scooter even War drones the majority of Teslas that you see on Ukrainian roads right now were once involved in a car crash of some sort in North America now most people think about EV friendly countries Ukraine is typically not on your list but currently Ukraine has a public charging network of around 11,000 Chargers that's more than the entire state of New York and double of what exists in Poland not only are high gas prices pushing Ukrainian drivers towards EVS the government is also pushing them through incentives since 2018 the Ukrainian government removed most taxes and customs duties on used EV Imports funny enough Teslas are becoming so common in Ukraine that it's become a joke that poor people in the country Drive electric cars while the rich Drive gas powerered cars imagine the irony despite War that's nearing its 2-year Mark Ukraine's EV fleet has doubled since July 2021 Ukraine's success is North American Insurance a failure the reality is every year repairs of newer EVS get increasingly more expensive because they come with ever more complex and high-tech features on top of that there's a shortage of vehicle technicians who specialize in EVS that's why insurers are quick to write off damaged EVS Believe It or Not In America EVS are more likely to be written off than gasped cars they're also more likely to be deemed as unfixable even after a minor crash the reality is that most EVS just aren't as easy to repair as gas powerered vehicles then of course there's a global debate on what to do with the EV battery after a crash also right now there's no Global industry standard on measuring battery health here's another thing about America American scrapyards aren't big fans of electric cars reason is unlike gas powered cars dismantling an EV battery requires lots of equipment workers and space mainly because of fire risks of storing lithium ion cells that burn at over 3,000 de fahren your average Joe dismantler won't have any of that on top of complications with dismantling an EV battery EVS usually have simpler drivetrains with more plastic and larger pre-fabricated body components these components are not easy to pull apart and in EVS that have a battery built directly into the car structure it's even harder to pull apart or repair all this is to say one man's trash is another man's treasure so think about this for a moment if insurance companies are quick to call wck EVS as total that's a lot of dough they're paying out to drivers and who pays for that well ultimately it's insured consumers bet is that as EV sales grow insurance premiums will increase astronomically to account and make up for the total EVS that's in addition to the fact that insurance premiums for EVS are typically higher than for gas powered cars anyway if you have an EV right now or thinking about getting one should you worry about your data going overseas if or when you total an EV well if you have a Tesla and you're logged into your Google Netflix and Spotify accounts in the car you should log out of your accounts before saying goodbye but what if you total your car without an opportunity to log up really who's thinking about that when you're in a wreck in that case there's a substantial amount of data and personal information that will likely remain stored in your ev even after an accident whatever personal data is still in your vehicle when it gets sent overseas will fall into the hands of the next owner of your EV remember the man the mechanic from Vancouver well he has Tesla support what to do Tesla advised him to change the passwords to his account interestingly enough across the US there's increasing pressure to prevent or reduce wrecked EVS from being sent overseas there are many different reasons for this just imagine the disaster if a damaged EVS bad catches fire on a cargo ship other critics are against dumping our E-Waste on other countries instead recycling or repurposing them here after all there are valuable minerals inside EV batteries that we could use and we do have battery recycling startups across the country although some of them recently shut down it's just that right now they barely receive any used batteries to recycle so you tell me were you surprised to hear that crash Teslas are ended up in Ukraine please share by commenting below if you like this video please like share and subscribe thanks for your support

Channel: Scotty Kilmer

Views: 296,833

Keywords: auto, auto repair, car, car diy, car repair, cars, diy, how to, mechanic, repair, scotty kilmer, car review, war, get ready for war, going to war, are we going to war, should we go to war, the truth about war, wartime, ukraine, ukraine war, is ukraine in a war, is there going to be war in ukraine, is the united states going to war, war stories, get ready, ready, here's why, stealing cars, stolen car, cars stolen, car industry, here's why ukraine, car theft, car thieves, stole

Id: EtSez6IC3Ys

Length: 10min 3sec (603 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 23 2023