I'm living in Tbilisi, Georgia. There are TONS of older foreign cars here with damage that would clearly fail an inspection in places like America.. Lots and lots of cars driving around with crumple zones that have been destroyed but the engine works fine. Apparently it's cheaper to import one of these than it is to buy a car here.

It's not just American and European cat's either. There are significant numbers of Japanese imports as well which have the steering wheel on the wrong side. Sometimes you'll get picked up in a taxi and the whole radio/infotainment screen is all Japanese.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

For a long time, cars written off in North America have found their way to Eastern European repair shops willing to take on damage that US and Canadian mechanics won’t touch.

Some have made fixing EVs written off across the Atlantic into a specialty, helping to drive a surge in the number of electric vehicles on the country’s roads, even as the war with Russia rages.

Sometimes, Malakhovsky says, he and his coworkers will break up large EV batteries damaged beyond repair and repurpose the cells to power electric scooters or even drones for the war effort.

Ukraine has a public charging network of some 11,000 chargers, according to Volodymyr Ivanov, the head of communications at Nissan Motor Ukraine—that’s more than the state of New York, and double the number in neighboring Poland.

That’s a relatively recent development, says Hans Eric Melin, head of Circular Energy Storage, a UK-based consultancy that tracks the international flows of used EVs and batteries.

Over time, Ukraine’s electric fleet grew to encompass the full range of EVs sold around the world, including Teslas, as more cars hit the roads and aged or got into crashes.

The original article contains 965 words, the summary contains 191 words. Saved 80%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Yeah, if the chassis is not repaired properly (which means really specialised tools and a lot of work) after a crash, chances are the next crash will be a lot deadlier with that vehicle. It may look and drive fine, but I wouldn't want to chance one.

Please tell me they're installing Gatling guns that pop out of the side fenders.

eastern euro used car shop makes a "new" car out of two totaled ones

this is news?

“There is a joke here that all poor people are driving electric cars, and all the rich people are driving petrol cars,” says Malakhovsky. “Tesla is a common-people, popular car because it’s very cheap in maintenance.”

yeah, only a joke unfortunately, later on the article they give the exemple of a guy who spent 24k$ for a totaled Y + 25k$ for repairs + 4k$ for batttery change... because the guy was tired of paying 400$/month for gaz, now he is paying 10-100$ for charging. This is even more expensive than a new one

It takes a lot of energy to ship a dead car around the world. And these are very heavy cars. It’s interesting that the economics work at all.

It’s good that these cars get reused if they work well enough.

The only question is how safe it should at least be compared to a new Tesla.

But I also think that cars have become way safer than before, so if it’s at least as safe as an old car from the 90’s, it’s good enough for me.

Now I have hope that my recently deceased vehicle may, in fact, live on! Fight the good fight!