If you watch the video [1] Chad (former Tesla repair technician) clearly states it's the issue is due to cost effectiveness not whether the car is under lease.
It's also not constrained the nose that was damaged here - whenever a part of the battery pack is damaged (could be a single cell) Tesla will replace the whole battery pack but not the part.
I believe Chad calls it "assembly replacement". It's not cost effective to train staff, have facilities and parts, and do the (dis-)assembly. Which is exactly why we need right to repair.
Does Tesla then have a separate workflow that re-uses the components of the "broken" 16K battery pack? Seems like that is necessary in order for spending an extra 15K in parts to be worth more than training some more people to repair them...
but then in that case, the sticker price of the repair also doesn't seem like it should be 16k, since Tesla's taking the old battery and capturing that side of the value too.
I thought a big part of the pack being made of modular cells is that the software can disengage cells that are problematic and you can keep running with the 999 remaining cells?
It's also not constrained the nose that was damaged here - whenever a part of the battery pack is damaged (could be a single cell) Tesla will replace the whole battery pack but not the part.
I believe Chad calls it "assembly replacement". It's not cost effective to train staff, have facilities and parts, and do the (dis-)assembly. Which is exactly why we need right to repair.
[1] https://youtu.be/vVSw3KSevEc?t=1415