Last week, a pretty common and minor-looking fender-bender ended up going viral on the Rivian Owners’ Forum. The wreck, a relatively low-speed rear-end collision involving a Lexus RX330 bumping an electric Rivian R1T’s passenger side rear corner, resulted in what looked like minor damage. A bent bumper cover, a dent in the tailgate — the sort of things that many truck owners would just learn to live with as part of the Truck Life. But a fancy new electric Rivian is no ordinary truck, and this was no ordinary repair bill.
According to the owner, the Lexus’s insurance adjuster came back with an estimate of $1,600 — about what most of us might have guessed. Of course, we’d have guessed very, very wrong, because the final bill came to over $42,000. I mean, good guess, it was just, oh, 26 times too low.
After the sordid tale of mildly bent metal and plastic blew up after being covered by several outlets including Carscoops and The Drive, we dug deeper to try to find out why this repair cost as much as an entire Tesla Model 3. I made some calls — a lot of calls, actually, and now I think I have a reasonable explanation, but it’s one that just makes me feel like this is a harbinger of a larger problem. I don’t mean just a Rivian problem; this is a particularly egregious example of how punishing and unforgiving some modern cars can be to fix.
What Happened
First, here’s the text of the post, from the owner Chris Apfelstadt (whose last name translates from German to “apple city,” if you’re curious):
“In early February, I was rear ended in my R1T. No airbags went off and the collision was at a relatively low speed. The other driver asked what kind of car I was driving, and my response was “the kind that is going to piss off your insurance company!” I figured the repair would be expensive but had no idea!
Originally her insurance estimated the damage to be around $1600 and sent me a check. I live in central Ohio and 1 of the 3 Rivian certified body shops in the state is about 40 minutes away from my house. The shop is called k-Ceps and they have a 70,000 sf warehouse dedicated to ev’s. They were incredibly meticulous and detailed and completely disassembled the rear end of my truck to discover all of the damage.
They carefully documented every step with photographs to show the insurance company the process and It took over two and half months to finally get my truck back. They did an incredible job and my R1T looks as nice as the day it was shipped. The final bill was over $42,000!!!
I have heard that Rivian made some concessions in the repairability in order to keep the Aesthetics a certain way. All I know is that this is a very expensive vehicle to fix! Her policy maxes out at $50k and with the car rental, we are close. Next I have to try and fight with the insurance for the diminished value. It feels good to have my truck back! It was almost like waiting for delivery all over again!”
Above you can see Chris’ picture of the wreck, and here’s the aftermath of the damage to the truck:
I mean, really, that doesn’t look bad at all. The Lexus seemed to have fared much worse, at least from that picture. Here we see a banged-up bumper cover, a lost reflector, and I think a bit of a dent in the tailgate and maybe the rear fender/bedside, but it’s pretty hard to tell. It just doesn’t look all that bad. Sure, that bumper cover has some ultrasonic sensors and stuff in there, but, really, this hardly seems like a huge deal.
The Repair Process
So why the hell does the one in-progress repair picture show the entire inner bed assembly removed, the tailgate removed, and even the cab’s rear window glass uninstalled?
It also looks like at least some sections of the roof panel have been removed. But all of this for a little tag on the rear corner and bumper? I guess I can see why the tailgate and bumper assembly would need to come off, but this truck has been half stripped down to the frame. Nothing is making any sense.
So, I reached out to the owner and asked him exactly what happened. Here’s what he told me (emphasis mine):
The bed came out to look for sure her damage to the frame and brackets. The bed quarter panel on most trucks is standalone. For the Rivian, it is one piece from the back corner all the way up to the front windshield. Since that piece was damaged, it had to be removed and replaced and then painted. To properly access it, they removed the back windshield.
The biggest story here is that what appears to be a minor accident on the surface, can be much more costly to fix. The truck is designed absorb the impact to limit injuries to the driver and passengers.
Now, what Chris is talking about here is something that body shops that work on Rivians seem to call a “unipanel” or a “uniside,” at least according to the few body shops that actually would discuss anything with me. The unipanel is essentially the entire outer body skin, minus the doors and side cargo area hatch, from the end of the bed up to the windshield frame/A-pillar:
Cars with huge, unbroken body panels certainly aren’t unknown: both the Volkswagen Karmann-Ghia and the Volvo 1800S had one-piece bodies, with only doors, hood, and trunk/engine lids separate. Those cars’ bodies are also notoriously tough and expensive to fix in collisions, because you couldn’t just, say, bolt off a dented fender and pop on a new one. But, they were still just steel, not aluminum (it’s worth noting that the Rivian has steel throughout its body as well, especially in major frame crossmembers), and built with 1960s and 1970s tolerances, all far, far easier things to deal with for a body shop.
The Rivian, however, is a different story.
How The Body Shop Explained It
I reached out to the body shop that did the work, K-Ceps Auto Body in Johnstown, Ohio, and asked why this repair was so outlandishly expensive. After being put off for about a week, I was finally able to talk directly to the shop, who confirmed the cost of the repairs, and helped explain a bit about why the bill was so dizzyingly high.
First, there were some charges that would be very specific to this particular case: the truck had an aftermarket ceramic coating that needed replacing, it needed a tow to Cleveland to have the sensors re-calibrated after the work, and there was about $10,000 in “sublet operations,” which was work that had to be done outside of the shop itself. All of this is according to my conversation with the shop, and all of these things definitely add up.
Chris seems to have been a bit mistaken about the unipanel requiring removal; the shop told me that the unipanel stayed on, but, because the tailgate needed replacing, the unipanel had to be repainted to match, and to do that it needed to be de-trimmed — a process that proved to be incredibly, even shockingly, complex.
De-trimming a Rivian is a hell of a lot different than popping off some chrome trim with a spatula; to de-trim that whole unipanel so it’s prepared for a full paint job, the inner tub of the bed needed to be removed (you can see Munro do that in the video below), along with the rear window and the roof spoiler. And to get the roof spoiler out, you need to remove the headliner inside, and to get the headliner out you need to remove the windshield.
I just want to restate this bit so we’re all clear here: because this truck had a low-speed hit to the rear bumper area, somehow that ended up meaning that the freaking headliner had to be removed. From inside the car, many feet away from where the car was hit. Through the windshield.
So, by the time all of that is done, an awful lot of that truck has been disassembled. And that’s not even addressing the new bumper or the brackets behind the bumper and the rear under-bumper sill panel, which, in this case, did sustain some damage, and had to be replaced, also a non-trivial job because they’re riveted and bonded into place, according to the person I spoke with at K-Ceps.
In short, the cascade effect that starts with needing to paint a new tailgate to the color-matching quality demanded turned into a process that took apart half a very complex pickup truck. I was not able to get an itemized list of the work from the folks at the body shop, who said that a lot of the procedures on there constituted proprietary Rivian information, and the owner declined to send me his itemized receipt, stating that he was “advised not to send it to anyone.” I asked why, but never got an answer back.
(Editor’s Note: This all sounds a little silly but their excuse doesn’t surprise me. The new EV tech startups, in particular, try and keep a tight lid on their tech and processes, as they may have new manufacturing techniques or software they don’t want getting to competitors — or just think they do. Tesla also keeps a tight grip on who’s “authorized” to fix its cars, and it’s been subject to lawsuits over this. -PG)
The body shop told me that this process isn’t all that different than other unibody pickup trucks, like the Honda Ridgeline, though I’ve not encountered any stories about repairs from a minor wreck that would total a brand-new Ridgeline, which, at $38, 800, costs less than the repairs to this Rivian.
What Rivian Said
I reached out to Rivian itself to ask if this scale of repair costs for such a minor incident was normal, and I got a polite but very uninformative statement back from a “Rivian spokesperson”:
“The nature of the repair and the parts and labor required with this specific case meant this bill was higher than what we’d expect for the average customer. We will certainly take this case into account as we continually seek to enhance our products and quality of service.”
Okay, great.
What Munro Said
I also reached out to Cory Stuben at Munro and Associates, who have a Rivian R1T they’ve been evaluating and disassembling. Cory was very surprised at the overall costs and initially wondered if there was any sort of frame damage to the truck to justify the expense.
He also noted that the Rivian is built in a very robust way that combines both unibody qualities and body-on-frame construction, with the body hard-mounted to the frame. Cory did send me some good pictures of what the structures look like behind the bumper in the area where the impact happened, and you can see some riveted/bonded brackets and elements:
Cory was also shocked at the idea that an entire side body skin might need replacing, and I did research that a bit more by calling other Rivian-approved body shops. It seems that replacing a whole unipanel is a thing that happens, though at least one body shop told me that Rivian does have procedures for sectioning parts from the unipanel so that you can, say, just replace the outer side of the bed up to the cab instead of having to do the entire thing and removing glass and doors and headliner, etc. But, sometimes, that whole panel does need replacing.
Other responses on the original post corroborated this as well, with an R1S owner claiming a $19,000 repair bill for a “very similar [rear-end collision]”:
While at first I saw that gut-punch of a number and thought that there had to be some funny business occurring, of some sort, but I don’t think that’s the case at all, and, perversely, I think that’s worse. I think all parties were above board in what they were doing, but the grim reality is that this truck – and, yes, likely many other cars but for this moment, we’re just talking about the Rivian R1T – is cripplingly expensive to repair.
There’s no way to spin this wreck as anything but a minor rear-ending. This is the kind of thing that happens many, many times across America every single day, and it looks like if you have a Rivian that gets hit in the rear, it’s very likely going to be expensive as hell to fix. Perhaps not $40,000 like this specific case, but still a hell of a lot.
I suspect that most Rivian owners carry comprehensive insurance, so they’re not paying out amounts like $20,000 to $40,000 out of pocket, but someone’s insurance company is, and unless there’s been some radical re-thinking in the insurance industry, they’re not charities, so those costs will eventually come back to the consumer via increased premiums.
What Is IIHS Doing About This?
What I don’t understand is why the insurance industry isn’t more agitated about this; back in the 1970s, they were so fed up that they helped push the NHTSA to implement the more stringent 5 mph bumper standards that were required in 1974 and phased out in the 1980s Reagan-era of de-regulation.
I reached out to the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS) to ask these questions, and got this response:
I don’t have any insight on why this repair would cost so much, but HLDI does track insurance losses by make and model and performs other analyses of insurance data to understand if certain vehicles are more expensive to repair. If this is more than a one-off occurrence, these repair costs will start to appear in the data. It’s something that we’ll keep a close eye on.
We have done some more general analyses of electric vehicles (not including Rivians) to see if there are differences in insurance loss patterns. What we’ve seen is that EVs tend to have lower frequencies of insurance claims (EVs are also driven less, so we adjust these numbers for milage). When claims are filed, we initially saw that the claim severities (the amount being paid per claim) were a bit higher, but those severities have come down over time and are more in line now with conventional vehicles. This could be due to body shops becoming more familiar with the repairs or cost of parts coming down.
IIHS does not currently run any sort of bumper testing, so there’s nothing in our crash test programs that would capture this issue. The Rivian R1Ts that we have crash tested are not repairable. I’m not aware of any current push to implement new bumper standards.
Then I pushed a bit more, to try and find why the IIHS was no longer doing those “bumper bash” tests like they used to, where they’d smash bumpers and record the costs of repair, like these tests, which you may remember:
IIHS responded, writing:
IIHS has limited resources to perform testing, so we shifted away from bumper testing to focus instead on new higher-speed crash test modes and evaluations of crash avoidance technology. While bumper testing can push automakers to make improvements from a damageability standpoint, it makes more sense for us to push changes that will also prevent injuries and save lives.
It’s hard to argue with saving lives and preventing injuries, of course, but while we’re living, uninjured, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that minor wrecks don’t end up being staggeringly expensive to repair. Cars and trucks can be designed to be safe and more forgiving in crashes, and designed with repairability in mind. The trend across the industry currently doesn’t seem to care much about how expensive cars are to repair, and this is going to be a growing problem as these cars age and get sold used and small shops will not be able to repair them effectively.
There May Be Nothing Stopping This From Becoming The Norm
It’s potentially wasteful and offers no benefit to the consumer. Remember, new manufacturing techniques are about to become a lot more common as automakers switch from engines to battery packs and look for novel ways to cut costs. Even Tesla says it’s about to totally reset how manufacturing works with its new “unboxed” system. I’m not saying that repairing a car built that way could be more costly, only noting that we’re in a different world these days.
If anything, stories like this one, with vomit-inducing repair costs should be less about Rivian specifically or Tesla or Volvo or Audi or any number of other modern carmakers, all of whom can have wildly costly repairs, but instead should be a wake-up call to consumers that, once again, the car industry isn’t really your friend.
I know most gearheads aren’t fond of the huge, diving-board 5 mph bumpers of the 1970s and 1980s, but for the most part, they did work. Minor accidents should have minor financial consequences; a lot of the joy of driving is sucked away when you realize you’re in a massive, alarmingly fragile machine that is financially crippling to repair should you make even a small mistake. I drove my 1989 Ford F-150 into a ditch not long ago, and, aside from outing myself as an idiot on the internet, suffered no significant damage to the truck, because that truck was designed with some degree of forgiveness. Sure, it’s a rock tied to a stick compared to a Rivian, but if a Lexus rear-ends me in that, it doesn’t cost tens of thousands of dollars to fix. It might cost tens of dollars, if it’s even worth fixing at all.
As car buyers, we need to make our needs known. We need to consider the models of the Right to Repair movement, and try and hold automakers accountable for building vehicles that aren’t devastating to repair, that aren’t built for disposability, because in the end, we’re the ones that end up paying.
If we want to have cars that don’t cost as much as buying new other entire cars to fix, we need to make those demands clear.
“a lot of the joy of driving is sucked away when you realize you’re in a massive, alarmingly fragile machine that is financially crippling to repair should you make even a small mistake”
Which exactly how I see every Ferrari and other exotic.
I have been speculating with friends, but situations like this make me think I may be right: Most impacts on vehicles like the Cybertruck are going to end up with the vehicle being totaled, thus creating another “order” for the customer to buy a new Cybertruck. Electric car makers will “sell” more, but there won’t be more actually on the road. The only benefit to any of this is hopefully cheaper battery packs on the used/secondary market.
Why would the truck be scrapped? Resell it as salvaged and let someone buy it who will actually do truck things on a daily basis.
I imagine there would be plenty of gardeners and contractors who would love to get something like this supercheap.
Totaled and scrapped aren’t the same thing. Once you take the payout, the insurance company owns a totaled vehicle, and they’re not fixing it to go back on the road.
If they don’t keep it to fix others like some do, you can see it on Copart like everyone else.
Rivan truck has a worthless 4 ft bed. Better off just buying a cheap car and pulling a trailer.
Maybe not. The aluminum on the Rivian is tough to repair, but the Cybertruck is stainless steel, and there are a lot of welders that know how to handle it. I’m going to be very curious to see how this works out.
There will be nothing to see as that abortion of a vehicle will never actually go into full scale production.
Why does the panel have to be repainted? I’m not familiar with body work, but wouldn’t it then not match the rest of the car after repainting if the concern is the tailgate not matching?
Yeah, based on my collision adjuster experience they should have only needed to paint part of that panel to “blend” with the tailgate, basically make any change from the original finish imperceptible because of a gradual change. More than enough space to do that in the quarter panels.
They replaced the entire rear/roof panel, which would come primed but not painted. Body panels don’t typically come painted from the supplier, the manufacturer does this work.
I remember watching a video walkthrough of the Rivian (probably linked from the old place), and thinking “this is a gentleman’s truck, for people who will never use it like a truck,” and that was just because of superficial stuff, like touch sensors in the bumpers (btw: wtf). I had no idea. This isn’t just a gentleman’s truck, this is a hothouse-flower truck. A garage-queen truck.
Sensors in bumpers is common across almost all brands of trucks.
These were like “touch this spot to pop open this trapdoor” touch sensors. Is that sort of thing common?
By gentleman you mean some aging GenXer who sold their parents SoCal house and wants to spend all the money on an overlanding midlife crisis, then yea
What a joke. Insurance companies need to start raising their rates for these vehicles accordingly, and maybe then the manufacturers will finally wake up and actually make their cars reasonably repairable. Gives me pause about a lot of the new EVs in general, but especially the ones from startups that severely limit who’s allowed to work on your car.
Erm … no. If I rear-end your car, I am responsible to pay for your car to be made whole. Your insurance does not even come into play. It’s my liability insurance. It does not matter what kind of car I drive; it could be a 40-year old beater that no fender-bender in the world is going to make worse than it already is, but my insurance has to pay for the $42k damage I caused to your car.
Raising the insurance premiums for Rivians doesn’t play into this at all. Only as far as coverage for self-inflicted damage is concerned. In liability cases like this one, no.
That’s how it works in some states. Not here in Michigan. We have no-fault insurance. If you’re legally responsible for an accident, you can have a ticket and points/fines assessed against you by the government. Ultimately though you’re responsible for insuring your own vehicle and go through your insurer in the event of a damage claim, no matter who is at fault.
That assumes you have insurance and/or don’t simply drive away.
We all pay for expensive to repair cars though, through across the board increase in premiums. Also the damage could just as easily be caused by reversing into something as being low speed rear ended.
Tesla Ys are expensive to insure (here in the UK at least) because the bumper doesn’t protect to boot lid, as they’re flush with each other. Even a minor rear end incident will cost a significant amount, because both bumper and tailgate will need repair/replacing/realigning.
Making cars cheap and easy to repair benefits us all through lower insurance.
In Ontario Canada your own insurance pays to fix your car even if it’s the other drivers fault. The idea was to reduce litigators.
The at fault driver will still see a rate increase.
How the actual fuck can be people on the road whose liability insurance maxes out at $50k? That’s nothing. That should be illegal, and in many places it is.
Here in Germany, the legal minimum is €7.5m for death or injury, €1.22m for damage to things (like to the car, as in this case) and €50k for “property” damage (that’s subsequent financial damage beyond what actually was damaged in the accident).
That’s the minimal coverage that you have to have. Without that, you are not allowed to drive. (And you can more or less read “US$” instead of “€”; they are within 10% of each other.)
Most people consider this kind of coverage to be laughably inadequate and have much higher limits.
But $50k, even for damage to things? That’s a sick joke.
I thought it was crazy too. What you have to remember is that in the vast majority of the U.S., it is nearly impossible to survive (hold down a job, get to medical appointments and the grocery store) without driving. Add to that the fact that we have a large low-income population. If you’re poor and have no real assets, what’s the downside from your perspective to having a $50K maximum policy? The aggrieved driver can sue you all they want; they’ll never collect.
I agree that the legal minimums should be much higher. The only problem is… people drive anyway. My state (Michigan) mandated extremely generous policies for decades that would cover lifetime medical expenses of any injured party in an auto accident. In principle that’s a good thing, but it resulted in us having the most expensive premiums in the country. We also have one of the poorest cities in the country (Detroit). It was estimated at one point that 50% of Detroiters were driving around with no insurance at all because it was so prohibitively expensive and, again, driving is basically a necessity here. There was a crackdown on uninsured/unlicensed drivers a while back, but then in a lot of ways you’re essentially criminalizing poverty. It’s a deeply complicated problem with no easy solution.
Just wanted to compliment you on a very well reasoned and measured response.
Thank you so much!
And let me second that emotion. Well said.
That’s the physical damage to property limit, not the bodily injury limit, which is almost certainly higher.
You highlight a significant class problem. I live in an area replete with high value vehicles and I pity the minimum wage service worker who has the misfortune to be at fault in a collision with one of these status symbols/penis enhancers. While Uninsured/Underinsured liability coverage is available, people almost always buy only the bodily injury coverage rather the physical damage kind. You buy a fancy new loaded R1T, I’m the immigrant country club busboy with the Shitbox Showdown winner who taps your rear end and my life is instantly over. Good times.
That isn’t how it works though.
Uninsured/underinsured is through your own insurer to protect you.
My wife was t-boned by a poor driver carrying state minimum insurance. Because the other drivers’ policy was maxed out almost immediately, we had to go after our own insurer to get a payout through the underinsured policy. In theory, my insurance could have gone after the other driver’s personal assets, but because she didn’t have any, there was no point.
In your scenario, the poor driver with the shitbox has no assets, so perversely, he has nothing to lose.
Well, I’m a licensed insurance agent, and yes, that is how it works. Uninsured Motorist Property Damage is not an automatic coverage and if you had it, then you were probably smart to purchase it. However, I suspect your car was actually repaired as part of your collision physical damage coverage. Note though that there are limits to that with respect to valuation (ACV vs RCV), deductibles, and even whether there is physical damage coverage available, so it can get quite complicated.
The shitbox driver also does indeed have much to lose. Have you heard of Liens? They are nasty legal financial instruments that can linger long time. You work for me now bitch!
I suppose anything is possible if you try hard enough, but our lawyer advised us that trying to recover anything from the other driver would be like squeezing blood from a stone.
I recently went through something similar wherein I negotiated two policy limit payments for underinsured motorist coverage. The amounts were substantial, yet in that situation too, both carriers elected not to pursue the guilty party. However, in that case, it had more to do with legal nuances of bodily injury coverage than anything else.
But I still maintain that if Juan hits Argent’s S Class and Juan has minimum PD coverage, he is in for a very bad day. (Note that names were chosen for dramatic stereotype effect, not bigotry)
Or worse, the Shitbox Showdown loser.
The owners ‘the kind that your insurance will hate’line makes me feel like he is a dick. The kind of dick that insisted these repairs went far beyond make it new again- there is no way the car had to be repainted because if the tailgate, not on something this new. That paint in no way faded enough that it couldn’t be blended/adjusted. I’m willing ti bet this guy insisted on any part be new, not repaired, not refurbished.
That said, a car shouldn’t need to be sent across the state for a sensor reset. Or torn down this much- how much easier would thos be with a traditional, non-unibody truck?
I kinda doubt there are any used or refurbished parts available for this truck.
He isn’t a dick. He just says what he knows to be true. Unless you consider him a dick simply for driving around in a Rivian.
nah he’s a dick. the ceramic coating was the icing on the dick cake.
You’ve got a point, this does not sound like someone with whom I would want to share a beer. But from working in the collision industry blending panels is required on all paintwork. Not because of UV damage. You have different paint manufactures and different environmental conditions which make perfect matching impossible. That is why painters use blending, to make these color matching differences imperceptible. Thirty years ago one could see what panels have been repaired/repainted because blending was not used. Now it is much more difficult to spot the aftermath of repairs.
Even the same paint code in a different lot or batch can have a visible colour difference. Paint matching and blending is an art that not even all experienced body shops can achieve.
If manufacturers are going to continue in this direction and make cars harder and harder to repair at the component level, I think it opens an opportunity for skilled body workers to open up shop as ‘panel beaters’.
I restored a 1973 Volvo 1800ES and when the car was completely stripped down to bare metal, you could see one of the front fenders had been replaced. As this article mentions, the 1800’s body is essentially one piece, with no seams other than the doors, hood and glass. The replacement fender piece had been cut in and welded to the adjacent panelsThe body shop I was working with commended the worker who had done the work from years ago. They did similar repair work on the lower rocker panels for me to cut out and replace panels damaged by rust.
These things can be repaired without tearing the whole car apart just to replace a single panel, but I think insurance company policies just dictate to do that, to avoid getting in to the aesthetic debate of whether a repair was done properly, which cutting/patching can get into.
But tell me again how manufacturers aren’t very aggressively designing cars to be purely disposable, forcing you to buy a new one as often as possible.
My insurer, by the way, refuses to underwrite Rivians, refuses to underwrite most Telsas, and is mulling a ban on all EVs with ‘structural batteries.’ Because nearly every car with a ‘structural battery’ that gets in an accident is a total loss.
I have a friend with a Tesla Model S – his car was totaled after he ran over something on the interstate. The car wasn’t damaged in any noticeable way… except that whatever he hit punched a small hole in the battery housing (as I understand things). However no shop was willing to undertake the liability of making the repair. There may be something I don’t know but I was in the car after the accident: it ran fine and looked perfect except for the gash in the underside
It’s also uninsurable, so he’ll be entirely on the hook when it burns down, or if he’s found at fault in a collision.
Any puncture or tear in the battery module compromises the weather seal, whether or not individual cells are damaged. Meaning now water, salt, and dirt can get into the HV area. Which shocker, will cause corrosion. Which will cause resistance. Which will cause heat buildup. Which will cause runaway exothermic reactions – better known as fire.
Tesla’s stance is that it also fatally compromises the crashworthiness of the vehicle. Which means if someone wrecks into him and breaks his arm, their insurance may not have to pay out. Whether or not they’re gouging or full of shit is irrelevant; insurers are not automotive engineers. They go by what the manufacturer tells them.
Floor pan damage totaling a car is not unique to Tesla or EVs. GM has totaled Corvettes over similar damage to structural pans. The difference is that on a Corvette, if it had been in non-structural pan? $3000 and done, including the paint. On any EV with a floorpan battery, $25,000+ because the dent exceeds the specified intrusion limit and therefore the entire pack is deemed unsafe.
He didn’t keep it….the nice insurance people got him a brand new one.
Sounds like your insurer is going to be low on new business come 2035.
Planned obsolescence is a byproduct of constant growth expectations. It has been prevalent in our society since the domestication of the light bulb.
If you noticed yesterday the current average age of a vehicle is 12.5 years. Clearly not purely disposable.
This is a good example of how automotive engineering is a delicate balancing act between things that are in opposition to each other, and how much corporate engineering experience plays into it as well, and what they expect customers want.
Rivian customers likely don’t think about repairability very much because it’s a low volume premium-priced vehicle, and they’re a new company, so they focused on clever engineering to give it a solid frame, lots of passenger room, etc. rather than emphasize repairability
A counter-example is the F150, where a lot of their customers are fleet, where low insurance and operating costs, ease of repair, and parts availability are very important, and in emphasizing that, there’s less space for storage and passengers
I find this a very concerning trend. This will lead to increased TCO if this becomes the norm through higher insurance premiums. My wife had a low speed impact in our Model 3 with a small pole in a parking lot…don’t ask…it was $7k. My premiums went up $100 a month, so paying for it but I hate how fragile and expensive these cars are.
“As car buyers, we need to make our needs known. We need to consider the models of the Right to Repair movement, and try and hold automakers accountable for building vehicles that aren’t devastating to repair, that aren’t built for disposability, because in the end, we’re the ones that end up paying.”
HOW?? We can’t get Dealers and Manufactures to make and sell cars of any color other than shades of white, black, and grey, manual transmissions or cheap hot hatches. How are we to pressure them to make cheap to repair and forgiving in low speed accidents??
I chuckled at this one; you’re not wrong.
A drunk driver plowed into the back on my parked Nissan Frontier, and it bent the bumper a bit. I didn’t even bother to fix it.
In my opinion, this is unacceptable. I’m sure it will eventually trickle down to my insurance rates.
This is going to be a huge problem going forwards. Reminds me of how expensive headlights have become on cars these days, I wouldn’t be surprised to see many cars getting totalled for that reason alone.
The insurance industry is slow to react, but they’ll find out eventually. And then they’ll jack the rates on Rivians until the company cleans up it’s act.
Would they jack rates by make and model, or just raise rates across the board?
Whichever will benefit them more and they think they can get away with.
This is ‘murica, which outcome do you think is more likely? 😀
What it boils down to, at least in the US, is “How is does someone of your A/S/L driving X car, Y number of miles a year, going to cost us in terms of claims?”
For example, Corvettes and Elises are weirdly cheap to insure for a sports car, because they’re generally ‘weekend’ cars. BMW M8s, AMGs, and Bentleys are insanely expensive to insure because repairs are incredibly expensive and owners tend to use them as daily drivers
If you want a fun adventure, check out this IIHS listing of insurance losses by make a model: https://www.iihs.org/ratings/insurance-losses-by-make-and-model
They’re not slow to react when it comes to jacking rates.
I knew someone whose Daewoo was totalled because someone backed into the headlight and the company had folded by then
This is idiotic. I know that if I had that truck, with that damage, I could take it to a guy who’d have it fixed for less than 5k. He probably wouldn’t have replaced every possible part with a brand new one, but 99% of the population would not be able to tell.
Maybe it’s time to bring back the 5mph impact foam bumpers from the 80s.
Yeah, PDR the ding in the tailgate, heat gun the bumper cover, would look cosmetically perfect afterward, good enough for my personal standards anyway. And no insurance claims history so no diminished value at trade in
If this becomes a widespread problem I can see insurance companies ironically taking the same stance as some have on cheap Kias and Hyundais and refusing to insure them.
Be right back, I’m going raise my insurance limits.
Do it anyway. We got sued by the other driver and her ambulance chasing billboard attorney for an accident where my wife wasn’t even ruled at fault for. Once lawyers get involved, even my $300,000 limit didn’t seem like enough. In the end, my insurance company still settled with them, rather than continue to fight and rack up lawyer fees and it was under my limit. I still went and got an umbrella policy as soon as the case was settled. If you are ever unlucky enough to be in an injury accident, especially if you are at fault, you’ll want more coverage than you have.
If you have actual assets to protect, you need an umbrella policy.
I moved to Florida 2 years ago and am surprised by how much more insurance is. I was from MN and never heard of anyone suing. Here in FL it is common. I am rocking 250/500 but might weigh the cost of an umbrella as well.
I have a $1m umbrella and it’s quite inexpensive. I’m thinking I might go to $2m.
It’s likely because Florida is a no-fault state, and up-to-date insurance must be presented to renew registration
I rear-ended a station wagon carrying about 5 kids in it at a very low speed, I was in my late 20s. I soon got a letter from my insurance company that my 50k liability coverage might be exceeded. Luckily, it turned out to be an overly ambitious letter from a lawyer, the kids were unhurt and the settlement was minimal. However, I soon contacted my insurance agent about increasing my limits. I was about to increase my liability coverage from 50k to 300k for about $10 every 6 months. I was actually a little pissed at my agent for not telling me it was so cheap to get SO much more coverage.
I went from 1 to 2 million liability on my homeowners and it was $1 more a year. Exactly like you I’m amazed they didn’t tell me about it.
They didn’t tell you because they didn’t stand to make more than a $1 extra but they may have lost $1m extra in case of a claim.
You should max out your auto coverage and also carry an umbrella policy. Hopsital stays are expensive, and injury attorneys target insurance when they sue. It doesn’t take much to blow past policy limits and then your estate is on the hook.
I started thinking as you mentioned IIHS that I couldn’t remember the last time I heard about any bumper tests. Makes sense that they’re not doing them any more but is surprising since that was what first put them on the map, before the offset tests really started getting coverage.
Also, when this Rivian story first broke, man did the “the kind that is going to piss off your insurance company!” line feel gross to read.
Gross indeed!
Between automakers collecting and monetizing my data, trying to charge me “subscriptions” to use features already built into the car, making it impossible for me to fix my car myself, jacking the price of new cars up well beyond the increase we should expect from inflation and… building something that costs an insane amount to repair for a parking lot incident that _will_ happen at some point?
I’m not really excited about getting a new car these days.
I really like Rivians. But a truck is supposed to be a utility vehicle at its core… not a precious object. No thanks.
I used to make fun of the luddites back in the early ’80s who decried fuel injection as the end of being able to do what you want with your car and swore they’d never buy a new car because of it, but more and more I’m starting to feel that way towards current new cars for some of the reasons you mentioned.
My brother got a $26,000 repair bill for a minor dent on the underside of his Mach-E. It happened to compromise one of the cooling channels for the battery pack, which means the whole battery pack had to go. The insurance company wanted to scrap it but my brother fought to get it fixed since it was so hard to get a replacement at the time. That is one of my single biggest reservations about the Lightning. At least the Mach E is supposed to stay on the asphalt (my brother’s car hit a piece of metal that fell on the road). I have contractor clients who would probably love to have a fleet of electric vehicles. But not if it meant they risk having them bricked every time they are on a jobsite.
EV’s and PHEV already cost more to insure, at least that’s been my experience. These kinds of experiences don’t help that at all. When I had a Volt, that insurance was at least 25-30% higher than other similar cars. But when seeing fellow owners have cars totaled for what would typically be $3,000-$4000 impacts, I started to understand why. One particular issue for the Gen 1 Volt was placement of the charger in front of the passenger side front tire, under the bumper. If you hit something there, often the high voltage cabling would get damaged and pretty much total the car. Hopefully as more people get automatic braking, it will help these things out. I know it’s saved me when backing up in my truck and I couldn’t see a low bollard that wasn’t in any of my mirrors (and I wasn’t watching the screen). The problem seems to be, the more electronics we add, the more insurance seems to cost. We don’t ever see the savings from all these electronic nannies, but they charge us more to repair all the extra electronics.
I have a Tesla Model 3P and an F80 M3; roughly similar in performance and initial cost. The Tesla costs about $300/year less to insure than the BMW. Interestingly, the collision premium is where the biggest difference is.
The last time I had the Tesla in the body shop (someone hit it in a parking lot), the costs were not out of line with what I’d expect to pay on any ICE vehicle.
New cars (particularly luxury models) have a bunch of sensors in the bumpers like parking sensors, radar, etc. It’s not the cost of the sensor that necessarily makes them more expensive to repair, but the labor in doing it right and calibrating it
You can spin this anyway you want, but this is unsustainable for a mass market vehicle.
Yeah, I suspect this is why my Tesla costs nearly double to insure than my BMW or Infiniti.
Couldn’t resist getting that flex in?
The flex is a Ford, not a BMW or Infiniti.
Not sure which Tesla you drive, but this hasn’t been my experience at all. I’d shop around for quotes.
Great..now the rate for my 2000 CRV is gonna go up on the off chance I bump a Rivian in a parking lot.
Yeah. I like new vehicles, but this could make getting insurance even more difficult for those at a lower income, and create a even worse gap between the “have’s” and the “have’s not”.
Jesus Christ. Missus got hit in the back in her Lexus and the front end of the offender caved in far worse. The repair bill of the Lex was not even one twelfth of this thing.
This nonsense got to stop or else insurance companies will start dropping these policies.