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.
So get the Lightning with the true body on frame design and put a hitch hammer in the hitch when not towing, got it.
I did have the same concerns with how Tesla’s moving with the gigapress for bigger and bigger pieces, and now other manufacturers are looking to follow suit. It’d be great if the cost savings had them start selling cars below $30k but don’t see them doing that.
Count me out, boys and girls.
This is also reflective of the broader consumer goods shift that has been happening for decades. Ask yourself: Aside from phone screen repairs, what consumer goods get repaired these days versus replaced? Shoe repair shops are nearly gone. Appliance repairs are far less common, if your DVD or TV breaks you throw it out and buy a new one. If you find a repair these days, it still often is price prohibitive versus buying the new and shiny model. Cars have a complex and dedicated network of repair and service shops, but even the local mechanic is becoming extinct due to complex tool requirements or lack of software access to the vehicle.
Jason, I work in total loss and your article is wonderfully researched and hits all the major concerns. This owner now has to worry that another minor hit will total his Rivian, especially as the miles increase and the years go by. You brought up a point that people don’t consider: the auto industry is focused on selling you new cars. So if the damage from minor hits wipes out the car, they get another unit sale. Insurance is starting to shift to totaling more cars due to complex repairs like that and all the ADAS systems needing calibrating, and a host of other factors. Yesterday I clicked to replace ONE headlight on an Audi and it cost $4400. More than the individual value of 3 cars in my driveway. Absolutely nuts.
the big question is the cyber truck…who’s going to repair damage to the exoskeleton and how?
It will not pass crash testing as shown. If you don’t have crumple zones, you get scrambled occupants.
We need less bumper covers and more bumpers. If the bumper wasn’t incorporated into the overall design so elegantly, a traditional bumper would have protected much better. Engineer an actual bumper that gives, but without disturbing the rest of the body panels.
Please read my posts below. I also prefer the look of pre 1972 bumpers.Their only protection was deforming. When it comes to energy management, there was a period of shock mounted bumpers, that proved to be ineffective if the impact wasn’t square on.
I witnessed a small-claims court case in which one party was suing someone who was at fault in a traffic accident. The at-fault driver, who was from a 3rd world country, asked, “But why are they making so much fuss about this? It still runs, doesn’t it?”
Well maybe a company like Rivian that produces 7 cars a year and limitedparts availability is vehicle specific will have huge insurance and will fail.
I think this article successfully unsold me on Rivian. I love the tech, but I like being able to afford repairs and maybe even do them myself!
Afford repairs or afford insurance? No one’s paying out of pocket unless its $500-1k. All EVs are more expensive to insure due to the more expensive repairs, but the gas savings more than makes up for it so its a wash.
gas savings are supposed to offset the higher price of the vehicle already. then you have also the out of warranty battery replacements that can cost as much as a decade of gasand oil changes or several engine replacements. long term ownership is not necessarily better than a reliable gas car…to be clear I own an ev. ‘ the battery is out of warranty and I’m going to sell it, and buy a more recent used ev
Gas savings makes up for all those things: Insurance, higher cost, etc.. If you factor in the average ownership (8 years), ave miles driven (14k/yr), ave gas price, the savings is ~$18k. Replacement battery? Thats the next guys problem after the warranty ends, but then again, the EV is pretty inexpensive at that point.
I was rear-ended at low speed in a 2004 Ford Focus by a Toyota Prius. The rear bumper cover on the Focus broke in the impact, but there was no other damage. The entire front end of the Prius shattered, and what looked like styrofoam spilled out into the street. The bill to repair the Focus: $1,700. The Prius? $7,000.
It’s EPP , Expanded Poly Polypropylene. Closed cell plastic foam, impervious to gas and oil, will compress 90% and come back about 98%
Don’t know how I got an extra Poly in there.
This is absolute Horse droppings. It’s one thing to build a pretty truck, that no one is going to be tossing fire wood into, It’s unconscionable to produce a design failure that has the required energy absorbing bumper improperly mounted.(virtually flush)
I was a prototype specialist (glorified technician) for the US headquarters of an international concern that I believe still has 60% world market share, raw material, molded parts combined, for energy absorbing bumpers. I CNC machined prototype cores for impact testing from 1997-2004 before specs could be set, and molds made.
There is a reason modern cars look the way they do. Front fascias often appear flush, incorporating the energy absorbing core, plastic grill, and lights under a single urethane cover that is designed to give. (often expensively sacrificing grills and lights) Rear fascias are most commonly protruding from the trunk plane to allow compression without body damage. These energy absorbing cores are backed by bumper beams, usually square cross section steal or aluminum, that will also deform before crumple zones need to get envolved.
Two things
Still, this is all kinds of nuts.
I think the insurance industry is going to have to rethink their model over how some EVs are insured based not only this, but the sheer weight of some of these monstrosities. The exorbitant extra costs involved in repairing these shouldn’t fall on those of us who still drive normal cars.
It’s meticulous stories like this that exemplify The Autopian and it’s why Torch and crew make the big bucks … uh, maybe I better subscribe and pay
Seriously. This is quality stuff, with a lot of homework and a big ‘so what’ tied to it. Awesome work, Autopian.
“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.”
Add a cracked hitch cover (no damage to hitch itself) and you got it. Took getting rear ended in my 2017 canyon twice to do that much. The other cars did not fair as well.
What’s to stop it from being the norm? People refusing to buy this type of shit car after learning about it. Will be a steep learning curve.
Car industry has jumped the shark as they say, I’m quickly loosing interest between this type of crap and the costs to own being so high.
It happening frequent enough and insurance will go up, causing fewer people to consider these types of cars with high repair bills when shopping.
I need to preface with the fact that I’m an idiot. Now on to the story, I went to the auto body shop this afternoon because I hit my truck with my tractor bucket on one side scratching, denting and busting a tail light. And I had a buddy do me a favor throwing a few bales a hay into the other side and adding some dimples. They are going to repair the damage close to good as new I’d guess and repaint the entire bed, 1680 dollars. I’ll pay out of pocket instead of adding two separate claims to my insurance. I’ll be keeping my Tundra for the foreseeable future.
I can’t imagine my insurance would keep me if it cost 42k and I surprised them with the bill for some similar issue, and I couldn’t pay it out of pocket if they said no. This will keep me from owning a vehicle like this for the rest of my life. So thank you Autopian for posting this.
You could probably get an entire new (used) truck bed in the same color at a wrecking yard, unbolt the old one, bolt the new one on, and you’re good to go.
AMEN
That’s a fantastic story. Well done, Torch!
Yeesh. I know Rolls was touting the Ghost’s lack of panel lines as a good thing for a high-end design, but that’s a super-luxe, high-end sedan. A Rivian’s sold on the promise of going out into nature, where all the scratchy and denty things live. Just seems like a weird design decision to make them stupidly difficult to fix. Like, did no one bother to ping the marketing side on this? Talk up any dudes with roof tents, or hangers-around in REI?
My whole car is worth 2K so next time someone runs into me i feel i should ask their insurance company for a kickback.I’m doing them a favor by driving a piece of crap!
It’s almost as if a company with no automotive manufacturing history doesn’t design for serviceability.
Having said that, the repairs on a F150 with the aluminum bedsides is very expensive as well. Our shop truck had an accident that would have been a minor repair on a truck with steel bedsides, and the fix was to remove the entire bedside and replace it. Not sure what the final cost was but it would have been multiples of a steel bed repair. The body shop claimed you can’t weld aluminum (there was a tear in the skin) but with both my father and one brother being expert welders I know it can be done, just not by your typical body tech.
Of course aluminum can be welded . But light gauge sheet without being able to get a heat sink behind the weld to minimize warpage ? That’s probably why they say ” it can’t be done .”
If it wasn’t bad enough with manufacturers only wanting to sell you EVs in the form of ridiculously expensive trucks and SUVs, they design the damn things to be made out of a single piece of billet aluminum. I am seriously going to look into a parts manufacturer/retailer to invest heavily in. They will be making hand over fist until ICE vehicles are legislated off the road because regular folk will have no other choice but to drive their current cars into the ground with the price and ownership costs of EVs (and new ICEs)!
Car and Drivers 2019 long term test Ridgeline took a harder hit-was $3600, so figure $5000 now maybe. https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a25606089/2019-honda-ridgeline-reliability-maintenance-update-20k/
My cottage trusty-but-rusty 98 Dakotas bumper met a tree backing up, a clean salvage yard replacement was $80… a few bolts, pb blaster and some cursing, job done…
eh the good old days
Insurance cos will get their $ back on this, somehow the house always wins…
Yeah this goes beyond the Rivian problem (although it is crazy how much this will cost to fix). I’m closely watching an aquantence go through almost the same amount of accident damage in the same location on a Hummer EV. It’s gonna be pricey…
I wish we could go back to the days of exterior panels not being structural (like a Fiero!). Also, this highlights that unibody trucks with a bed that can’t be unbolted from a frame structure might not be the best approach….I think you could even unbolt the truck bed from a Commanche, and that was unibody.
Or early Saturns! I too thought that was a great idea. But then there were always those sissies who would recoil at the panel gaps — apparently ignorant of the fact that composite materials have different thermal properties than metals, and the gaps were there to allow for expansion. (And then cut to 10 years later when my Saturn was still dent-free, while similar-age cars looked like they had been parked inside a driving range.)
I’ll never forget that commercial with the guys at the car wash intentionally bumping into the doors. “Polymer panels, man!” I sure did like my old Saturn SL2.
My old ’93 SC2 (power everything, but with cloth and a five speed!) slid backwards down an icy hill one winter, and slammed into a tree with the rear bumper. Got stuck facing uphill. The bumper was caved in a solid four inches, and as I had no traction, the only way to get it off the tree was to rock it repeatedly while turning it until it slid sideways down the street – which meant I was essentially repeatedly slamming it at low speed into the tree.
I get out at the bottom of the hill to check the final damage, and there was none! Not even a scratch.
I miss cars like that.
you know, car companies shout out how environmentally conscious they are- but if this is somewhat normal going forward, all those resources saved go out the window (so to speak)
Well I suppose in a short time there will be lots of 2 year old EVs on salvage title.
Even if it becomes “normal”, it will, the unbelievably small percentage of vehicles involved in wrecks (even less with driving assist stuff) means the net gain will still be HUGE! This is not an issue.
What exactly is that percentage? I have an unexamined preconception that most vehicles leave this earthly realm via crashes. If the crash happens while the vehicle is still valuable, it gets repaired, if not… Parts.
Almost every day I’m reminded I’ll never buy a new auto again. I do pretty well, but the product and price point of late model vehicles is not interesting any more.
I drool over post-automatic seatbelt, pre-screen era cars.
I’m pretty sure I’ve said this before, but the biggest concern I have with Rivian after watching the Munro teardowns is that those trucks are full of too-complex designs that are so tightly integrated with the rest of the truck that you can’t trivially fix them up in a mid-cycle refresh. This feels like a shining example of that problem. Even if we assume some price-gouging, just the process that was required to do this repair is insane and will cost a fortune no matter how honest the shop is.
Can they fix it? I hope so, but I fear it’s going to take a full second generation to meaningfully lower the cost and complexity of the trucks.