A Rivian owner was in a fender bender. The repair bill was $42,000.::The repairs cost over half the starting price for the Rivian EV. The owner said he’d expected it wouldn’t be cheap, but it was a “shocking number.”
One of the primary reasons for the high price was that the accident affected a panel that reaches from the back of the vehicle all the way to the front roof pillars of the truck and fixing the panel required service workers to remove the ceiling and front windshield, the Times said.
What a terrible design
Even removing a ceiling and windshield, $42,000 seems stupidly excessive.
Yeah this. I was reading expecting some critical board got damaged or something with the electrical system that also had to be replaced, but nah, they just had to take more apart to get to it.
My uncle was a mechanic, he’d have to take engines apart he wasn’t charging no $42k for even 3 days labour.
Just dealership shenanigans it sounds like.
EV’s have a much smaller pool of people qualified to repair them.
but also, one of the reasons I’m not buying a tesla or a rivian is because a “traditional” car maker would have known about repair-ability and made plans to simply things. the lack of automotive experience is telling, especially in Tesla’s.
Remember that this is a truck where the base model costs in the neighborhood of 70K, even with whatever depreciation, wear and tear, etc. it has picked up (which probably isn’t too much since the truck is, at most, not quite 2 years old) playing around with the kelley blue book website, it looks like the value of that truck is still almost definitely 10k+ more than the cost of the repairs (and honestly probably more like 20K+ unless this guy has seriously beaten the crap out of his truck and racked up a ton of miles)
So the insurance company basically has the option of paying out either 42K for repairs, or 50, 60, 70K+ for the full value of the truck to total it.
That’s some pretty easy math to do to see why it’s not totaled.
To remove rhose things probably disconnects them from other things, further increasing the amount of car that has to get fucked up before its fixed
Fender bender?
He crushed the roof under a streetlight and had to have the unibody structure repaired.
Maybe they will challenge Tesla for the title of most expensive insurance.
All I want out of an EV is a fully electric 1990s era Single Cab Ford Ranger
I think the environment is just going to have to suffer a bit more on my part. Until someone puts out a simple EV that doesn’t constantly surveil me Imma stick with used ICE vehicles
I’m not sure why people are down-voting you. Asking for a car that doesn’t have remote data logging and other BS that a bunch of electric cars have now is not an unreasonable ask. Just make a plain car that works.
This surveillance thing is not EV exclusive. Remember the whole BMW heated seats fiasco? This is the future to come am afraid. The moment manufacturers realize they can squeeze some more money out of you, we are done for.
