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- cross-posted to:
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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.”
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.
You think non-EV car manufacturers don’t make their vehicles deliberately more obtuse to maintain, in order to make their repair and maintenance a specialism? They’re all at it, it just happens that EVs can be created as far more of a black box of proprietary systems.
not exactly, no. they do design for their people to be able to repair it efficiently, though. generally, it’s more in the “you need this super special tool only we make” kind of thing, as apposed to a fender bender causes needing to basically disassemble the entire vehicle just to reach a part.
Yeah I agree that while EVs might require special training or additional skills, car manufacturers have been gating repairs for decades. Lots of the late model cars my uncle worked on required special codes only available thru the manufacturer. They would also withhold data and repair info to third party shops. It got so bad that my uncle was turning away BMW and others that would require codes for simply things like oil changes. Hell take you if the check engine light came on!
I feel like EVs may simply allow them to charge more simply because it’s an EV.
At that price don’t you call it totaled?
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.
I really don’t understand the second hand market for stuff like this… If you can’t afford it new… You probably shouldn’t be buying it used…
It’s like a dude trying to buy a used yacht because he can’t afford it new… You’re not in the yacht club my guy, buy yourself a sensible boat you can afford and maintain.
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
I would disassemble and reassemble the entire thing for less than $42,000, down to the last bolt
Depending on how early the build is. Sometimes poor design decisions like that are allowed for earlier builds while other kinks are worked out.
i would have done it for 200 bucks
Pretty sure this is the same with most vehicles, there’s one piece of metal that goes the length of the roof.
Honestly, this just sounds like people out of touch with how expensive the repair process is.
Standard unibody design. You just don’t hear about it with normal cars because they have enough production to cover shit.
Doesn’t the insurance have an onus in understanding of cost of repairs to vehicles they cover? How can they only offer$1600?
Also, I thought Tesla and others were also looking at these unibody designs for manufacturing purposes.