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.
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.
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
Standard unibody design. You just don’t hear about it with normal cars because they have enough production to cover shit.
Fender bender?
He crushed the roof under a streetlight and had to have the unibody structure repaired.
All I want out of an EV is a fully electric 1990s era Single Cab Ford Ranger
This is why my only electric vehicle is a bicycle lol, still waiting on prices to come down to something sane. In the meantime, I have my trusty old Honda and Subaru.
This is the exact wrong way of thinking. This has nothing to do with the fact vehicle is electric. This has everything to do with the fact Rivian is young company. People will often neglect the fact Toyota (and others) exist for decades and has been pouring time and money in figuring reliability and ease of repair. It’s not an easy thing to achieve. It’s decades and number of different models of improvement upon improvement that we take for granted today.
Of course Tesla’s quality is going to suck ass, they’ve been around for far shorter, and have an idiot for owner who thinks he’s the best thing. And not only Tesla, Rivian but all new manufacturers will struggle with issues like these. Some manufacturers are smarter than others and they will hire experienced people to help work and design. Musk is not one of those smart people as his tendency is to make sure smartest people leave in every company he buys.
