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.
Funny, got into my E28 Bimmer (with ugly AF US-spec bumpers) one day, and I do not know what possessed me that day but I got in the car, put it in reverse (without even looking… i parked in a non-usual parking spot and idit me just did not pay attention) and BANG! hit the concrete column so hard and it literally stopped the car, as i did not ever realize at the time what the f i just did. So I got out….slooowly got to the back of the car with one eye close and Voila! nothing I MEAN NOTHING! only the huge black rubber mark on the white concrete column (from rubber trim on the bumper) but that was it. I knew there were actual shock absorbers mounted to each side of those bumpers so they spring back and firth a good 3-4 inches.I actually tested them and they work.
since that happened those bumpers are growing on me every day.
Too late. When was the last time you saw a modern car (not an SUV, Truck, or BOF Van) with an actual external bumper, not just a plastic facia that gets destroyed in a collision with anything at any speed?
They don’t exist in the US at least.
Modern cars are already disposable for the most part. Body Shops in my limited experience are more ‘Body Panel Replacement’ Shops than anything else, They’d rather cut half of the extended cab portion of a 94 Toyota pickup out and weld a new one in than pull the softball sized dent. In this modern era where body shops don’t pull dents I’d rather have a car that has either un-dentable body panels (like the Saturns of old) or with cheap and easy to replace body panels.
P.S.
I am probably one of the few people who actually loves 5 MPH bumpers.
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.
People fail to realize that collision repair is an EXTREMELY specialized skill that takes YEARS to master, and manufacturers are making it harder for cost effective repairs to be made on modern vehicles. Then you have people driving older cars like myself where OEM parts availability is becoming a serious problem (I have a 2006 Buick Lucerne that was rear ended last month and my insurance totaled it because the repairs exceeded their ACV of the car because the trunk lid and taillights are no longer available new from GM)
This isn’t so much an EV problem as it is a startup car making problem. No one at Rivian was designing for low speed crash repairability. They had bigger priorities when trying to get a first truck to market. This will eventually shake itself out as these things begin to cost huge amounts to insure and sales drops force them to fix it or they preemptively fix it on the next refresh.
Side note. The rear quarter panel of my 2007 Pontiac Solstice GXP runs the full length of the car. Large panels to avoid joints is common.
Yep, it’s very much the arrogance of a startup that thinks it knows better. Tbh I’m surprised the IIHS let them get away with this because finance, JD Power and insurance agencies and even the dealers got to see our cars reasonably early in the design process to make there are no land mines.
I’ve worked with just about every OEM while at tier one suppliers – the amount of people actually working at developing these vehicles at the startups is shocking compared to the traditional OEM’s.
In many cases, not necessarily in a bad way…but at some point it makes a difference.
I’m imagining Rivians aging and being bought cheap by someone like me.
With that minor collision, I would only get it fixed if someone else was paying. If that wasn’t the case, I would leave that minor damage as-is.
There is expensive and there is silly. If this is the sort of repair Rivian specifies, then I guess you have to go with it.
But there is really only a little dent that I can see. Maybe a new bumper/sensors are required but perhaps not.
Tearing apart the whole truck is probably going to mean the thing rattles and squeaks down the road.
I would prefer a paintless dent repair to a complete vehicle rebuild, even if someone else is paying. But maybe that’s not an option and that is too bad.
Nice looking truck, but no dice for me when a dent costs $42,000 to repair.
From the owner’s standpoint, the collision was not his fault, so why should he spend the rest of his time with the truck having visible damage regardless of the repair cost. I would want it like new myself. Now if it was my fault, sure, I would repair the functional items, but that sucker would look like that until I sold it.
I’ll live by TVR’s philosophy of car safety; “don’t crash then.” If someone bumps into me, that’s their problem.
The problem is that most jabronis carry bare minimum insurance (if at all) your own insurance will cover the repair.
My 2020 Hyundai Ioniq was hit while street parked back in 2021 (they sideswiped the car behind me and came to a stop on my DS rear bumper corner). No visible sheet metal damage, taillight and hatch not damaged. Only the plastic bumper and crash beam behind it, along with the blind spot sensor module. Total repair was $3800. Modern cars are insanely expensive to crash repair.
Just a really top notch article
It will not be fun to own a second hand car made in this way in 10-15 years time when you won’t be able to easily remove and replace panels if they aren’t bolted on. And the design and use of a panel which goes all the way from the rear to the cab is rather stupid or is it just me? Especially if there is an expectation that the panels will need to be replaced at some point due to damage. I guess the big manufacturers account for such things but have panel join lines which Rivian was trying to avoid in their design
> It will not be fun to own a second hand car made in this way in 10-15 years time when you won’t be able to easily remove and replace panels if they aren’t bolted on.
Especially when the manufacturer will have been deceased for 8-10 years and no parts exist.
I do recall the Kharman Ghia also having custom fit panels and doors, the result being inability to swap doors or hoods if they deteriorated and a good donor with say a crunched rear end was available.
I have seen it mentioned elsewhere that insurance companies are somewhat more likely to just write off and EV versus repair it. these kind of repair costs might go a step further and make the vehicles uninsurable, this would be a bad day for Rivian.
“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.”
Well, yes and no. They did work well for city dwellers where bumper-parking is common. However in fly-over country where most accidents happen at speeds over 5 mph, they did nothing except increase the cost of the bumpers… the NHTSA did a study after the law was reduced from 5 mph to 2.5 mph and found that there really was no savings over a 10 year “life of the vehicle” – the statistically aggregated savings from very low speed protection being offset by the increased cost of the bumper and supporting structure.
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/807072
“There’s almost always a simple solution for every problem. Often that simple solution doesn’t work, but it exists.”
This type of thing is still going, hopefully the next president will pull back the regulations a bit as it makes no sense that we have to have the car sense when the car is wandering across lanes or if it is too close to the car in front of it. Just install cell phone jammers in the vehicles and require eyes to be on the road when driving(vision sensors) and the world on the road would be much better.
I expect the larger issue is modern pedestrian collision safety testing. Things made of plastic over poltstrene shells are much more yielding than heavy bars on shock absorbers.
As a shop owner …this is call fleecing 100%
Thanks for the (disturbingly) informative article Jason. 🙂
I’d like to say that I’m gonna add a R1T to my ‘never-own’ list, but I doubt that I’ll still be around by the time that it’s depreciated to the point where I could consider one.
So, no need. 😉
My 2018 Chevy Volt was hit in the driver’s front corner at low speed. No glass damage. Fender, hood, and bumper damaged. No battery or drive damage. Steering wheel and drivers foot airbag deployed. Estimated repair cost: $14,500. Insurance totaled it. I hit a deer with our Tesla and damaged the same parts – drivers fender, hood, and bumper. $7,000 to repair but no air bags deployed. A co-worker’s Camry cost about $7,000 for a similar deer hit. Modern cars are expensive to repair.
Well, this does alleviate some of my concerns about the future of the used market. If you start totaling everything that has a minor accident when it’s 3 or 4 years old, there won’t be one.
they make as much or more than they pay tot he car owner via sales at Copart. they no longer have to insure a vehicle that is worth less than the insurance value after a wreck repair, and they get to raise the premium you pay on the replacement car if you buy a new replacement. I don’t agree with the deplorable insurance system, but I understand why they do what they do. Pretty Sure that terrible repair group that sells bonded title cars “The Internet Car Lot” is getting first dibs purchases from copart for a kickback of the after sale profit.
No, there will still be a used car market. It will just have a whhoooollle lot of salvage titled cars in it.
Salvage title with a small dent in the rear!
The problem is getting the salvage title cleared for use. I know that varies from state to state, but I wouldn’t be surprised if regulations tighten up even in the lax states so they don’t get stuck being the approver of a thermal runaway on wheels.
I think the opposite will happen, at least in states where there is no desire to build public transit. A dearth of used cars will drive prices even higher. Poorer folks need a way to go to work. It will come down to some state sponsored battery inspection rubber stamp on salvaged EV batteries and they will be good to go.
One comment about insurance in the States. Why in do you still use the archaic method of having the other drivers insurance company pay for the repairs?
Where I live they have no-fault insurance. If I am in an accident my company pays to repair my car. The other car’s insurance pays to repair their car.
It sounds crazy, but it actually is awesome. People with expensive cars get to pay more in insurance as they have a more expensive car to repair. A person with a inexpensive car does not get penalized if they end up in an accident with say a Ferrari.
The insurance companies have a much better situation as they only have to cover the value of the car drivers car. It also put the onus on the insurance company to make sure the repair is done properly and not as cheaply as possible as it is their own clients car. Most major insurance companies offer lifetime warranties (for as long as you own the car) on the repairs if you use one of their authorized repair shops. (You can go anywhere you want – you just won’t get the insurance company backed warranty.)
In the event of an accident where the driver is charged by Police – like say for DUI things are handled there too. Both insurance companies pay to repair their client’s cars. The insurance company of the non-DUI driver can then subrogate the cost of repairs to the DUI-drivers insurance. (IE: Send them the final repair bill.) The DUI-driver insurance must pay that once the DUI charges work their way through the legal system and the person is found guilty.
Simple and clean. But I suspect it seems communist like or something to some…
I actually live in a state (Michigan) which is one of the few, if not only, no-fault states. As a result of this and no lifetime limit on medical benefits until recently Michigan had far and away the most expensive insurance rates in the country! What you say has merit, but what actually happens is that if some kucklehead hits you because they are checking their Insta feed while your sitting at a stop light YOUR insurance rates increase. If you hit someone else, YOUR insurance rates increase. There is a system of getting your deductible covered, but its slow and painful.
Ouch. No lifetime limit on medical benefits is the cause of the high insurance rates – that is just a recipe for gouging. Here soft tissue injuries are heavily regulated so costs are kept under control.
Most major insurance companies here offer accident forgiveness – get in an accident after 5 years no claims and getting in an accident will not increase your insurance rates.
True story, I am in FL and insurance is super high here. Everyone sues and if your limits aren’t high enough they go after your assets.
No fault indicates it was nobodies fault, but if it was clearly not your fault you should get no penalty, replace or properly repair your car, provide a loner while you wait and the other persons insurance should cover the value loss from a vehicle that now has dirty carfax record.
I see your point completely. That was my initial feeling when it was being put in place decades ago. However, it has generated significant saving as all the litigation involved with arguing who’s fault it was in an accident has gone away. Litigation makes things very, very expensive quickly. I cannot emphasize how much this adds to the costs involved.
As I stated, in cases where Police file charges – then things change and costs can be subrogated to the insurance company of the person charged by police. So serious accidents have a way for things to be covered by the other insurance company eventually. (It takes a while as the due process required before a person can be found guilty of the charges.)
A lot of accidents (I suspect the majority) are not clear cut as who is actually at fault. So no fault just deals with things easily and simply – which cuts total costs significantly. In no fault you car gets repaired properly as your insurance company is responsible for the repairs.
The whole idea you get compensated for the loss in value of your vehicle is just weird to me – but I’m sure the lawyers love them fees they rack up. My car is repaired and I can use it – enough for me.
I’ll also repeat that most major insurance companies here offer accident forgiveness if you go for enough years without an accident. So one accident will not impact your insurance rates.
Heck some insurance companies here are even now running their own repair shops (which you don’t have to use) and they are realizing significant savings due to shady billing practices from repairs shops.
No fault insurance is nice, but comes with a whole raft of problems it creates. Unfortunately, every solution has inherent compromises.
As others will surely tell you, Michigan is a test case of what not to do.
Michigan made the mistake of lifetime medical benefits – that is just so asking for people to abuse the system. That is gone apparently.
A quick google search says 18 states apparently have no fault. Including Texas!! (I emphasize as I was genuinely surprised… I was not expecting that.)
All insurance companies in the us that I’ve had to deal with (home, auto, healthcare) always try to subrogate. For everything. It’s infuriating.
Michigan has this, as do a few other states (in part, at least). It’s wildly expensive. The year/make/model is far from the only factor in determining your auto ins. costs. They also take into account things like your location, the number of un-/under-insured drivers in your area, etc. etc.
“Broad form” car insurance, as is required by any financed vehicle, in Detroit can easily be over $5k/yr. This is due to high auto crime rates and mind boggling numbers of un-/under-insured drivers, an estimated 60% (as of 2019, Univ. of MI estimate).
Lots of uninsured drivers in your area? Rates go up. Fewer people can afford them, so more go uninsured. Now rates go up again. Even fewer people can afford them, so more cut coverage. Aaaand that’s how to get to an estimated 60% uninsured.
https://poverty.umich.edu/files/2019/03/PovertySolutions-CarInsurance-PolicyBrief-r1.pdf
Nice job in telling this story, Torch. I saw the headlines over the last week, but none had this level of effort & explanation.
Not like I have the $$$ laying around to buy one of these anyway, but this certainly gives me pause. Big advocate of EV’s, but the idea of these service centers being so few and far between, plus insane costs like this (not to mention the cost of the vehicle itself)…it’s a lot to wrap your head around.
I accidentally backed into a Model 3 in a parking lot a few years back. Both the owner and I looked at it, and decided since the damage was so minor, I’d just pay them out of pocket for it once they got it fixed.
Fast forward a week, and not only did they have to travel 2 hours to the nearest place that Tesla authorized to approve the repair, but it was going to cost $16k!!!
For a minor bump with paint scrapes!
Needless to say, it then went to the insurance company, who paid it out, but jesus christ it was insane.
“…Tesla authorized to approve the repair, but it was going to cost $16k!!!” I suspect this is a partial cause in the rivian story as well. Exclusivity limits competition and encourages this sort of bullshit. If the owner was paying out of pocket at a normal shop they would have repaired the body work and blended the paint in the panel.
Yeah, I suspect you’re correct. Given the damage, I bet a local body shop could’ve done it for under $2k easily.
A few years back I rear ended a Hyundai sedan. I was driving a 99 Dodge Intrepid, and the front of my car went under the back bumper of the Hyundai and my hood made contact with the rear bumper. No visible damage to the rear bumper on the Hyundai, not even a paint scratch. No dent on the hood of my Intrepid, just a 1/2 long scuff in the paint that I really had to look to find. The Hyundai owner took it to a body shop and they said a couple of the small plastic tabs that have locking pins holding the bottom edge of the rear bumper in place had broken. Replace rear bumper cover, $3800 repair. Design of new cars has not been for ease of repair for a long time.
Good ‘ol market forces will eventually help to ameliorate some of this, as the physical damage rates for insurance will drive customers away and thus force the manufacturer to higher prioritize repair costs in comparison to manufacturing costs. It simply does not matter how much you save building the vehicles if no one buys a particular brand because they have a reputation for prohibitively expensive insurance premiums. Furthermore, the insurance companies will howl loudly about the costs directly to the manufacturers while threatening to put their brand or model on a declination list similar to what Hyundai and Kia are currently experiencing in some markets. No insurance, no loans.
Then consider the scenario wherein you gently back your fresh new R1T into the Camry in your own driveway and do $40k in damage. There is no other insurance company to bill in such case.
It seems to me that the R1T really pushes the depreciation curve into some crazy territory. If the Rivian referenced in this article had been like 28 months old, the insurance company for the Lexus might have totaled out the R1T over that tiny fender bender. That’s fucking insane.
Fantastic post. Thanks Jason.
I dunno – I’m not exactly shocked. I feel like the reason this is so expensive is the bodyshop had no experience with the car. This leaves them in a position where it will be very time consuming to learn the car’s setup. They are a specialty shop focusing on EV repairs, so they want to do a very, very, very good job on the first repair or they could be black-balled for subsequent Rivian repair opportunities very quickly.
With time, that shop will become more efficient with dealing with the car and costs will come down.
As for repair costs, they can get expensive quickly. Case in point, I owned a 1992 Lexus SC400 that was in very good condition. About 10 years ago I ended up in an accident where it sustained front end damage. The visible damage was minor. The original estimate was $2000 to repair.
First big problem was the radiator was leaking – so that had to be replaced. That then meant all the hoses to the radiator had to be replaced – those hoses are very, very expensive. They tried using the original plastic front end but it warped when baking the repaint. Bang, new front end had to be ordered…. from Japan. That front clip had to be painted when it finally arrived. In the end the total cost of repair hit just under $10,000. And that was over 10 years ago.
Why so expensive? Niche car. Expensive repair parts. Insurance requested that bodyshop – in exchange the work was warrantied for the life of my ownership.
So look at the Rivian. Niche – yup. Expensive parts – yup. Insurance requested bodyshop – yup. Work warrantied for life of ownership – I would expect yes. The insurance company knew it as going to be expensive but wanted it to be done right as the risks of work done wrong is way, way more expensive.
Agreed, limited production exotic vehicle expensive to repair should surprise nobody. It also used carbon fiber and aluminum in the body which few shops work with. Its why Tesla repairs are higher, aluminum. Most shops just deal with steel all day. It was a concern when Ford switched to aluminum for their truck beds.
Hell, someone scraped the rear quarter panel of my 2015 Dodge Charger and it was an $8k repair bill just for that. Paint work is expensive. It looked like $2k to me but I work in IT and the last dent I hammered out of a car was a 1969 Valiant.
Please tell us it was overnighted…
🙂 Good one. No, it came some other way – it took just under 3 weeks sitting at the shop waiting for the part. You now make me wonder if it would have been cheaper to air freight it in? I had a rental car they paid for for all that time.
Excellent research, a deep dive, that you did for this article Jason!
Sucks to be you if you rear end a Rivian.
Sucks to be you even more if a 7000 lb Rivian rear ends you.
Sounds like your insurer is going to be low on new business come 2035.