EV Suffers Minor Fender Bender, Owner Surprised As Repair Bill Soars To $42,000 As Mechanics Get To Work

Even a small dent in an electric vehicle can mean big bucks in repairs, as one Rivian owner has discovered.

In May, Rivian R1T owner Chris Apfelstadt made public the cost of a February crash in which his truck was rear-ended. The bottom line was $42,000, according to the auto news website the unit.

“I expected it to be expensive, but it was still a shocking number,” Apfelstadt said, according to the report The New York Times.

Between the cost of the repair and the rental car Apfelstadt used in the interim, the entire company came “very close to hitting the other driver’s $50,000 insurance payout limit” , The Drive reported.

The Times report said the huge repair bill for electric vehicles is one reason the average cost of repairing a vehicle, gas or electric, has risen 36 percent since 2018, which which has contributed to the 17 percent increase in insurance premiums in 12 years. months ending in May.

The Times summed up the repair world by writing that vehicles, including many electrics on the market, “have become so complex and luxurious that seemingly simple repairs can cost a small fortune.

“The modern digital architecture is so advanced that systems beyond the point of impact are being disrupted,” Ryan Mandell, director of claims at Mitchell, a firm that provides information to insurance companies and businesses, told the Times. car repair.

“Returning a car to pre-loss condition is more difficult than at any time in history and it’s only going to get more difficult,” he said.

The Times reports that Rivian, the maker of Apfelstadt’s vehicle, has a limited repair network of about 200 stores, unlike Ford’s 2,800 dealerships.

Data provided by Mitchell indicated that the average repair bill for an electric vehicle last year was about $6,800. That’s about $2,400 more than the average total vehicle

The Times report said Teslaswhich sell for between $40,000 and $110,000, account for about 75 percent of collision claims involving electric vehicles.

Damage to an electric vehicle’s battery is a daunting challenge, according to Sandy Munro, an engineer and consultant who hosts a YouTube show, who was interviewed by the Times.

“Right now, if there’s serious damage to the package, no one is anxious to try to repair it,” he told the newspaper.

said Apple Town the unit that the construction of his vehicle was one of the reasons why a fix initially estimated at less than $2,000 turned into a monstrous bill.

“The bigger story here is that what appears to be a minor accident on the surface can be much more expensive to fix. The truck is designed [to] absorb the impact to limit injuries to the driver and passengers. So, in the event of a collision, they have to inspect many parts to make sure they are not damaged,” he said.

“The rear quarter panel was damaged and that piece goes from the back door to the front windshield,” Apfelstadt said.

After studying the matter closely for an article on the automotive culture website The autopia, Website co-founder Jason Torchinsky wrote that Apelstadt wasn’t quite right on some details, but found that repairs involved “a process that turned out to be incredibly, even surprisingly, complex.”

He noted that “when all of this is done, a large part of this truck has been taken apart. And that’s not even addressing the new bumper or the brackets behind the bumper and the sill panel rear bumper, which in this case suffered some damage and had to be replaced, also a non-trivial job because they are riveted and glued in place,” citing information from the shop that did the repairs.

“In short, the cascade effect that starts with the need to paint a new tailgate to the required color match quality turned into a process that took apart a very complex half truck,” he wrote.