Rivian R1T Fender Bender Turns into $42,000 Repair Bill

https://www.thedrive.com/news/rivian-r1t-fender-bender-turns-into-42000-repair-bill

by clouddrover • 3 years ago

56 74 3 years ago

thedrive.com

j-bos• 3 years ago

Is Rivian considered a luxury brand? Because this seems untennable for the average driver.

strongpigeon• 3 years ago

Their trucks are expensive, but to be clear, the other driver’s insurance paid for it.

The $42,000 repair cost, along with Apfelstadt's rental car cost, was very close to maxing out the other driver's $50,000 insurance payout limit.

pseudo02• 3 years ago

In this case, sure, but unless Rivian drivers are unusually careful they will end up being at fault around 50% of the time. And their insurance companies will adjust their rates to account for $42,000 fender benders.

stu2010• 3 years ago

Many states still only require $15,000 of liability coverage to drive, so there's going to be a lot more uninsured / underinsured motorist claims in the future.

The Rivian owners insurance will frequently end up paying out, via that underinsured motorist coverage.

ilyt• 3 years ago

It always shocks me how different things are between EU and US.

Like, the minimum amount insurer can insure for here is around 1 mil EUR

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=OJ%3AJOC...

For comparison I pay around ~$250 yearly for car liability insurance with pretty much no discounts.

foobarian• 3 years ago

OK, I think I have a brilliant idea!

1. design a car with a bunch of cheap off-the shelf parts, but bind them in a way that requires complete disassembly and tons of man-hours of work to inspect

2. in-house repair network charges insurances

3. profit!

givemeethekeys• 3 years ago

Yes, very much a luxury brand.

_ea1k• 3 years ago

They are more upscale than Tesla. The interior materials all have a premium feel to them.

suzzer99• 3 years ago

This almost feels like hospital pricing in the U.S. - where there's the official price that assumes you have insurance, and then the actual price you can negotiate down to if you're paying out of pocket.

princevegeta892• 3 years ago

In other words ... a scam

prottog• 3 years ago

To be fair, dealing with insurance carries a substantial cost in medicine, and it makes sense that there is a discount for sidestepping it. Of course, that doesn't excuse a $0.05 Tylenol pill being upcharged $200 or whatever, but it's not a pure scam.

zx8080• 3 years ago

Repair shops are going to love Rivian. As they bring 30x more money for a single repair.

The only thing is that an insurance will probably cost 30x (not only for Rivian cars owners!). So insurance will love such cars too.

sokoloff• 3 years ago

It’s not a 30x multiple. That looks likely to be a $3-6K repair on a new F-150 with repairs and paint on the tailgate and bed side, a replacement bumper and trim, a replacement light, misc bracket replacement, and rental truck.

The other insurance company cut a laughably low-ball check, hoping the Rivian owner would cash it and go away.

ShroudedNight3• 3 years ago

That's still 10x though, which is basically untenable to a whole bunch of the population.

inconceivable• 3 years ago

The other insurance company cut a laughably low-ball check, hoping the Rivian owner would cash it and go away.

yeah, it happens all the time. in california you don't need to talk to the other drivers' insurance company. they will hound you for days, just ignore them. absolutely do not submit to a recorded interview with them. ignore their threats, of which there will be many - all bullshit, made-up nonsense. forget your nice upbringing and be a total ignorant dick about it, because they're trying to get you to slip up verbally. this is especially prevalent with "lesser" insurance companies because they know they're about to be hit with an enormous bill.

i guarantee you the other driver will 100% lie their pants off with zero shame or remorse. their insurance company knows this, because all of their customers are shitty drivers who lie through their fucking teeth as easy as breathing. not only will they lie to the insurance company, they'll lie to their own god damn family. (one time the guy's daughter called me directly to try to ask me about my version of the accident because his english was non-existent - i hung up on her). they may be so good at lying that they convince themselves. stop and think about how incredible that is. these people are out there, driving around.

it happens every single time (again, because their customers are morons), which is why they resort to dirty tactics to get you (the good driver who is not-at-fault) to say something incredibly stupid due to naivete and because your parents taught you manners.

talk to your company's adjuster EXCLUSIVELY. they will abrogate the entire thing through the appropriate channels. if you have a dash cam the entire process takes like a week. if you don't have a dash cam, do the smart thing and buy one. don't tell anyone other than your adjuster about the footage. once they catch the other party in a lie based on the cam footage it's an open-and-shut case. upload an unlisted video to youtube so that you control access to the video (to the extent that nobody runs youtube-dl on it). you need to think two steps ahead of whatever moron is on the other end of this claim.

when i got hit, along with my video submission, i annotated a google maps screenshot with a full diagram of the accident with both street and satellite imagery. yeah - my claim had satellite photos - you think this is a motherfucking game? i pre-wrote my recorded statement and read it back into the phone like i was back in grade school. i probably did 80% of the adjuster's job for them.

as soon as you are involved in an accident it's a legal battle with no holds barred. you never know what absolute cockamamey horseshit (medical bills, injuries, etc.) they will just fabricate out of thin air. the crowd on HN is either broke as a joke, or upper middle class++ - if the latter, protect your ass in every way possible. put your business thinking cap on as soon as you get in the car.

tomrod• 3 years ago

Really depends on cost of parts. I'm not sure labor price is 30X.

princevegeta892• 3 years ago

In the end who's getting screwed? The one and only..customer!

langsoul-com2• 3 years ago

All new tech loaded cars are ungodly expensive to repair.

There was a Tesla that would side scrapped, $100k bill.

Don't worry, eventually all cars will be tech loaded and you'll also be facing that bill :)

red-iron-pine3• 3 years ago

Nah my insurance company will. They'll bleed me slow instead of all at once :)

ExMachina73• 3 years ago

That's about half the sticker price of a new R1T. If one more panel was involved would it be totalled?

randyrand2• 3 years ago

AFAIK totaled implies that the car is undriveable unless fixed.

If a cheap <$300 car gets a dent in its paneling, it would not be considered totalled.

Was his car undriveable? I don't think so. He just wanted it to be restored as good as new.

userbinator2• 3 years ago

Totalled from insurance point of view.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_loss#Auto_insurance

darknavi2• 3 years ago

I'd hope this would come down eventually. I got hit way back when in 2018 in my Model 3[0] and it was a pretty fresh car. Not many on the road and Tesla still figuring out how to scale the manufacturing.

I think part of the high repair price was that the Model 3 was so new, which also meant that there were only a few shops that could/would work on it (Tesla does not do body work, or at least not back then). I had to wait a month before they would even look at it and then they dropped the huge price tag. What was I going to do? Go the only other shop and wait another month? They had all of the leverage and could charge as much as I wanted.

The total bill was ~$28k. StateFarm only covered ~$22k so I have to pay ~6-7k out of pocket (it was an insane "uninsured driver" who car-jacked a teen and hit 4 other cars. Pictures in the album of him preaching on top of our car).

0: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Sbne4ATVZgD74Hon7

klyrs• 3 years ago

How kind of him to take his shoes off before climbing on your vehicle. Don't see little courtesies like that nowadays...

dylan6043• 3 years ago

Some criminals had really great moms that raised them right

irjustin• 3 years ago

Part of the problem w/ the price coming down is the size of the panel, it runs front to back?

I'm sure in design phase it makes it look SUPER nice, but.... is it worth it for removing one of the lines?

DaveExeter• 3 years ago

They had all of the leverage and could charge as much as [they] wanted.

That's how it works! You got cheated.

On an unrelated note, I upped my liability insurance from the $25k minimum to $100k just because of those crazy repair prices. It only cost like $17 or so more.

darknavi2• 3 years ago

Not sure exactly how this worked, but StateFarm didn't actually max out on the claim but they maxed out on the hourly rate. The shop was charging something like ~$170/hr to work on the car because of "high voltage" or "EV" or some bullshit like that and StateFarm maxed out at like ~$120/hr.

I will say the car is like-new repair but they still raked me over the coals.

WirelessGigabit4• 3 years ago

Did you at least sue him for the damage?

red-iron-pine3• 3 years ago

There is suing, and there is collecting. You may win in court but never see a penny, and that's assuming you can find someone to summon.

Might not even be worth the trouble.

ShroudedNight3• 3 years ago

It seems nuts to me, that in a shared medium such as public roads, that there isn't some upper bound in collision liability for unintentional damage caused to other vehicles. Given the average cost of a car today, this incident would likely clear whatever bar is set anyway, but given the necessity of driving (at least in the US), the idea of someone making peanuts be liable for multi-tens-of-thousands repair bills for low-speed collisions because someone chooses to drive a car that costs as much as a house, just feels like an unnecessary kick in the nuts.

midoridensha4• 3 years ago

They should change the liability limit so that the maximum payout is the cost to buy an equivalent-functionality vehicle of the same age on the used market.

So if someone owns a $80,000 (new price) 2018 pickup truck, and someone smashes into them, the most the driver at-fault has to pay is the cost to buy a low-end 2018 pickup truck of any brand. Someone whose 2005 Ferrari gets smashed gets enough money to buy a 2005 small car, maybe a Hyundai.

Cars are supposed to be for transportation, not status symbols. If you want an expensive car, you should pay for the insurance to cover it.

pbourke• 3 years ago

If you want an expensive car, you should pay for the insurance to cover it.

Do you think there’s a difference in insurance premiums between the 2005 Ferrari and 2005 Hyundai?

friend_and_foe2• 3 years ago

I think we just get rid of liability insurance altogether and we all cover our own cars and passengers. No liability is assessed in a road accident, just self coverage. Exceptions would be pedestrians and cyclists. Maybe tack on a cheap liability coverage for them.

WirelessGigabit4• 3 years ago

Equivalent-functionality doesn't work. What you consider functionality and what I consider functionality is not the same.

Clearly you don't feel that horsepower and 0-60 is important. Both of which are drastically different between that Ferrari and the Hyundai.

And even if we go beyond that. I paid extra for xDrive on my BMW. If it gets totaled, should I get a Toyota Yaris with FWD?

maxerickson2• 3 years ago

Where's the line on 'unintentional'? When does it become careless?

Given how little it costs, it's kind of strange people skimp on it. My $100,000 property damage coverage costs $120 a year. I should consider upping it really.

ShroudedNight3• 3 years ago

Good questions to which I do not have an immediate answer. What does 'property damage' cover? I could see scenarios where it included at-fault damage to other cars, but I could also see it being specifically about non-vehicular property damage.

throw0101b• 3 years ago

It seems nuts to me, that in a shared medium such as public roads, that there isn't some upper bound in collision liability for unintentional damage caused to other vehicles.

As opposed to intentional damage? Does anyone start their car and plan to cause damage to others?

Also worth considering the mindset of how to evaluate these events:

* https://crashnotaccident.com

* https://www.vox.com/2015/7/20/8995151/crash-not-accident

* https://www.michigan.gov/mdot/travel/safety/road-users/crash...

cliftonk• 3 years ago

I once had a fender bender in a Tesla that cost 20k to fix (back in 2016). Downside of not having 3rd parties making the parts.

SkyPuncher• 3 years ago

IMO, this headline is misleading as it includes a rental car. This is not just the cost to repair.

Cost to repair was $14k. That's still insane, but it's far more believable.

hn_throwaway_99• 3 years ago

That's not correct, please re-read the article. The repair bill alone was 42k.

largbae• 3 years ago

I read it that way the first time too, but going back they mixed two incidents: One enthusiast had a treat quarter replaced for 14K, but this guy was charged 42k plus rental car fees that took him close to the at-fault party's 50k limit.

midwesternerer• 3 years ago

I think you skimmed the article too quickly. The article is about a 42k repair that was almost 50k with rental.

The $14k number was another redditor who got in a fender bender in a rivian.

They were two different incidents.

cowpig• 3 years ago

However, Redditor and fellow Rivian R1T owner Earlgr3yh0t was also rear-ended a few months back, except their rear quarter panel had a basketball-sized dent just below the taillight. They took the R1T to a certified Rivian body shop who said the entire rear quarter panel, as well as some tailgate internals, needed replacing. The total cost of replacing an entire body panel and some tailgate bits was reportedly just over $14,000. So a $42,000 rear bumper replacement seems exorbitant, but Apfelstadt says he's happy with his truck.

Pretty sure this is referring to a different incident with a different car.

The $42,000 repair cost, along with Apfelstadt's rental car cost, was very close to maxing out the other driver's $50,000 insurance payout limit.

Sounds like they reported $42,000 plus something to insurance

userbinator2• 3 years ago

The back quarter panel was damaged and that piece goes all the way from the tailgate to the front windshield

This is what happens when you train people to be nothing more than parts-swappers and design with that sentiment, along with a "we'd rather you buy a whole new one" attitude. Skilled labour i.e. welding and fabrication and other metalworking skills gets rarer and even more expensive, to the point of disappearing.

dylan6043• 3 years ago

If the back quarter panel goes all the way from the tailgate to the front windshield, does it still qualify as a quarter panel?

mdmglr• 3 years ago

I would like to see a change in public policy on this. If you’re going to operate a car that costs 40k to get repaired on a small accident on public roads perhaps the operator should have to foot most of the bill. I believe the state of Michigan has this implemented.

Rivian R1T Fender Bender Turns into $42,000 Repair Bill

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