Fixing the minor damage to a Rivian pickup involved in a fender-bender last winter cost $42,000 — nearly half the price of the truck.
“I expected it to be expensive,” the truck’s owner, Chris Apfelstadt, told The New York Times for a story last month, “but it was still a shocking number.”
The case is an extreme example of car repairs that have become exponentially costlier as automakers pack their vehicles with more electronics and parts that are more difficult to replace.
Apfelstadt’s repair, which was done at one of only three Ohio businesses certified to fix Rivians, involved replacing a panel that spans much of the R1T’s length and necessitated removing the windshield and headliner. The insurance carrier of the driver who rear-ended the truck initially offered only $1,600 because the damage had been deemed minor.
The report cited figures from Mitchell, which collects insurance claim data, saying the average cost of repairing accident-damaged vehicles has surged 36 percent since 2018 and could top $5,000 this year. Electric vehicles cost about $2,400 more on average to fix, the data said, though one factor contributing to that disparity is that many EVs on today’s roads are luxury models.
“The modern digital architecture is so advanced that systems beyond point of impact are being disrupted,” Ryan Mandell, director of claims performance for Mitchell, told the Times. “Getting a car back to pre-loss condition is harder than at any point in history, and will only become more challenging.”