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Rivian R1T Fender Bender Turns into $42,000 Repair Bill
- j-bos 4y agoIs Rivian considered a luxury brand? Because this seems untennable for the average driver.
- strongpigeon 4y agoTheir 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.
- pseudo0 4y agoIn 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.
- ahahahahah 4y agoRivian drivers are almost certainly unusually careful by that understanding. Just like any other owner of a car with price significantly higher than average. Hell, just the fact that they own a recent model car means they are safer than average.
- giraffe_lady 4y agoHow?
- pseudo0 4y agoMost under-25s probably aren't buying a $80k car as a starter vehicle, for example. And that group is very overrepresented in accidents. I doubt an average middle-aged Rivian driver is much different from an average middle-aged Toyota driver though.
- stu2010 4y agoMany 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.
- smileysteve 4y agoTo detail, though the Rivian driver has under insured insurance, the at fault party is still responsible for that difference, and the insurance company will take the at fault party to court if they can recoup a portion of the remaining $35k at low expense.
- ilyt 4y agoIt 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_2018_233_R_0001 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.
- asdfman123 4y agoThe $50k is probably limited to the car damage portion of it.
- foobarian 4y agoOK, 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 4y agoYes, very much a luxury brand.
- _ea1k 4y agoThey are more upscale than Tesla. The interior materials all have a premium feel to them.
- zx8080 4y agoRepair 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 4y agoIt’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.
- ShroudedNight 4y agoThat's still 10x though, which is basically untenable to a whole bunch of the population.
- inconceivable 4y 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.
- suzzer99 4y agoThis 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.
- mrtweetyhack 4y ago[dead]
- princevegeta89 4y agoIn other words ... a scam
- prottog 4y agoTo 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.
- rqtwteye 4y agoIt’s close enough to a pure scam to not make a difference.
- dylan604 4y agohorseshoes, hand grenades, and insurance scams. 3 things close enough is good enough
- joecool1029 4y agoYour logic doesn't even play out in reality. The insurance negotiated rates are lower than out of pocket rates, there's a 'discount' for cash paying but you still pay more for doing them the favor of cutting the insurance companies out of it.
- red-iron-pine 4y ago
- ExMachina73 4y agoThat's about half the sticker price of a new R1T. If one more panel was involved would it be totalled?
- randyrand 4y agoAFAIK 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.
- userbinator 4y agoTotalled from insurance point of view. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_loss#Auto_insurance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_loss#Auto_insurance
- randyrand 4y ago"All that is required for a vehicle to be a write-off is that it would cost more to return to marketable condition than the market value it would then have." Yes seems to agree with what I said. "marketable condition" i.e. not undriveable.
- Kon-Peki 4y agoFor all intents and purposes, when the insurance company declares your car a total loss, they are just offering to buy it from you at what they believe to have been the market price of your car had it not been in a crash (you can haggle with them). A few years ago we had a nice car that was in a moderate crash. The damage estimate was around $20k, but the insurance company said that they would rather have the car for the parts than fix it - it had a bunch of options that were in very short supply at that time. We worked out a deal, and they cut a check. I think I paid $80k, drove it for a year, and sold it to the insurance company for $75k. LOL.
- darknavi 4y agoI'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 https://photos.app.goo.gl/Sbne4ATVZgD74Hon7
- klyrs 4y agoHow kind of him to take his shoes off before climbing on your vehicle. Don't see little courtesies like that nowadays...
- dylan604 4y agoSome criminals had really great moms that raised them right
- irjustin 4y agoPart 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?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- DaveExeter 4y 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.
- ShroudedNight 4y agoIt 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.
- midoridensha 4y agoThey 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 4y 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?
- midoridensha 4y agoI'm not an expert on car values or insurance. I'm guessing the 2005 Hyundai is pretty much worthless, while the 2005 Ferrari is still somewhat valuable. Maybe I should have picked an older Ferrari? Collectors still buy and sell certain models for a lot of money I think. If it helps, change my proposition to use a 2015 Ferrari as the example.
- dangus 4y agoTrue, but that’s really beside the point. Given the fact that everyone has some non-zero risk of being at-fault, it’s also true that people who own more expensive cars raise the insurance rates for everyone, including those who don’t choose to own cars that cost insane amounts to repair. If you have 9 cars that cost $10,000 to replace and one car that costs $100,000 to replace, that means your average cost to replace a vehicle among that population is $19,000. So in this hypothetical scenario the one asshole who owns the exotic car is nearly doubling the insurance cost for this population set.
- cliftonk 4y agoI 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 4y agoIMO, 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 4y agoThat's not correct, please re-read the article. The repair bill alone was 42k.
- largbae 4y agoI 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 4y agoI 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 4y 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
- userbinator 4y agoThe 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.
- dylan604 4y agoIf the back quarter panel goes all the way from the tailgate to the front windshield, does it still qualify as a quarter panel?
- mdmglr 4y agoI 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.