Rivian R1T Fender Bender Turns into $42,000 Repair Bill
thedrive.com
thedrive.com
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).
I'm sure in design phase it makes it look SUPER nice, but.... is it worth it for removing one of the lines?
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.
I will say the car is like-new repair but they still raked me over the coals.
Might not even be worth the trouble.
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.
Do you think there’s a difference in insurance premiums between the 2005 Ferrari and 2005 Hyundai?
If it helps, change my proposition to use a 2015 Ferrari as the example.
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.
Except that replacement average is only meaningful and the $100k exotic car an asshole if the rate is the same among all 9 drivers to insure all of those cars and the risk pool among all 9 drivers is identical.
A $10k car driven 60k miles a year by a 17 year old male, owns potentially a larger slice of that $19k average then the $100k car if it’s driven 500 miles a year by a 55 year old woman.
This is why insurance companies employ actuaries because it’s a tad more complex to calculate policy risk than adding up all insured values and dividing by the number of the insured.
I didn’t factor in the risk factor of the driver profiles because it’s nearly irrelevant to the discussion, since the discussion is surrounding the plain existence of an expensive car on the road versus not being on the road, all else being equal.
It doesn’t really matter whether the owner or the expensive car is a perfect driver because the scenario under discussion is whether I need car insurance that covers high value damage to other people’s vehicles. If that super responsible wealthy person owned a less expensive car, the total amount of dollars paid out by insurance companies still decreases.
In other words, if my insurance company knew for a fact that nobody on the road drove a car worth more than $10k, my rate would be lower, if only slightly.
In your scenario where low value vehicle drivers are less responsible, it actually bolsters my point because those owners need to insure against being at-fault in crashes with the “more responsible and sophisticated wealthy vehicle owner.”
But it comes with a different issue. No fault will cause the Rivian's to have to make a claim. No issue here. But a claim means rates go up. And that is incorrect.
Some states have a state fund for things like this. New Jersey did in 2010 when I got hit biking to work. I didn't use it because I'm incredibly bad at paperwork.
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?
I'm not even sure you should get anything at all from the other driver.
Do you demand the Earth compensate you when your house gets damaged in a storm, or do you pay for the insurance policy that covers that?
If instead someone comes and burns down my house, I would hate it if they only had to give me a "equivalent functionality" tent in the wilderness because the law considers all shelters to be equal.
If you have some giant mansion, do you really think you're going fully compensated by some unemployed (and now imprisoned) people who burned it down?
They propose there is some baseline subset of functionality and value that matters, beyond which no one else but the owner should be obligated to care about.
I have to say it makes sense to me and I can't work up any sympathy for the counter argument.
If you choose to take some obnoxiously exotic delicate object out into the wild world, that should not be the rest of the worlds responsibility to protect your priceless irreplaceable paint job made from extinct dodo egg shells and door handle made from aluminum smelted from lunar rock samples.
In an interaction between those two vehicles, only one person chose to put a million dollars at risk, and one was just trying to get their groceries.
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.
A separate $1 million property damage coverage that applies to things other than operated vehicles costs $20 a year.
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...
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.
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.
Yes seems to agree with what I said. "marketable condition" i.e. not undriveable.
> 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.
The Rivian owners insurance will frequently end up paying out, via that underinsured motorist coverage.
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.
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!
The only thing is that an insurance will probably cost 30x (not only for Rivian cars owners!). So insurance will love such cars too.
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.
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 :)
As in if someone bought a Toyota sedan in 2013, would the insurance bill, adjusted for inflation, be the same as buying a Toyota sedan in 2023.
Cost to repair was $14k. That's still insane, but it's far more believable.
The $14k number was another redditor who got in a fender bender in a rivian.
They were two different incidents.
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
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.