Here’s Why That Rivian R1T Repair Cost $42,000 After Just a Minor Fender-Bender
theautopian.com
theautopian.com
"I’m pretty sure I’ve said this before, but the biggest concern I have with Rivian after watching the Munro teardowns is that those trucks are full of too-complex designs that are so tightly integrated with the rest of the truck that you can’t trivially fix them up in a mid-cycle refresh."
Something to think about when designing systems!
Sure, you can sue the person who hit you civilly, but it’s not going to be worth it, because you aren’t going to get blood from a stone.
Minor accidents happen to everyone. They should not be life-ending/cause total devastation in life.
But there has to be a better way to handle this.
Mandatory insurance is legally mandated to be used by every motorists and it is illegal to drive without it, which makes it pretty cheap.
Cars were a failure and I believe we'd all be better off if they'd never been invented or at least hadn't been met with the enthusiasm of petrol-financed politicians that turned our cities, infrastructure, housing policies and everyday life into something that largely depends on cars.
Looking at cities like Paris, Barcelona or Amsterdam that broke the dominance of cars makes it clear, that the quality of our lives drastically improves by not leaning into a car-centric design.
But why should the average roadway user be liable because someone wants to drive a piece of art? It makes more sense that the Ferrari owner pay for the excess liability since it’s their choice to put it at risk.
What if I chose to drive around with a Picasso in my trunk. Should I get to sue for its cost if someone crashes into my car and ruins it? It’s bonkers that the law doesn’t limit liability in this way.
Obviously if folks were guaranteed the ability to drive around, then the liability system wouldn't make sense.
Doesn't designing a car in such way that it requires 20k-50k of parts and labor to fix the mildest and most common type of car accidents defeats the entire purpose of their mission?
"Today we’re operating off hundreds of millions of years of accumulated plant- and animal-based carbon. On our current path, we will fully exhaust this stored energy in only a few generations and, in the process, carbonize our atmosphere to such a degree that life as we know it will not be possible. If the planet is to continue to sustain life and enchant future generations, we have to change. To build the kind of future our kids and our kids’ kids deserve, extraordinary steps must be taken to stop the carbonization of our atmosphere. This requires individuals and entire industries to come together in ways we never have before to transition the world toward sustainable energy. This is where Rivian’s potential lies — in creating solutions that shift consumer mindsets and inspire other companies to fundamentally change the way they operate.
As staggering as this may sound, and as complex as our objective is, we already have everything we need to create change. It starts with harnessing the very thing every human being is born with: an adventurous spirit. There’s a reason we’re hardwired with curiosity and a capacity to invent better ways of doing things. The part of us that seeks to explore the world is the secret to making sure it remains a world worth exploring. Forever. "
The entire purpose of their mission is selling $75k trucks to yuppies. They would sell kitten combustion engines if those were popular and rich people were willing to pay.
This is neat tech. But the reason why repairs cost $20k is because people are willing to pay. Not designing for sustainability isn’t surprising to me.
This is a trend with many car manufacturers now and I don’t think they care about low maintenance and repair costs. I had to pay $2k for a slight fender bender that just bent my bumper and I have a pretty regular car.
I remember my boss 15 years ago having an accident that totaled his old but reliable car because the trunk and read bumper were damaged. He bought the totaled car from the insurance company for $500 and just kept driving it. But it was a lot easier to get junker cars inspected back then.
Why should I have to cover the cost of someone else’s poor decision to buy an ultra expensive to repair vehicle?
You don't.
You have to cover the cost of the damage you caused unlawfully, not the cost of their decision to buy an expensive to repair vehicle. Routine repairs that aren’t due to torts for which other people are liable are the reaponsibility of the owner, and those are the only ones that are natural consequences of the purchase decision. Consequences of tort are...consequences of tort. Victims don’t owe tortfeasors a duty of care to minimize likely damages in the event of tort.
As to why you are liable for harms you caused even though they might have been cheaper were the victim differently situated, well, that’s basically the well-established “eggshell skull” rule of tort liability.
I do agree that ultra-expensive-to-repair vehicles do impose extra costs, but I also think to some extent that cost is already priced-in by both insurance companies and the current system probably handles it better than it would with your proposed change.
A limit of liability on property damage of $20K per vehicle would be much fairer. Want an expensive car, or a car with excessive repair costs? Go for it, but you will shoulder the extra insurance premium costs too instead of forcing e.g., minimum wage workers to help pay for your ego car.
My point is that they have a lot of data, a lot of incentive to use that data, and a lot of pressure on their pricing. There just doesn’t seem to be very much room to also fit in “let’s all fuck over poor people to save rich people some money”.
That unibody design is epically bad, along the lines of Karmann-Ghia but even worse!
https://images-stag.jazelc.com/uploads/theautopian-m2en/unip...
Cool car though, one for the history books on the evolution of motorcars. A pleasure to drive, and superbonus of no Elon Asshat in the supply or shareholders chain.
For the painting though, even in "simpler" cars, vehicle painting is ridiculously overpriced and complex, IMO. I've been quoted nearly $2000 to fix a dent the size of a nickel on my basic 10 year old car because the body shop said they'd have to repaint the entire door, then repaint all of the panels adjacent to the door to blend it in. In other words, fixing a dent the size of a nickel somehow requires repainting an area thousands of times larger. It's ridiculous. There must be a better way.
I had a driver back into my parked classic Mustang. They were not at all happy with the eventual cost of the repair, thinking that they could just pay out of pocket a few hundred bucks (really) because the dent wasn’t that bad in their opinion. Well, tough. The eventual repair was the entire fender and blend time for the hood and door, with associated labor for disassembly and reassembly because the car started with no detectable damage and that’s the state to which it needs to be returned.
Don’t fix the dent?
This is by design.
Imagine how much climate damage is required just to earn the money to pay the tax on such a repair to a supposedly environmentally sound vehicle like this.