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Rivians, to date, are expensive vehicles. Take a stroll around the Internet and it’s not hard to find a story about a fender bender turning into a $42,000 headache, or $41,000 repair job that really shouldn’t cost that much. The man in charge of Rivian agrees that’s insanity and shouldn’t be.
In Park City, Utah, during an exclusive interview on the latest episode ofThe Drivecast Rivian Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said, “There’s no collision repair that should cost tens of thousands of dollars.”
Listen to the entire conversation starting at the moment Scaringe talks about repair costs below.
The two main reasons the R1 is so expensive to repair is the fact that it’s made of aluminum and the way in which Rivian designed its first vehicle. “We used a one-piece body side, and so that means if you damage like the rear fender, the repair operation, depending on the level of the damage, you can either do body work or you have to cut out a portion of the panel, re-weld the new panel on,” Scaringe said.
The team knows this is a challenge, and being made of aluminum makes all this even more complicated. But a solution was implemented to try and ease the issue. “And we actually, as part of our service parts for collision centers, we have subsets of the full panel so we don’t have to replace the full body side,” Scaringe said.
Unlike service and sales, which are both vertically integrated and done in-house rather than via third parties (i.e. dealerships), Rivian doesn’t have its own in-house collision centers. Scaringe said, “And one of the challenges on collision is you don’t go to Rivian collision centers. This is actually just third parties. And so third parties, the reason you saw some of these really high numbers, is we’re like, ‘A Rivian? And what’s a Rivian?’ So they they don’t know the car, and they quote an enormously high number, the insurance company agrees to it, and then that happens.”
Scaringe continued, “We have standard procedures, and there’s no collision repair that should cost tens of thousands of dollars. These are very unique anomalies that are a specific, you know, probably a mom-and-pop collision center has not seen a Rivian before, didn’t phone us, you know, call us as Rivian to say, ‘Hey, what’s the process?’ didn’t look at the parts, like, you know, sort of quoted a really high number because they probably didn’t want to do the work.”
Rivian’s aren’t alone in the realm of insane reports of repair costs. A GMC Hummer EV taillight costs an eye-watering $6,100 to replace, plus labor. The idea of having to replace one of Audi’s new adaptive Matrix LED headlight setups is something most people probably don’t want to stomach. And the volume of complex components that are now embedded inside the dashboard of a modern car is headache inducing. At least Mercedes is reverting back to screwing things together rather than gluing things in a back-to-basics manufacturing push.
Got a tip about something costing an eye-watering amount to fix? Send us a line at tips@thedrive.com
As Director of Content and Product, Joel draws on over 15 years of newsroom experience and inability to actually stop working to help ensure The Drive shapes the future of automotive media. He’s also a World Car Award juror.
