A Rivian R1T owner from Ohio was involved in a fender bender that ended up costing about half the price of the truck to repair.
Chris Apfelstadt posted his story on the Rivian Electric Vehicle Discussion page on Facebook, where he said he was rear-ended in his red R1T in early February, but the airbags didn't deploy and the collision happened at a relatively low speed.
He exchanged insurance information with the driver who hit his truck and got a check for $1,600 from the other driver's insurance company for the repairs to his pickup. But as he later found out, it was nowhere near enough.
Apfelstadt contacted Rivian, which instructed him to go to one of the three certified body shops in Ohio. He chose K-Ceps which, according to him, has a 70,000-square-foot facility dedicated to EV repairs.
The shop mechanics were and meticulously thorough with the repair process, documenting each step with photographs, but for some undisclosed reason, they disassembled most of the R1T’s rear section, including removing the rear window. In the end, the repair bill was more than $42,000.
This led some commenters to say something fishy was going on.
“This is 100% insurance fraud on behalf of this authorized repair facility," one commenter said. "Clearly they are taking advantage of the fact this is an extremely new platform to justify egregious costs. Unless it takes 300 hours to remove the bed and rear glass (for no reason at all it would seem) and reassemble how in the world is this a 42k dollar repair? I've seen [Lamborghini] Aventadors have entire rear carbon sections repaired and repainted for less than that…”
The owner of the damaged Rivian said the body shop did “an incredible job” and his R1T “looks as nice as the day it was shipped.”
He concluded his post by saying he’ll try to fight the other driver's insurance company to cover his losses, adding the insurance policy maxes out at $50,000, which is very close to the final expense sheet, considering he also had a rental car during the repair.
Abby Andrews