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A Rivian Fender Bender Cost $42,000. Its CEO Says That Should Never Happen
(www.thedrive.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2026
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I got into a fender bender with my Buick and they totalled it because the fender was worth half as much as the car. They're doing something very wrong in car design.
Wrong for who?
I used to drive an Isuzu Trooper. I got rear-ended which totaled my car. Theoretically it was repairable, but when your car is old enough to vote it doesn't take much damage for it to get totaled.
There was other damage, but one thing that still pisses me off is that a few hundred bucks of that calculation was my spare tire cover, which had some cracks after the accident, and the insurance company would not let that drop.
It was a plastic shell that is mostly just decorative that covered the spare bolted to the back of my vehicle. I didn't care that it was cracked, it in no way affected the safety of my vehicle, I would have happily driven that car for another decade with it being cracked, if they slapped 5¢ worth of epoxy on it I would have been more than satisfied, or hurry they could have just thrown the damn thing away and I guess my spare would get a little dirtier that it would if it was covered.
But they had to include that in the repair cost estimate, and since it was kind of an uncommon older car, replacement spare tire covers were scarce and pricey and added a few hundred bucks onto the estimate.
I don't know if that was the thing that pushed me over the edge to a total loss but it certainly didn't help
I had a perfectly mechanically sound vehicle that was paid off, and could possibly still be on the road today, and instead I got stuck with a couple years of car payments on a car I liked less than that one.
Isuzu Trooper mentioned! Consumer Reports did them dirty with the rollover test rigging. Really hurt the sales. Glad to see them on the decline as a reputable information source.
Yeah the spare parts are an issue for less common vehicles. I was getting some Trooper parts from Australia before the tariffs messed that up for awhile. Really a shame how many cars are scrapped by insurance. Cash for clunkers not allowing parts to be sold also didn't help much.
The rollover test was not "rigged". Troopers had a stupid high center of gravity and could flip from a simple avoidance. Jeep had the same problem.
CR changed how fake off road vehicles were made, you're welcome.
It was absolutely rigged. You could pass or fail it depending on how you drove. I agree they were high center of gravity and didn't handle well. So were many other vehicles they passed.
I don't agree with a test that is dependent on the driver. They could have easily failed the Ford Explorer if they had driven it like the Trooper.
It's a shady organization.
Slate' service partner blurb at least has some sound bites related to ease of repair. But aren't they also a 'our car only has 3 parts' company?
The plastic body panels on a Slate are easily replaced by owners.
But until Slate actually builds and sells vehicles, they are in the same vaporware pile as all the other promising EV companies that went broke or never deliver [cough] Aptera [cough].
Slate is the car for me.
No radio. No screens. A gas pedal, brakes, steering wheel, and manual windows.
Is it still a gas pedal when the truck is electric :P
technically, it's an accelerator, but I've taken to calling it the "go pedal"
According to an old video by Doug Demuro, an early Volkswagen EV had the "play" and "stop" buttons on the accelerator and brake pedals, respectively.
"Go pedal" was Tesla's thing, it was part of their branding.
Well, fuck; now it's ruined...
How about "Vroom" and "Skrrch"?
Fast Footy?
Nyoom step.
Yea, just like the save icon is still a floppy disk.
What do you mean? I save all my files to floppy.
(I actually have a floppy drive yjat I sometimes use to remember yo sounds)
I refuse to call it a "go pedal" like Tesla tried to create, lol. I guess it's like "footage" for film, or "rewind."
Maybe we can call it an accelerator?
I want to be hype for it so bad, but I can't get behind buying a Bezosmobile. I really wish somebody else was behind it.
He was an early investor, it is not his idea. He is not the majority owner.
But the other majority owners are all invested in Amazon. It's all within the Amazon family.
Oh really? Damn, then I've been misinformed. I'll have to take another look.
That's a Buick thing. Was it a CTS? I've seen two year old CTS total from small accidents because there were no parts available for it.
Envision. The car was worth like $18k but with labor the fender was about $7.5k and since that's over 40% of the value, it automatically totaled. I argued to no avail and almost kept it but the damage title wasn't worth it.
Totaling a car over 40% is wild to me, is this a normal thing in the US? A bus drove into my grandma's car last year and the damage was something like 11k Euros on a 16k car. The bus insurance paid for the full repair.
US insurance devalues cars pretty heavily. When the estimated repair cost is close to the devalued price, they always write off the car.