The market is ripe for the equivalent of a wileys jeep ev. Cheap to buy, repair amd capable with no frills.
Dacia Spring (but that’s probably not exported to the US which I guess you’re from)
Slate… though who knows if it will ever materialize in the real world.
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?
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.
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?
TL:DR: Poor scale and awareness due to being a niche brand, overly large aluminum body panels requiring either massive replacements or complicated welding, small shops guessing that it must be even more exotic and expensive than the CEO claims, and insurers shrugging and moving on because the volumes aren’t hitting their financials hard enough for them to care.
welding aluminum requires TIG. It’s harder and more specialized.
welding mild steel body panels are simple with equipment any body shop will have.
Hell any home 120v wire welder can do mild steel. It is the cutting and shaping part that is hard.
Just hammer it out bro
Hit the front with a hair dryer for a minute, then use a mallet from the inside
Just drive it as is. When other road warriors see your battle scars, they’ll know not to mess with you.
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.
Audi made these adaptive light strips to fix the artificial problem of newer headlights being too bright compared to older ones.
Meanwhile, only 30 years ago when we had sealed-beams in standardized shapes, you could replace a headlight for like $10. And the lens was actually glass instead of plastic prone to yellowing and abrasion.
Yeah and if you hit someone that glass shatters and stabs them. The plastic is shatter resistant.
Those lights were absolute garbage though and the vehicles that used them got half the gas mileage compared to new ones due to their blocky shape and lack of aerodynamics.
Somehow, people could still see in the dark.
And the ones who couldn’t see crashed.
My Miata with pop-up sealed beams gets ~30 MPG. Any aerodynamic problems it has are due to being a convertible, not the headlights.
