Why Repairing Your EV Is So Expensive

Still, when EVs need repair, it can be costly. Rental-car company Hertz Global Holdings, which operates a large electric fleet mostly composed of Tesla vehicles, said its third-quarter profit was pinched in part because of the cost of repairing electric models.

Higher repair costs are also helping to drive up insurance premiums for electric owners, who pay on average $357 a month for coverage compared with $248 for gas vehicle owners, according to insurance comparison website Insurify.

“People are used to hearing that EVs have fewer parts than a combustion vehicle, but that is not the case in collision repair,” said Marc Fredman, chief strategy officer for CCC Intelligent Solutions.

Bringing down repair costs is another complication for automakers as they try to attract first-time buyers and reignite sales growth of electric models, which has slowed in recent months. Companies including Tesla and Ford Motor have slashed prices this year in hopes of attracting new customers.

Last year, on average, an EV repair required roughly double the replacement parts compared with a conventional vehicle, according to CCC Intelligent Solutions. The way many electric models’ parts are bolted or welded in the vehicles often means the components cannot be repaired and have to be replaced, Fredman said.

When these vehicles do get into a crash, repairs can be more complex for many reasons. The bodies can be more complicated to disassemble, and the repairs tend to require more steps and precautions, Fredman said.

Vehicles containing lithium-ion batteries also require special storage consideration because of the risk of fire when they are damaged, said Scott Benavidez, chairman of the trade group Automotive Service Association and owner of a collision repair business in New Mexico. Those precautions add both time and cost to the repair process, he added.

The vehicle bodies themselves can result in higher parts and labor costs because EVs tend to use more exotic materials than traditional steel, collision-repair specialists said. Some of these materials, like aluminum, require specialized tools and storage facilities, narrowing the number of shops that can perform the work, they said.

“Those shops will charge more because they’re taking on the risk of working on them and retrofitting their shop,” Benavidez said.

Repairing an electric car tends to take longer, as well, in part because there are still a limited number of shops capable of doing this type of work. It takes 25% longer to get an EV into a body shop than a traditional vehicle, according to data from CCC Intelligent Solutions. Those repairs tend to take roughly 57 days compared with 45 days for non-EVs, the data showed.

In the case of MacFiggen’s Rivian truck, the cost of the repair reflected deeper, structural damage that wasn’t immediately visible, a Rivian spokesperson said. MacFiggen said his insurance covered the five-figure repair bill. The price of repairing body panels on any vehicle can vary widely, but it typically costs between $100 and $3,000, J.D. Power data found.

“Our top priority is building safe vehicles,” the Rivian spokesperson said. “Repairing Rivian vehicles is in line with similar repair costs to other EV manufacturers.”

There are signs that costs could come down as automakers build up a supply of spare parts and more independent repair shops become trained.

EV market leader Tesla has company-owned collision repair centers, as well as a network of privately owned body shops. Those additions helped half the cost of repairs on Teslas over the past decade as more shops became equipped to work on the vehicles, said Xander Walker, a former Tesla employee who worked on refurbishing leased vehicles and trade-ins.

Today, Tesla says the costs of operating a Model 3 sedan are similar to those of a Toyota Corolla over a five-year period, in part because of lower maintenance and repair costs.

Hertz Chief Executive Stephen Scherr also said he expects repair costs to come down as replacement parts become more readily available, and as Hertz purchases more vehicles from traditional carmakers with a broader network of suppliers.

Meanwhile, Scherr said the rental-car company is attempting to lower the price of spare parts and planning to perform more repair work in-house to bring down costs.

Ford Motor also expects that repair costs will eventually come down as technicians are trained and components become more readily available.

“With any technology, the more it scales, the more the cost comes down and customer wait times go down,” said a Ford spokesperson.