this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2026
349 points (99.4% liked)
Technology
85463 readers
3957 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.
No insurance company works like that.
The cost to insurance comes out of premiums. Rivians and Teslas cost a fortune to insure.
Fair enough, I may have inferred a bit too much, so here is what the CEO said:
welding aluminum requires TIG. It's harder and more specialized.
welding mild steel body panels are simple with equipment any body shop will have.
TIG is neither expensive nor difficult any more. Laser welders are now cheap and trivial to use for aluminum.
You can weld aluminium with MIG just fine. It is indeed way more difficult than normal steel and not every car shop has skills nor equipment for it.
'can,' maybe, huge pain in the ass more likely. I'm far from an expert, but I've had much more success with AC. That oxide layer rebuilds itself pretty quick...
You need a suitable welder for that with pulse feed so that it kinda-sorta acts like square wave AC. With your average hobbyist garage welder it's going to be a real pain in the ass.
Hell any home 120v wire welder can do mild steel. It is the cutting and shaping part that is hard.
No, that's easy as well. It's the not breaking to pieces and looking like shit part that is hard.
Well hell, I've never welded anything and I struggle with those things in my daily life anyway.
ahh yeah, my steel stick welding looks like a swarm of seagulls with daierherra
Grinder is your friend