Specialty and Electric Vehicles

What is actually different

The body of an electric vehicle is a body. Panels dent, structures deform, paint needs matching, and the principles of unibody repair apply exactly as they do to a Sprinter.

Two things genuinely differ.

High voltage isolation. Before any structural work, welding, cutting or heat near the battery enclosure and its cabling, the high voltage system is isolated and verified de-energised following the manufacturer's documented procedure. This is not a general precaution, it is a specified sequence with verification steps.

Calibration. These vehicles carry extensive driver assistance systems. Cameras, radar and ultrasonic sensors are aimed relative to their mountings, and any repair affecting a mounting point requires recalibration. A system that has not been recalibrated continues to operate from an incorrect reference, which is worse than a system that is obviously not working. See ADAS scan and recalibration.

Rivian

Rivian R1T and R1S bodies combine aluminium and high-strength steel, and the repair procedure is specific about which components may be straightened and which are replace-only.

Aluminium repair requires separate equipment and a separate work area to avoid cross-contamination with steel particles, which cause galvanic corrosion in aluminium. Structural aluminium sections are joined by methods specified by the manufacturer rather than by general practice.

We follow the published procedure. A Rivian repaired as though it were a conventional steel unibody looks correct and behaves differently in the next impact.

Electric delivery vans

Fleet electric vehicles including Rivian EDV platforms bring the isolation and calibration requirements plus the usual fleet considerations.

Downtime matters more on a delivery vehicle than on a personal one, and charging infrastructure adds a logistics question: a vehicle in the shop for three weeks needs somewhere to sit at a state of charge appropriate for storage, which is worth agreeing at intake rather than discovering later.

What we handle

Collision and structural repair to manufacturer procedure, aluminium and high-strength steel repair, panel replacement, paint and refinishing including matching modern multi-stage finishes, glass including units with embedded camera mountings, ADAS recalibration, fleet graphics, and equipment mounting on commercial electric platforms.

Insurance on specialty vehicles

Two recurring issues on electric and specialty vehicles.

Repair procedures are more prescriptive than on conventional vehicles, and the required operations, isolation, calibration, replace-only components, cost more than a carrier's initial estimate frequently allows. Those are not optional operations and we document them as such.

And valuation on specialty vehicles is frequently contested, because comparable sales data is thinner than for mass-market vehicles. Our insurance section covers how those arguments work.

What specialty and EV repair costs

Body labor is $210 per hour, structural $260, diagnostics and calibration $285. Full posted rates on the pricing page.

Aluminium repair requires separation

This is a practical constraint worth understanding when choosing a shop for an aluminium-intensive vehicle.

Steel particles embedded in aluminium cause galvanic corrosion, and a shop that grinds steel and aluminium in the same space will contaminate the aluminium. The corrosion appears months later as blistering under paint, and by then it is in the material rather than on it.

Proper aluminium work needs separate tooling, separate abrasives and a work area isolated from steel dust. That is an investment a shop either has made or has not, and it is a reasonable question to ask any shop quoting on a Rivian or an aluminium-bodied vehicle.

Documentation on specialty repairs

Every repair here produces a record: the manufacturer procedure followed, isolation and verification steps performed, components replaced rather than repaired and why, calibration report with pre and post scan results.

That matters in three places. Your carrier frequently requires it before paying for the prescribed operations. It forms part of the vehicle history at resale, and on a specialty vehicle a documented procedure-compliant repair is worth materially more than an undocumented one. And it is the evidence that the work was done correctly if a subsequent incident raises the question.

We provide it as standard rather than on request.