When Ford unveiled the new, aluminum-bodied 2015 F-150 pickup at the 2014 Detroit auto show, it touched off a firestorm of speculation and inquiry. The central topic? How insuring and repairing a truck made from the lightweight material might affect the wallets of the hundreds of thousands of annual F-150 buyers. Knowing that truck shoppers prioritize low cost of ownership, Ford came prepared, stating on the 2015 F-150 page on its consumer site that “repair and insurance costs are expected to be competitive with the previous F-150.” But is that true? To find out, we consulted Ford’s own parts site, queried local repair shops, and even bugged an insurance think-tank. Read on for our findings.
Parts Costs: It’s a simple fact that raw aluminum costs more than raw steel, which leads one to believe that the F-150’s aluminum body parts will be more expensive than the outgoing model’s comparable steel parts. But Ford could decide to sell the parts at cost—or even at a loss—in order to meet its claim, or perhaps cost parity will be achieved simply due to the sheer number of pieces Ford will produce. For now, however, Ford’s parts site quotes a replacement 2004 F-150 hood—the first year that panel was rendered in aluminum as standard—at $1092.72; a steel unit for the older 2003 F-150 costs $647. The aluminum hoods for 2009–14 F-150s are slightly less expensive, at $880. However anecdotal, Ford has seemingly already been able to take some cost out of aluminum stuff already. One could reasonably assume that there are more newer F-150s on the road, however, which would require producing more inventory, thereby lowering costs. (You see the rabbit hole we’re diving down here?) Even so, the outgoing F-150 hood costs more than the older steel piece.
Repair Costs: We called the local body shop that handles many of our repairs, VCR Automotive, to see what kind of cost differential exists with aluminum versus steel. Unsurprisingly, we were told that fixing aluminum costs more. Independent shops like VCR tend to flat-out replace a dented/crumpled aluminum panel, since the properties of the metal make cleanly popping out dents difficult. It’s not a shocker that doing so adds dollar signs to repair bills. The F-150’s panels are riveted and glued in place, and that glue isn’t cheap: Our man from VCR says it costs “about $60 per packet,” and that he recently used five packets to repair both aluminum quarter panels on a damaged car. ANd that’s not even counting the extra labor involved. We were also told that insurance companies often try to pressure body shops into cheaper repairs, which means, if it’s possible, merely filling in the dent and then sanding and repainting the panel.
As for extreme damage to either the cab or the bed, VCR said it would probably just replace the whole of either, as welding aluminum patch panels into, say, a pickup bed’s forward bulkhead, requires a clean room to prevent contamination of the metal. And even getting panels can be tricky: Clean-room-equipped shops are pretty rare, and we were told that many manufacturers won’t even provide replacement aluminum body sections, as a precaution against contamination. (If aluminum is contaminated, it will corrode faster than normal.) What about small repairs, such as hail damage? We spoke with Dent Wizard, a national paintless dent-repair company, and were told that if an aluminum panel could be repaired (and not all can be), customers are levied a 25-percent upcharge for the effort. Dent Wizard also reiterated aluminum’s resistance to clean dent removal.
Insurance Costs: Common sense says that if something costs more to repair, it’s going to cost more to insure, but this might not actually be the case. We called Allstate Insurance Company to find out whether it had run the numbers yet on the new F-150, but it it couldn’t yet speak to the impact of the steel-to-aluminum switch on the F-150, telling us that general data regarding aluminum repairs is thin. We then reached out to Dr. Robert Hartwig, President and Economist at the Insurance Information Institute, and asked him to illuminate what kind of cost impact aluminum-bodied vehicles have to consumers. In the case of a high-volume car like the F-150, he believes the switch to an aluminum-intensive construction might increase owners’ insurance premiums slightly, but any increase likely wouldn’t be very noticeable.
How could this be? Dr. Hartwig pointed out that the portion of most drivers’ insurance premiums devoted to collision repair is rather small, with the majority given to liability coverage. Given that comprehensive and collision typically makes up about a third of a premium, any increase in repair costs won’t drastically affect overall premium rates, which are affected by a multitude of other factors. It was also stated that, in cases such as this one, in which a vehicle adopts new, pricier materials, insurers need time to gather more data before determining any adjustments to collision insurance costs relative to previous models. So we’re going to have to wait for the next-generation F-150 to hit the road—and for truck owners to start hitting stuff—before we learn whether an insurance penalty exists.
January 23, 2014 at 9:21 am by Alexander Stoklosa
http://blog.caranddriver.com/how-much-more-will-the-aluminum-2015-ford-f-150-cost-to-insure-and-repair-heres-what-the-experts-say/
