John Wayland wrote: > >How many shops are equipped to handle repairs > > to aluminum frames & body panels competently, > > Respecfully, the above is what I disagreed with. Your words > to me, implied that upon having an accident with an Insight, > one would probably have a hard time finding a shop able to > deal with working on the aluminum bodywork.....in my case, it > took exactly 5 minutes to find the shop, and there were > others that could have done work on it, too.
What I meant to convey is that it will be more difficult to find a shop competent (and experienced) in the repair of aluminum body and frame vehicles than to find a shop with the same skill level in the repair of steel construction vehicles. Not that you cannot find such a shop anywhere, just that they will not be as common, in general, and that depending where you are, they may be completely non-existent even though steel construction repair facilities are. > > You said: > > >and how costly is it? > > This implied to me, that after an accident, an Insight would > cost more to have repaired than the average car. My Insight > got hit at a whopping 45 mph, while it had the parking brake > on! To only have approx. $5k of damage to a $20k car after > such a hit, is remarkable! I would venture to say that any > other car of the same weight and size as my Insight, would > have been wiped out, or at least have had greater costs in > repairs... Aha; we are not talking about the same thing at all here. I am stating that similar damage to a steel construction vehicle will cost less to repair than *similar* damage to an aluminum construction vehicle such as the Insight. I am not making any crystal ball predictions about the relative repair cost if you were to subject vehicles of the two different construction materials to similar impacts, since the outcome of that comparison will depend heavily on the individual vehicle designs. > ...said they'd seen it before with other Insights. This is something that struck me as interesting... Portland isn't really a *huge* city, and Insights aren't exactly a common vehicle, yet this one shop has already had experience repairing 3 of them, before yours became their 4th. I wonder if there is some unusually high probability of being involved in an accident in an Insight, even if completely not at fault, as was your case? > > It cost US$5k to repair damage that looked like the car had > > only been hit in the bumper at 10mph in a parking lot, > > It looked minor only because of the high quality design and > construction of the car. It wouldn't have looked that way, if > I had been in a standard steel bodied car and the damage > would have been far worse; the costs would be even higher. That is irrelevant to the point I was making, though. The damage sustained *was* relatively minor, by your own description, and while that is a testment to the strength of the Insight chassis, it does not eliminate the likelihood that the same damage to a steel-construction vehicle would have cost less to repair. And that is all I suggested. > ...It's also quite possible, I wouldn't even be here > arguing with you, either...I came pretty damn close to buying > the farm as it was! I agree that it is likely that a typical steel construction vehicle would have sustained greater rear end damage, however, it is through sustaining such damage that it would have protected *you* better from the impact. Our priorities may differ on this, but given the choice I'd choose walking away from a write-off over spending months (or forever) recovering with only $5k in damage to the vehicle. The Insight's rigid construction approach will certainly work well in certain situations, however, in others (such as when the occupant(s) are not firmly restrained to the vehicle, or when the rigid vehicle gets knocked into something equally or more rigid and non-movable) the conventional less-rigid construction approach can have decided advantages. > But, having the gas engine and all of its support equipment > on board, makes it a hybrid, not a 100% electric Prius, as > was the title of this thread. It is entirely likely that the original question was asked only thinking of converting a Prius to pure electric, with no hybrid capbility at all, and if so, then we are in complete agreement; there are many better-suited 4-5 seater vehicles out there, whether from Toyota or not. There is a small possibility that the question really just wanted to be able to convert a Prius to operate in electric-only mode (there are, after all, a lot of mis-conceptions about the differences between the Prius's and Honda hybrid's operation), and would need/appreciate some form of range-extension. This is the possibility being addressed by my response. Rather than censor the discussion, it seems more beneficial to throw as many possibilities/options out for consideration by the person asking the question, since only they really know what they meant, or what would best suit their needs, even if that happens to be something a little different than what they asked about. > Your idea for a 'hybrid' version of the > Prius (gosh, does that sound stupid...an oxymoron?) Add the qualifier "plug-in" and/or "charge-depleting"; that might make increase your comfort level with the idea ;^> Cheers, Roger.
