345
A Rivian Fender Bender Cost $42,000. Its CEO Says That Should Never Happen
(www.thedrive.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2026
345 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
86962 readers
3207 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
They burned out and needed to be replaced. New ones should never burn out
You say that as if saving $10 on a bulb once every few years is worth the risk of spending $100s or apparently even $1000s if they get damaged.
There are reasons cars have been getting ever more unaffordable (above and beyond inflation), and stuff like bespoke model-specific headlights requiring complicated tooling to manufacture is one of them.
Cost wise, no it’s not worth it.
But you now have an item that
The adaptive headlights in my car are truly amazing, and every time I’m blinded by oNcoming headlight glare I wish everyone had them
They’re nice until you need to replace them.
Unfortunately that's the fifth owner's problem so nobody really considers it
Brighter is a negative trait in my opinion.
I partly agree, headlights are causing harm by blinding other drivers. But adaptive headlights seem to work. Brighter should only be allowed with adaptive headlights
I can drive through a busy area with “high beams” on but watch dark spots move to keep other cars in the dark
I live in a very hilly area, adaptive headlights do exactly fuck-all.
True, you can never entirely take human responsibility out of the loop. And humans suck
Even when there scenarios adaptive headlight don’t cover, they’re much better overall than human
I might support this point of view if the last 20 years of lifespan promises with new light bulb technology had actually been true.
Well, AUDI owners are insufferable douchenozzles so I don't have much sympathy.
So... put LEDs in the same form factor. Now you have lights that don't burn out and can be repaired. You can even use PWM to dim them.
Same form factor is the problem: LEDs need a different beam pattern with a sharp cutoff, otherwise they’re harming other drivers.
But adaptive headlights are even better. They seem to work really well and I’m a huge fan. I have really bright LED headlights so I can see everything but I can also watch them change to keep other cars in a dark spot so I don’t blind them.
The combination of super bright LEDs with adaptive headlights seem like a huge safety improvement for us all
Same form factor doesn't mean same reflectors. It just needs to fit into the same space. You can fit LEDs into that space.
You could, but capitalism … most cars do not get aftermarket reflectors, no one would pay the significant cost, and LEDs fit into standard reflectors. There’s a whole bunch of failure here
We're talking about the sealed headlights with the reflectors contained in them. LED versions have their own reflectors that could be (and I assume are) tuned to work correctly with LEDs.
I don’t think I’ve seen those since before my teenagers were born.
A few weeks ago I showed my younger kid how to replace headlights on his old car
The problem is you can find led replacements that fit the same base “for offroad use”
When to be legal, to not cause glare problems, someone would need to re-engineer the assembly and people would need to be willing to spend that kind of money
Yeah, it's that kind that produce disastrous results. Returning to sealed-beam lamps would solve that issue and make replacement much easier as well, but that would remove a profit opportunity for manufacturers, so it won't happen voluntarily.