Why Your High-Tech Car May Cost a Fortune To Repair
Modern cars are durable, but they usually don’t last forever. Even if you regularly follow your vehicle’s maintenance schedule, eventually you will probably have to replace a small part or make a significant repair. When you do, you may experience a serious case of sticker shock. Here’s why repairing your modern car may cost you thousands of dollars.
Safety Features Aren’t Cheap
In the past, cars didn’t have many safety features. Nowadays, vehicles are full of components intended to keep you and your passengers safe during collisions. These components touch virtually every part of your automobile. They also aren’t cheap to manufacturer, service or repair. Meanwhile, if you need to access another system, you often must go around or remove safety features. Doing so, of course, often requires you to pay extra.
Modern Cars Are Complicated
Safety features aren’t the only culprit making repairing modern cars expensive. Virtually all systems in today’s vehicles have electrical components, complex designs and other aspects that make repairs complicated. Highly technical repairs involve many steps and typically take a long time to complete. Further, since many mechanics charge an hourly rate for repairs, long, complicated fixes typically result in an expensive invoice.
Mechanics Require Expertise
Successfully repairing cars requires tapping into considerable knowledge and expertise while using special skills. Generally, the more technology a car has, the better abilities the repair technician must possess. As you may imagine, hiring good mechanics requires paying a fair wage. To make a profit, repair shop managers often must pass higher labor costs through to you.
Materials Are Expensive
Today’s motor vehicles usually aren’t made with vintage materials. Instead, modern automakers often use state of the art components that are expensive to produce. Even though mechanical shops often try to find the lowest prices on repair parts, components are usually more expensive for newer vehicles due to higher production costs.
Calibration Takes Time and Money
Newer cars, trucks and SUVs are sensitive machines. Following a repair, most require alignment, calibration, programming and other modern services. These procedures, though, may not always be cheap but are usually vital to completing the repair. Likewise, calibrating repaired vehicles usually takes time, requiring the car owner to pay higher labor costs for the calibration job.
High-tech vehicles have the modern features that many drivers want. They also can be extremely expensive to repair. Instead of suffering sticker shock, understand why your high-tech car may cost a fortune to repair so that you can budget to keep it in tip-top shape.
