The high-tech features on new cars make navigating the roads safer, but come with a higher price tag on the vehicles as well as the repairs and insurance.
Fixing a bumper isn’t the same old job. Repairing a bumper on an entry-level luxury car, for example, can cost about $3,550 for a 2016 model for parts and labor, compared with about $1,845 for a 2014 model, according to data from Liberty Mutual Insurance.
Why? The 2016 model has a distance sensor; the 2014 model does not. Parts are 130% higher and labor is 18% higher.
“Increasingly, simple, small repairs can now be much more costly and complex to do,” said Maxime Rieman, product manager for insurance at ValuePenguin.com, a personal finance research firm with a website that can help consumers select insurance plans.
Read the article at Detroit Free Press.