A few years back, Tesla became one of the first big-name manufacturers to adopt a new type of assembly process, which it called “gigacasting.” This assembly process, also known as megacasting or unicasting, uses large casting machines to create unibodies—the “skeleton” of the car—in a handful of large, single segments, rather than through hundreds of smaller pieces.
The system, designed to lower assembly costs, is the basis for the chassis of the Model Y, Tesla’s most popular car (and for a few years, the best-selling car on the planet). Ford, in its attempt to make a modular EV architecture that’ll include a $30,000 electric pickup, is adopting a similar approach.
For a while, people worried whether small crashes or other damage to these gigacast parts would increase repair costs, since one large component would have to be replaced instead of just a smaller piece, where the damage is contained. But the data shows repair costs are usually in line with standard unibody cars, if not cheaper.
What else is going on in the world of cars? Following the issue of a stop-sale earlier this week, Hyundai has issued a recall for over 60,000 Palisades after the power-folding rear seats killed a two-year-old girl. Plus, Rivian and Uber are teaming up to build a bunch of Robotaxis, and Rolls-Royce promises it’ll keep building V12s past the year 2030.
Let’s get into it.
Ford Expects Repair Costs To Go Down, Not Up, With Unicasting
The Autopian has covered Ford’s revolutionary new EV pickup quite a bit, but here’s the short version: The company plans to build its $30,000 electric truck using three subassemblies. The two front and rear assemblies will be based on large aluminum unicastings, allowing them to travel down their own assembly lines. Eventually, they’re joined together by a third subassembly, forming the basis for the vehicle.
Back when the Model Y was new, repair shops took an “all-or-nothing” approach to repairing pieces of the gigacast unibody. According to InsideEVs, bodywork people would simply replace the entire damaged piece, which would be costly and time-consuming.
But as time has gone on, repair shops have figured out ways to repair gigacast pieces of metal or replace only portions that are damaged. Ford told Automotive News that early research indicates vehicles made with unicastings are now actually less expensive to fix, so long as they’re designed to be repaired from the start.
“What we quickly found is that actually, it’s easier to repair a vehicle that has unicastings,” Alan Clarke, Ford’s executive director of advanced electric vehicle development, told reporters. “When you make it a constraint — that it needs to be repairable at specific speeds, because we see customers actually having accidents at those speeds — it actually creates a bunch of creativity with engineers who figure out the easiest way to repair it, and it ultimately becomes an advantage.”
It’s not just Ford claiming unicasting is cheaper for repairs, either. Autonews references a study from UK-based firm Thatcham Research, which discovered that, on average, a Model Y in need of a partial gigacast replacement costs way less than a similar repair on a Model 3, which uses a traditional unibody structure with no gigacast parts. From the study:
Comparative analysis revealed that the Model Y’s mega cast construction delivered consistent cost advantages across multiple scenarios. Partial replacements cost £2,167 less than the Model 3’s traditional multi-part steel rear sub-assembly construction, while full replacements saved £519. Similar patterns emerged when comparing against other manufacturers’ vehicles, with the Model Y demonstrating lower repair costs than other models, including the Mercedes EQE, Hyundai IONIQ 5, and several internal combustion engine vehicles.
That £2,167 works out to nearly three grand in American dollars, which is not chump change. Those kinds of savings mean more money in consumers’ pockets, not just due to direct repair costs, but thanks to lower insurance costs, since insurance companies have to pay less to get the car fixed.
Those cost differences aren’t just because repair shops have figured out ways to repair or partially fix unicast parts on their own. The parts Tesla supplies for gigacast repairs make things incredibly easy for body shops:
Darren Bright, Thatcham’s principal engineer for automotive repair, told Automotive News that repair parts from Tesla have slots on the end designed to easily slide into the casting and be attached with adhesive, structural rivets and bolts.
“There’s no welding involved,” Bright said in an interview, making fixes simpler and faster.
Ford, then, is smartly copying Tesla’s homework for everyone’s benefit. From Autonews:
A Ford spokesperson, in a statement, said the upcoming electric pickup will be engineered similarly.
“We designed the vehicle to localize damage to specific areas for low and moderate speed collisions — the most common incidents on the road today,” the spokesperson said. “Although our unicastings are single structures, they are designed to be modular for repairability. We are accomplishing this with predefined cut zones to decrease variability in repairs.”
What does a “predefined cut zone” look like? Well, according to Ford, it’s basically like a stencil you’d see your kindergarten-age child playing with after school. From the factory, these unicastings will have pre-drawn lines where repair shops can slice out damaged pieces and replace them with new factory-supplied parts.
This makes things easier for body shops, not only because they don’t have to decide where to cut, but because it standardizes the repair process, meaning fewer unique replacement parts need to be ordered or fabricated from scratch. The repeatability means shops aren’t doing something totally new each time, either, further driving down the time needed to perform the repair.
If the casting is damaged, they’re designed to be partially repaired and replaced, in many cases more simply than on traditionally built vehicles.
“I think we often forget that repairing a sheet-metal vehicle is really challenging after a small speed collision,” said Ford’s Clarke.
In contrast, he said, a vehicle made with large castings “literally has a dotted line of where to cut, and you just cut it and the manufacturer offers the repair part and you glue it in place.”
It’s nice to know that if someone rear-ends me in my electric Ford truck, I won’t have to replace an entire third of the vehicle.
True To Its Word, Hyundai Recalls Palisades After Folding Seats Kill A 2-Year-Old
On Monday, Hyundai ordered dealers to stop selling its three-row 2026 Palisade SUVs equipped with power-folding second- and third-row seats after it learned a two-year-old girl in Ohio was killed by one of the seats earlier this month. That day, it promised it would issue a recall for the affected cars—all either Limited or Calligraphy trims—that would include a software update as an interim fix.
Today, that recall has been made official. The report reveals that, in addition to the complaints highlighted on the NHTSA’s site before the child’s death, reports were coming in about problems with the seats from as far back as August 2025. Hyundai was already investigating the potential dangers of the seat for months leading up to the March fatality. It’s not a great look.
As for a permanent fix, Hyundai says it’s “still in development.” It’s urging 61,093 owners to exercise caution when using the power-folding seat functions, and to avoid the “one-touch” function on the second-row seat back, which folds the seats forward for easy access to the third row, altogether. In the meantime, it’s going to offer up some new software, either through a dealership visit or over the air. From the recall doc:
As an interim action to mitigate the risk of injury, Hyundai plans to notify owners to bring their vehicles in for a software update or, for eligible vehicles whose owners have enrolled in Hyundai Bluelink, to complete an over-the-air software update. Additional information will be provided when available. When made available, all remedies will be offered at no cost to owners of affected vehicles, regardless of whether the affected vehicles are still covered under Hyundai’s New Vehicle Limited Warranty. Additionally, Hyundai will provide owners of affected vehicles reimbursement for out-of-pocket expenses incurred to obtain a remedy for the recall condition in accordance with the reimbursement plan submitted to NHTSA on March 2, 2026.
If I had a Palisade that fell under this recall, I think I’d probably just pull the fuse to the power seats just to be safe. So long as it doesn’t affect any other safety features, like airbags, it’d be the most effective solution (until the real fix comes out, anyway).
Your Uber Might Likely Be A Rivian By The End Of The Decade
Uber announced a pretty serious $1.25 billion investment into Rivian yesterday that could see the ridesharing company and its partners purchase up to 50,000 units of its new R2 SUV for autonomous robotaxi use.
The deployment of said robotaxis will happen in two phases, according to Rivian. The first, funded by an initial $300 million investment from Uber, will see the company deploy up to 10,000 autonomous R2s starting in 2028, using Miami and San Francisco as testbeds. Should Rivian achieve “certain autonomous milestones by specific dates,” it’ll get the rest of the funding. By 2030, your closest big city will very likely have Rivian-based Uber robotaxis operating in it. From the release:
Should all milestones be achieved, the companies will have deployed thousands of unsupervised Rivian R2 robotaxis across 25 cities in the US, Canada, and Europe by the end of 2031. The companies also have the option to negotiate the purchase of up to 40,000 more autonomous Rivian R2 vehicles beginning in 2030.
What those milestones are, and when they need to be achieved, isn’t clear. Back in December, Rivian showed off its latest LIDAR-based, Level 4 autonomous driving technology at its “Autonomy & AI Day” event. Back then, Matt wondered why this tech was being introduced on the R2, rather than the more expensive R1. Now that this Uber deal is public, it makes a lot more sense. Whether Rivian can get it all to work is another story. Google’s Waymo has been operating for years now, and it’s still far from perfect. Guess we’ll see.
Rolls-Royce Says V12s Are Here To Stay
Back in 2022, when Rolls-Royce launched its first all-electric production car, the Spectre, then-CEO Torsten Muller-Otvos made a bold declaration: “By the end of 2030 we will no longer be in the business of producing vehicles with internal combustion engines,” he said.
At the time, Rolls expected 20% of sales to immediately go to the Spectre when it was released, and that 80% of the company’s sales would be electric by 2028. Things have obviously changed since then, with demand for EVs and emissions rules softening.
Chris Brownridge, Muller-Otvos’s successor, is of a different, more realistic mind. He says the company is abandoning that 2030 EV goal, and sticking with what customers know and love: 12-cylinder powerplants. From his interview with The Times:
“For every client that loves an electric vehicle there is one who does not,” said Brownridge. “Some clients do want an electric vehicle, we build what is ordered.”
He said Rolls-Royce, owned by the German group BMW and which manufactures 5,600 vehicles a year at its plant in Goodwood, West Sussex, would continue to offer cars with V12 engines.
Brownridge said of the pledge of Muller-Otvos that it was “right at the time” adding: “The legislation has changed. That prediction was based on a different set of circumstances. We recognise some clients would rather have a V12 engine. The V12 is part of our history.”
Seeing as how there are just six manufacturers left that still make V12s for production cars—Aston Martin, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Cosworth (through Gordon Murray Automotive), Mercedes-Benz, and Rolls-Royce—I’m glad Rolls isn’t dropping out any time soon. For a modern Rolls-Royce, a V12 just feels right, anyway.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Chuck Norris passed away yesterday at the age of 86, and while Walker, Texas Ranger finished airing before I entered 3rd grade in school, the show’s theme song is still somehow baked into my mind.
The Big Question
Do you think unicasting will become mainstream? Should it?
Top graphic image: Ford
The youtuber JerryRigEverything put up a video showing the repair process on his Cybertruck, including a fun demonstration of the glue used.
Yes, and yes. As someone that spent an excessive amount of money to learn industrial engineering, I am excited to see what it does for the automotive industry.
Somewhat related . . . friends took their Tesla in for repair. It’s gonna’ take a week, maybe two. The loner they got? A Cyber truck. In bright orange wrap.
I feel like the QC sucking mondo ass is just a forever feature with Hyundai/Kia at this point and that the cheapness is so ingrained in the corporate culture that nothing will change. Their entire business model is to undercut their competitors on price and you’re just not going to be able to do that for years and years on end without making concessions along the way.
They’re incapable of going more than a few months at a time without grabbing headlines for something awful, although their stupid seat design killing a toddler is ghastly even by their low standards. I’m genuinely not sure how you let something like that hit the market but Hyundai uh…finds a way.
It sucks! I like my Kona N and it’s now paid off so it’s not going anywhere. But the wife and I are definitely not going to buy another.
Do you think their QC is better or worse than say Ford or Stellantis? I’m curious because we have one Hyundai/Kia in the family and have only had one issue with it (known issue of window trim coming off). I know the older ones of course had issues with longevity, but I thought those were mostly gone at this point.
I have a hard time seeing Tesla as a positive example of a manufacturer lowering repair costs. It is great if Teslas are cheaper to repair after major accidents, but the cost of dealing with minor damage is ridiculous.
My Model 3 needs a new headlight after a minor accident. I haven’t got a quote from Tesla, but I’ve read this will cost well over $1,000 and isn’t easy to do yourself because software updates are required. Further, I only need the headlight replaced because the car appears to shut the entire headlight unit off when it senses any faults (the headlight was cracked in the wreck and condensation periodically triggers the fault; the headlight works 90% of the time and I can usually “fix” it by parking it in direct sunlight). This isn’t a problem that should require a four-figure repair.
Tesla also quoted me over $300 to repair a tire with a slow leak (a tire store fixed it for a little over $10) and charged me over $600 (and took two mobile service visits over three weeks) to replace two tires after one was puncture and couldn’t be repaired (they wouldn’t replace one tire citing safety concerns).
Used Teslas can be a good value and maintenance is essentially nonexistent, but savings can be easily negated if your car suffers minor damage.
Unfortunate reality of great modern LED Lighting are insane costs. I had to replace one of my 2015 GTI’s headlights from a parking lot collision and it was $1400 for a new headlight and needed to be coded to the vehicle. Thankfully I had the coding tool otherwise that would have been additional cost. A new OEM Headlight for my wife’s Honda Pilot is $800, and for my 2018 Type R its $650
As for tire costs, that is not just a Tesla Service department issue, but an industry problem. Prices are all over the place and really dependent on the shop and tire you’re buying. I just paid $160 to have 4 tires mounted for my Type R. Yet to get the exact same brand tire mounted on my Miata was only $100 at the same shop. They Type R wheels are more difficult to mount and balance. Similarly, my wife got a flat in her CX9, the dealership wanted $1600 to put a set of tires on that Costco did for $1190
I know repairs aren’t as cheap as they used to be. I’m still frustrated by the headlight issue, mostly because it is designed in a way that replacement with aftermarket or used parts is very difficult. I have seen used or aftermarket lights for as low as $300, but I’ve read that it is almost impossible to guarantee that any aftermarket or used headlight will work on my car. I don’t want to pay $300 to find out it isn’t a compatible part.
That’s the same problem with all automotive lightning now that headlights have modules that talk to the car’s ECU over the CANBUS network.
BMW says hold my beer.
All dealerships do this. They’re not in the tire business, they don’t want to be in the tire business, and they charge you a premium to just take your car/wheels over to a tire shop to do the same thing you could have done yourself.
Nothing you have listed is a unique Tesla problem.
I am aware these are not unique to Tesla. However, prices are considerably lower for other vehicles I have owned. I have had to replace headlights on new-ish vehicles before and have always found a way to do it for a few hundred at most. I’m not sure BMW is a fair comparison – BMWs are a luxury product; the Model 3 isn’t supposed to be a luxury car.
Replacing two tires instead of one was probably reasonable; I was more annoyed at how long it took as opposed to the price.
Quoting over $300 to patch a tire is batshit crazy on anything that isn’t a supercar.
Unicasting will go mainstream, but they’ll have to use some new lingo to get the YOUTHS to adopt it.
“We’re FrameMaxxing our chassis so we can mogg on other manufacturers and spike their cortisol levels”
Or whatever the Gen Z/Alpha kids are saying these days.
The description of these easier repairs makes me wonder how it might impact the values of vehicles that have been repaired. Glue and rivets seems like it might reduce the value.
Also, the fact that a Tesla Model Y and a Lucid Air Pure would cost me the same amount to insure makes me wonder about how much it actually lowers repair costs.
To be fair, any reported damage on a CarFax already reduces the cars value.
Yeah, but what I wonder is whether this means further reductions or not. Even if the repairs are cheaper, it might cost the typical car buyer more in the long run if it means every accident drops the value even more than it would on other vehicles.
Glue is a bit of an understatement to what that structural adhesive actually is. The F series trucks and Expedition/Navigator SUV’s bodies are all held together with glue and rivets. The stuff is significantly stronger than welds. I spent 4 years in a Ford aluminum body assembly, maintenance and engineering role. When that stuff is put together, the only way it’s coming undone is to cut out that joint.
This is modern Ford we’re talking about, don’t give up hope just yet. I’m sure they’ll find a way.
Coming soon to a headline near you: “Ford recalls 1/3 of vehicle because of defects in castings.”
They need to take a page out of Tesla and just say the defect is a feature
/sarcasm
Didn’t Lucid make the opposite statement recently on giga-casting? That it was cheaper to build and insure vehicles that were not unicast? I wonder if he was only referring to the up-front tooling costs.
Having, over the years, had vehicles in collisions – the pricetag of repairs is striking. They can easily add up, even in seemingly minor impacts.
Pop the airbags, and it’s likely a writeoff regardless of what’s underneath.
We have gone a long way from making things easy to repair – front grilles are integral to the bumpers, headlamps get easily crushed in a parkinglot ding, etc…
But what costs insurance companies serious money: personal injury.
So it speaks to cars getting safer across the board.
why did you have AI write that?
Ouch.
RIP Chuck Norris, he had an amazing life but still seemed too short.
The Unicasting makes sense with traditional unibodies, kind of like trucks have ladder frame, bed, cab, easy peasy, front/rear/middle instead of welds and rivets everywhere.
I’m just curious how that scales with multiple models. Like Tesla only does it with the Y but not the 3 which are very similar sized and shaped, so is that a whole separate gigacaster for each model?
It’s not surprising that Rolls Royce is rolling back their EV goals, like so many others have already had to do. I remember thinking when the big EV push started happening that there just isn’t enough demand for this.
They presented the EV Rollers being sublimely smooth and quiet, while having the power and presence of a Rolls.
Even with declining numbers, RR are still selling more Wraiths than Ghosts.
That ought to tell them something – but they’re doing the opposite anyway.
Really? I would think a Rolls-Royce is the perfect car to be electrified. You want it to be quiet, serene, and smooth. All traits an electric drivetrain excels at. There’s no range anxiety with a Rolls. If you have a Rolls and you’re going further than 150 miles, you take the private jet.
At the rate unicasting is catching on, soon we’ll be driving life-size diecast cars…
Nah! 3D printed. Or maybe diecast with 3D printed interiors?
Darn. Chuck Norris didn’t die; he just stepped away from this timeline.
I have a unicast Y. This tech should become mainstream. After successfully bonding rocker panels onto a rusty old car a long time ago with structural adhesive in a garage, I’m totally fine with holding metal together with fancy glues. It worked fine for me.
Unicasting might become mainstream, but it won’t become The iPhone. There will be areas it will work extremely well, and areas it won’t. I imagine that there will be applications that the process will be entirely inappropriate for…as well as, inevitably, someone screwing up the design process enough to give the whole technique a bad rap. (Olds Diesel and GM’s accounting department) It will also remain to be seen how easy it actually will be to make changes to the big dies or patterns, as well as how long said patterns last.
At least from an ownership standpoint, so far, so good.
I think the other potential positive is that by casting it as one assembly, it may be possible to make the attached components more serviceable.
Modern cars are fantastic. There’s no doubt about it. They’re more performant, luxurious and capable than they’ve ever been. But repairability is lower than it’s ever been, and ultimately that drives up insurance and ownership costs for everyone. And some operators are particularly egregious when it comes to the cost of repairing crash damage. It’s why I’m concerned about my partner wanting to get the new R2 for a daily driver.
I hope to hear more automakers making noise about–and then actually implementing–steps to make their cars easier to repair, mechanically, electronically and structurally.
I have a lot of faith in FoMoCo’s research on this one, because of their history. They began researching bonded-and-riveted aluminum construction, like that of the aerospace industry, in the early 90s. They decided to use the low-volume “X350” Jaguar XJ as a test bed, which debuted in 2003 and then the “X150” XK in 2006. The VH-platform Aston Martins also got the technology. Finally, Ford deployed it for use in the high-volume F-150 that arrived in 2014 (MY2015)…and the F-150 is such an important and ubiquitous vehicle that they’d have never been able to do it without developing the infrastructure to repair it economically. So they have a good track record in recent memory.
The depressing likelihood is that unicasting isn’t going to lower insurance rates. Insurance companies are accustomed to charging more, and I expect that they won’t want to change that if they can continue to charge high rates and make an even better profit margin.
Though because of that, I expect that insurance companies will champion this method because it’s going to help their bottom line at the expense of policyholders, as per usual.
Bingo.
Just like consumer prices don’t fall when raw materials cost decline, insurance rates won’t go down – they just won’t go up as much.
Yep, just like all these ADAS systems that help avoid accidents (blind spot monitors, ultrasonic sensors, cameras, radar, automatic emergency braking, etc.) don’t seem to help insurance rates and in fact seem to cost more.
It’s kind of like the “discount” I would get on my homeowner’s insurance by having a centrally-monitored alarm system. $20/month discount, $50/month monitoring charge.
Spending dollars to save pennies.
RIP Chuck. Really thought he was going to outlive us all…
I’m sure he gave the grim reaper a hell of a fight including one last round kick for good measure.
Death once had a near-Chuck-Norris experience.
Chuck Norris isn’t really dead. He’s just giving the Earth a rest.
Chuck Norris won’t be lowered into his grave. The earth will rise up to meet him.