The latest tech is great -- until you have to replace it

At night, the thin band of bright red LEDs on the rear of the 2015 Dodge Durango stares back at the drivers behind like an evil-looking menace in a space helmet.

It’s one of the most unique lighting signatures on the road today.

Just don’t hit it.

There is a downside to rapidly advancing automotive technology: Break something, and you’ll pay an eye-popping amount to get it fixed.

We all know about showroom sticker shock. Average transaction prices for light vehicles in the United States hit a record in January, according to Kelly Blue Book, before falling slightly to $33,299 last month, up from about $28,000 in 2010. And nearly a third of new loans are now 74 months or longer, NPR reported last week.

But there is another side of the affordability problem you don’t hear much about: hefty repair costs for even minor accidents.

At least two factors are driving up the cost to fix vehicles: electronics, and the way cars are built today.

Automakers save money on engineering, purchasing and manufacturing by replacing individual parts with complete, nonserviceable assemblies. This also helps raise vehicle quality because there are fewer parts that can be installed wrong on the assembly line.

Because of these two factors, the cost to repair what used to be inexpensive common items -- headlights, taillights, bumpers/fascias -- has ballooned into the stratosphere.

If you back into a fencepost with a 2000 Cadillac Escalade and break the taillight lens, you can visit the Cadillac dealer and replace it for $56.08. If the whole taillight assembly is broken, GM will sell you a new, original-equipment replacement part for $220.49.

But what a difference 15 years and those flashy LED lights make. On the 2015 Escalade, you can’t replace just the taillight lens. It is no longer available as a separate part. Now, you’ll need a whole new taillight unit. Cost: $795.

Headlights are even more expensive. Let’s say a rock breaks a headlight on the 2015 Escalade. That’ll be $1,650 to replace the entire unit, according to the price quoted by a Cadillac dealer parts department. On the 2000 model year Escalade, a GM replacement headlight unit costs $210.

And that Durango: The 2000 model year Durango taillight assembly is available from Dodge for $81.50. The 2015 Durango taillight unit costs $380.

With cameras and other equipment for adaptive cruise control installed in grilles and bumpers, the cost to fix what appears to be minor damage from low-speed mishaps can be shocking.

When Edmunds.com recently whacked a 2015 F-150 with a sledgehammer to get an idea of how the aluminum body repair process works, a taillight lens inadvertently cracked. But it wasn’t just a regular taillight. The unit housed the sensors for the optional blind-spot monitoring system. So instead of $106 for a new unit without the sensors, the cost jumped to $887.25, Edmunds reported.

These higher repair costs are showing up in insurance premiums. One way to reduce insurance costs is to have a higher deductible -- which leaves the driver on the hook for the first $500 or $1,000 of the repair. And deductibles have been rising, according to State Farm Insurance.

A recent survey commissioned by Insure.com showed that vehicles with high horsepower and high tech are some of the most expensive to insure.

So, in addition to sticker shock in the showroom, now there’s higher insurance premiums from escalated repair costs. And this might now be a permanent part of the automobile owning experience.

“Everything that impacts our costs shows up to some extent in the overall premium we collect,” says Dick Luedke, a spokesman for State Farm. Luedke says the company analyzes each claim for each model and closely tracks repair costs. The cost of the parts is factored in to the premium, he said.

For older, lower-tech vehicles, there is a large variety of cheap, knock-off replacement parts available. These are typically imported from mostly Asian countries and sold on eBay, some auto parts stores and online.

But that isn’t likely to happen with something as complex and precise as a Cadillac Escalade taillight assembly, a one-piece unit with more than a dozen LEDs and a Cadillac logo cast in the plastic.

Perhaps the only option for replacing a broken trim part or light other than with a new factory item is finding a used one from a scrapyard. But even that doesn’t offer much savings. Three secondhand headlights culled from wrecked 2015 Cadillac Escalades were for sale on eBay Motors recently for between $1,119 and $1,500. And most insurance companies don’t offer the option of using secondhand replacement parts for most repairs.

Technology is great -- until you have to replace it.