High-tech car gadgets are cool, until they need repair

Sure, all those high-tech gadgets and systems on your new car are cool. But have you ever stopped to figure out what they'll cost you if and when they go kaput?

Lock your seat belts!

Let's say your luxury sedan has been in a fender bender. You sharply smacked the car in front of you when the light suddenly changed to red.

The bumper is now a twisted plastic noodle, the front of the hood looks like an accordion and a couple of air bags in the dash and steering wheel deployed.

It will be a pain in your daily schedule to get the car fixed, but no one was hurt, so how bad can it be?

You roughly estimate $3,000 to $5,000.

Then you get the repair estimate: $15,000 and your heart skips a beat at the thought of increased insurance premiums or the possibility your car could be written off as totaled.

As cars have incorporated more high-tech safety and convenience features -- some optional, some standard equipment -- the cost of repairing them in the case of even minor accidents or just plain malfunction has risen dramatically.

"There are some really great features being incorporated into more and more cars, but the cost of repairing or replacing these systems is a lot more than many owners realize," says Russ Rader, spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which tracks such trends.

New car features, big repair bills
What worries some consumer advocates is the likelihood that most car buyers these days are unaware of the potentially huge repair costs associated with the tide of new features that have been incorporated in cars and trucks over the last five years.

A hypothetical front-end collision in a 2006 Mercedes-Benz sedan could -- in addition to the body damage -- destroy the adaptive cruise control, which uses radar units mounted in the front bumper to keep track of traffic around the car. The cost to repair: $3,342. If your optional Xenon headlights and their washer system are also damaged, add on $1,644 per light -- or almost $6,700 over and above the cost of the body damage.

If you own a sport utility vehicle like the Cadillac Escalade, take care of those big, heated, outside rearview mirrors. Knock one off in a parking garage and it will cost $604 to replace.

One of the coolest gadgets that came out recently is the rain-sensor windshield wiper system that actually turns on your wipers when needed. But, if a falling tree branch shatters your windshield and also knocks out this system, expect to shell out $500 beyond the cost of the glass to get the rain-sensor system replaced.

Another big-ticket item: those backup cameras that are starting to appear on everything from luxury sedans to SUVs to minivans. They're great safety items that eliminate dangerous blind spots, but if a parking lot smack down demolishes the one on your Lexus RX330, it will cost $4,336 to replace.

What's more, it can be very difficult for car shoppers who try to consider the cost of repair for all those conveniences and options to get a firm handle on the potential financial risk. Consider the hot new feature on the 2007 Lexus LS 460 sedan, automatic parallel parking, which calculates the size of an open parking space and, using sensors in the bumpers, actually parallel parks your car -- hands off the wheel, but foot on the brake.