Motor insurance: CESVI France offers 3D-printed spare parts

Car manufacturers hardly ever offer plastic attachments for ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) and headlights for retail sale.

When these parts break, mechanics often have no alternative but to replace the whole ADAS or headlights for a price that can easily reach €1,200 to €1,500 for the latest vehicles, while the cost of the attachments is rarely more than a few hundred euros.

To reduce the cost of these repairs, CESVI France – the Covéa Group’s technology centre dedicated to technical research applied to the field of motor insurance – has formed a partnership with Gryp, a company specialising in 3D printing that has established a solid reputation among car collectors by making parts that are no longer in series production.

On the basis of the most common requests, received via an online form, CESVI France provides experts and mechanics with a range of reconfigured plastic parts designed and certified to replace original parts as best possible.

Sometimes reinforced by fibreglass or carbon, depending on the model, these parts are then 3D printed at Gryp’s workshops under perfectly controlled temperature and humidity conditions.

“We are responding to the desire to repair rather than replace, one of the fundamental principles of the circular economy and CSR. This also reduces the carbon impact of producing a headlight or a complete radar sensor,” explains Christophe Petrynka, director of CESVI France.