Having enough money for a Rhino and for repair nanites means you are not a complete newb to the game anymore, in my opinion.
A Rhino can cost you up to 300k, and with 100 packs of nanites you've spent ca. 500k. This is a lot of money for a new player, believe me. I've been helping new playeres ever since and they even cannot afford to buy a new weapon at the vendor nor do they have the money to get them built. So if we really want to do something for the newbs it's helping them out with equipment in the start instead of changing rulesets that many of them don't care about until much later.
I reckon that if you've gotten that far in game you should be prepared for some of the dangers of the Wastelands. I think People will learn to cope with it especially when they are told about it by other players.
However, because there seems to be so much concern about the vehicle ruleset maybe the impact on the LE'd player can be lowered by making Rhinos for LE drivers always respawnable at the ASG, like the quad.
Of course one issue of this will be that LE players will very rarely need to buy a Rhino again, but this is the case anyhow if the vehicles cannot be attacked and destroyed by other players.
