‘Quotes were £5000 or more’: electric vehicle owners face soaring insurance cost
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
If this was happening to all EV owners we would be seeing them all complaining about it, yet this is an article about one person not a poll showing this is happening widely.
> John Lewis Financial Services told us: “Our underwriter has temporarily paused offering new policies and renewals on fully electric vehicles while they analyse the risks and costs entailed. This decision does not affect any existing policies in force, or hybrid vehicles.”
Go right this second and try to find the cheapest EV with the $7500 tax subsidy and it’s still $10000 more than a comparable gas car.
Do the math on solar panel installs and it barely makes sense even with the subsidies, and you are only 1 sudden roof replacement away from making it all worthless.
Wind is being renegotiated / written off on the East Coast.
Yes, if we dump trillions of dollars into this tech and squint really hard it might make sense. But it’s pretty dismal.
https://www.autoweek.com/news/industry-news/a43699126/gm-can...
I know a guy who owned a Volt for years and it was a total piece of shit.
Two, that article is old news as it was a short lived decision that GM reversed https://www.npr.org/2023/07/27/1190569344/chevy-bolt-electri...
Remains to be seen how long they'll be boltless before the new platform version is available, and they haven't said anything about pricing yet.
I'm sure parent commenter is aware the Bolt and Volt are different cars, but it's perfectly valid to look at Chevy's other products to set your expectations for new ones. They don't have a reputation for reliability.
It is valid to look at Chevy's other products, and the LG battery problems with the Bolt were unfortunate. OP's anecdote about the Volt may be valid, but using the Volt as an example of Chevy's reliability is the worst thing you could do as the reviews for it were phenomenal and punching well above Chevy's typical prowess. That car is a very practical, affordable, emissions saving, plug in hybrid.
On the Blazer EV they've killed the base trim before the car even comes out, AWD 2LT will start at $56,715, pricing on the non AWD 2LT remains unknown but is probably over $50k.
One of the Bolt's revenue streams has been selling emissions credits to other manufacturers, with the Bolt having been the US's best selling non-Tesla EV, and most car manufacturers not having a particularly good fleet of low emissions vehicles here. That's going to start drying up as more manufacturers bring more EVs to market, so the Bolt will need to be priced to be profitable on its own.
https://www.spglobal.com/mobility/en/research-analysis/selli...
If I had to guess, the Equinox will land in the high 30k's (if its 1LT trim makes it to production) and the Bolt will be more like $34k, compared to current pricing starting at $26.5k. Affordable for an EV, but puts the base trim of a Bolt around the top trim of a Prius.
Whose anecdotes win here?
Easy to presume: it was being compared to a car that cost more than $14k USD?
Wind is averaging 30.2% of the yearly power production of the Uk and its growing fast. There are numerous solar arrays going up across the country beyond just the home projects which are currently running at 200k homes a year, its limited by installers not demand. The most important stat really is that 4x the current Uk power demand of Solar projects is currently held up on grid upgrades which will take us through to 2035. That alone with some battery storage will be more than enough. This transition in the Uk is happening and fast and all the economics show its because green power is cheaper than fossil fuels and nuclear power.
They also claim that batteries are expensive to replace, but if I can buy a nearly new second hand car for next to nothing, why would I buy a brand new expensive battery?
Why are the US writing off wind? We generate a huge amount of electricity from wind in Scotland. Is it not windy is the US?
If. This doesn't sound like it will foment a healthy used car market, at least not one that's anything like used ICE.
David probably got those 3 points from speeding. If you’re going to speed in a £60k supercar-for-dads please don’t also complain about your premium going up.
The only weak argument that can be made is that "David" is a "danger" on the road because he drives too fast, and therefore, is bound to crash his car eventually. Which would "warrant" a higher insurance premium.
But the fact is that, if "David" was accident-prone, he would already be penalized by his malus.
So now he is being charged extra beforehand, for an accident he didn't commit, just because the insurance company can. In a way, it reminds me of Minority Report..
He's got 3 points, and so? That's none of the insurance company's business. It's between a driver and the road authorities.
Statistically, a non-negligible proportion of medication prescribed to the general population can have an impact on cognitive abilities, and, de facto, make them worse drivers. Yet, car insurance companies are not privy to a driver's medical history. For a good reason: breach of privacy.
My argument is that points on a license fall under the same category: privacy, and not-their-business.
Then again, they also had insurances in the UK inviting drivers to install phone apps to monitor their driving, and set their premiums accordingly. So, if a country thinks that's absolutely fine, well, what to say..
Even if traffic violations fell under criminal law, and most of them don't, it still would remain a private matter. Private companies simply have no right to a person's criminal record, full stop.
Same effect, extra pain in the ass.
[0] https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/20-mph-speed-limits-hav...
Also the 20mph policy is about reducing the risk of pedestrian death, not accident rates.
That's a blanket assertion - surely it would depend on the law being violated and how it is violated. What if a law was unjust? What if a law was designed to be violated? Are free speech activists in authoritarian countries reckless?
> insurance companies can only charge high rates for speeders if they can prove their past payouts were higher for speeders than non speeders.
Untrue, there's little regulation on how insurance companies determine and charge for risk and there's next to no transparency.
> Also the 20mph policy is about reducing the risk of pedestrian death, not accident rates.
The referenced article looks at 'outcomes' - `road traffic collisions, casualties, or driver speed`. Not just accident rates.
> Untrue, there’s little regulation…
But this is not true. Not only are there large regulatory bodies whose main purpose is to audit the spending and calculations of insurance firms, but there are also laws on what companies can consider in actuarial calculations (e.g. not race).
LOL, so it seems much more likely the new speeding ticket or whatever had more effect than the Tesla on the price rise.
Still maybe something to discuss (getting punished for speeding itself, then by the insurance rise), but a different issue.
When brand specific theft surges, theft insurance for those brands rise.
I hate the effect this will have on EV uptake but I caution against assuming there is no factual basis to why insurers are moving. It's like futures markets and one of the reasons why they were invented: to manage farmers future risks, not just to benefit derivatives investors. If premiums are rising, future and current owners need to know why, and EV manufacturers need to be responsive.
Take Tesla's gigacasting, for example. Great to bring down manufacturing costs, horrible for repair costs. Insurance covers repairs, not production. If your gigacast vehicle gets in an accident, you're likely to get screwed. It's very hard to do bodywork on those vehicles and there's few people with the experience to do it. That's expensive - and that's what you're asking your insurance provider to cover.
Add to it the sensors and cameras and everything else they're adding to these vehicles and they're becoming a nightmare to repair. It kind of pisses me off, in a way. EV's are supposed to be simpler, but what we've done is to actually make them more complex, at least from a repair perspective. All I really wanted was a simple car, such as a Honda Civic, that has an electric drivetrain. Simple. Not a bunch of electronics to go awry, I could take to any bodyshop and have repaired, and I could realistically expect to get 400,000 miles. </rant>
The single-cast underbody is a big and expensive single thing to repair if it gets damaged, as is the battery.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a42709679/tesla-insurance-...
My bet is that the quote wasn’t an error or a deliberate tilt against EVs but instead a real assessment based on modelled risk.
Couldn't you just have a couple of officers stand and type the registration in of all passing cars? They'd make a fortune in fines (which I know US police depts like) if 25% of drivers were uninsured?
But here, no-one cares. All people I know carry uninsured / underinsured coverage in case they get hit by a person in one of those categories.
And even they are insured, their limits are so low that if someone crashes into you and totals your 1 month Tesla model 3, your underinsured will still need to kick in as limits can be as low as 15k / accident.
Why even type ? Scan license plates and issue the fine
Why even fine ? Have an automatic fall back insurance assigned to you the moment your car is uninsured
While you are required to have at least liability insurance in most US states, I can tell you that here in MN there is no link between your insurance status and vehicle registration. When you register a vehicle, they ask for a policy number and expiration date.
As long as that date is in the future, the registration will be issued. I know this because there have been times when I couldn't be bothered to look up my insurance policy and just made something up (at work, couldn't log into insurance site for some reason, etc.). Cars registered just fine.
That seems odd. One of the main things about having an electric vehicle was supposed to be theirs reliably and simplicity compared to the complexity of an internal combustion engine.
At the same time insurance actuaries figured something out that is counterintuitive to the general expectations around EVs. Do people in EVs drive more dangerously? I can see the repairs being more expensive due to needing specialized skills, but it would seem higher reliability should have offset that, but perhaps it didn’t.
I'd also question the whole reliability angle. In my current car, the engine is comfortably outlasting the electronics, because engines are easy to service and maintain. The equivalent doesn't really exist for electronics. You aren't going to rewind an electric motor every service interval; you just use it until it fails and then replace it. But the whole point of servicing is to prevent those failures before they happen. And a maintained engine probably lasts longer than electrical components that don't have preventative maintenance done on them.
Another issue is that EVs are very high torque, much like motorcycles and go carts. Teslas especially so. Most people are poor drivers and not capable of driving cars like that safely. People tend to panic and hit the throttle instead of the brake pedal when the torque takes them by surprise. More crashes -> higher insurance premiums.
That's what it feels like, at least with the current models. With IC cars there can still be a choice replacing the larger system, or spend more in labor to open it and replace just the broken inner component.
When EVs were starting up I thought, given the touted simplicity, we'd have cheaper models, for say $8-10k or so, with a higher reliability. It turns out they are more or just as expensive to buy and maintain. The cheapest Chevy Bolt is $26k, while a Honda Civic is $23k.
https://www.trekbikes.com/us/en_US/bikes/hybrid-bikes/electr...
Battery degradation is a thing for sure, but I feel like you’re overlooking a lot of issues with ICE cars here. If a gearbox, engine or exhaust goes “end of life” then the car is essentially worthless until it’s replaced, no?
> maintained by me (unlike an ev)
Why can’t you maintain an EV? Surely things like suspension is mostly the same?
I had this happen to me about 15 years ago, if by "happen to me" you mean "I committed a criminal offence while in control of a motor vehicle". My insurance went up by about 25% for the following 5 years, which was annoying, but I'm not sure how much attention we should pay to the opinions of a convicted criminal when it comes to the punishment for their crime. It's heartening to hear that we are clamping down on these vermin.
> "...because who has got that kind of money [£4,500] in one go?"
The Tesla Model Y has an RRP of £~45,000, so its owner is probably better placed to answer this question than we are.
It's not until you get into reckless driving, street racing, or similar that they move into criminal classes (misdemeanor/felony)
I think the relevant section is clause 89 here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1984/27/part/VI
P.S. For those who think cherry-picking is going to win the day, try this search: murder inurl:fuckcars site:reddit.com. I'm not misrepresenting them at all.
Don't ever call them out on this though, because you'll never hear the end of it.
Anyway, I don't trust any of them, and if you had any sense, you wouldn't either. But I'm not your dad, so I can't tell you what to do. Good luck out there!
EDIT: you edited your reply? - or (more likely!) I am retarded and missed the last sentence first time round, sorry about that. Anyway, the so-called misguided attempt at character assassination was neither, just a bit of pointed mockery aimed at what I see as a crappy opinion. I stand by it - I think it's vaguely amusing enough to have value for the general reader, and not offensive enough to be really problematic. Page dang if you're still unhappy.
I had a look at their subreddit. They currently have one giant thread asking "Do you think cars should be banned outright?", and not a single upvoted comment is even saying yes.[1]
Overall they seem more concerned with how car-centric infrastructure and too many cars in cities reduce quality of life.
It's fair to say you're misrepresenting that community. Why?
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/16x7d3x/how_extre...
As to your point about RRP.. £45k isn’t cheap but it doesn’t mean the owners (who often lease) will have expected such a huge increase in premiums.
I suspect a lot of the issue is due to issues getting parts post-covid which meant costs to insurers went up (since many offer hire cars while repairs are being carried out).
Very expensive parts with poor/non existent inventory Limited service network Leading to huge delays in getting repairs done (many months)
As such I think a lot of fairly minor claims go to "write off" territory very quickly.
Tesla does need to solve this as in the UK at least it's becoming a semi-well known fact that Teslas are very difficult and expensive to insure. Much more so than the ropey build quality.
> You must have motor insurance to drive your vehicle on UK roads.
> Third party insurance is the legal minimum. This means you’re covered if you have an accident causing damage or injury to any other person, vehicle, animal or property. It does not cover any other costs like repair to your own vehicle.
https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-insurance#:~:text=You%20must%20ha....