EV Owners Facing Soaring Insurance Costs
By Paul Homewood
My heart bleeds for this planet saving hero!!
Driving an electric car should be a win-win, saving money and the planet. So David* was shocked when the insurance on his Tesla Model Y came up for renewal, and Aviva refused to cover him again, while several other brands turned him away.
When David did secure a new deal, the annual cost rocketed from £1,200 to more than £5,000.
“My insurer was Aviva from July 2022 to July 2023, but when it was coming up for renewal, I received a letter stating that they would not be covering the Tesla Model Y any more,” David says. “I am a member of a Tesla UK owners forum, and lots of other people seem to be having the same issue.”
In the Facebook group, members share stories of horror renewal quotes, with increases ranging from 60% (up to £1,100) to a staggering 940% (a jump from £447 to £4,661, according to a screengrab shared by one driver).
“I spent weeks on every comparison site as well as trying individual insurers and specialist brokers, but either they wouldn’t cover the car or the quotes were £5,000 or more,” says David, whose only change in circumstance was three points on a licence.
Privilege, Vitality, Axa and the specialist broker Adrian Flux were among the brands he found were “unable to insure him at this time” before he nailed down a policy with Direct Line, albeit at a price.
“The best quote I could get was from Direct Line at £4,500,” he says, adding that the total cost exceeded £5,000 once the interest for paying monthly was included, “because who has got that kind of money in one go?
But it is not only owners of Model Ys – which with a starting price of about £45,000 was the bestselling electric car in the UK last year – who are finding that, like the government, insurers are wobbling about the cost of net zero.
Alex Gerlis, who bought a Smart EQ Forfour last year, had insurance from John Lewis Finance but, before the mid-August renewal date, it advised him it would not be able to offer a renewal because it was not insuring electric cars
It comes as all motorists face soaring insurance costs, with prices said to be at an all-time high. A recent cost of living bulletin from the Office for National Statistics revealed that the price of car insurance – which for many Britons is one of their biggest household bills – is up by 52.9% in the last 12 months.
However, this average masks bigger increases for electric car owners, according to Confused.com. Its figures, derived from quotes, show that insurance premiums for electric vehicles are 72% – or £402 – higher than this time last year, at a typical £959. Meanwhile, for petrol and diesel car drivers, the increase is 29%, or £192, taking the figure to £848.
I have no sympathy for these fools, who have been more than happy to taxpayer subsidies for their cars and avoid paying thousands of pounds in fuel duty, and then preen themselves under the illusion they are saving the planet.
The trouble is that all of this is coming our way as well in the not too distant future.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
I guess the clacker ball fad of electric, might not last as long as clacker balls.
SS..that took me back. Thanks for the memory. 🙂
With an even more painful outcome than the usual blow on the wrist from the clacker balls.
Insurers will factor into all car quotes the possibility of a claim arising from a collision with a third party EV.
A wise point, old fruit. The bastards get us coming and going.
I know it’s a big car but I was horrified that he was paying £1100 last year, comparing that to my £200. Admittedly my car is a Hyundai IX20 so it’s bound to be cheaper but my brother-in-law got away with £161 this year for his Seat.
No wonder used EV prices are falling through the floor. Maybe the tax advantages aren’t looking that tempting now. No free lunches comes to mind.
What!?! You mean that Leftist centralized government planners don’t consider all of the ramifications of their various grandiose plans to make your life better?
EVs are still faddish cars. Not until they have a more acceptable battery life and cost will they ever take more than 20% of the UK car market. I hope Sunak has been told the facts because no doubt the Climate Change Committee are up in arms about his growing new belief that NetZero is a nonsense.
I would suggest more rapid charging but realistically battery cars are not likely to be most owners primary car.
Rapid chargers drastically degrade battery performance
They should have fixed the range problem before even launching EVs on the market. Look at them. Less than half the range of petrol cars from the sixties. Less than a third of the range of both petrol and diesel vehicles this century. And it only takes maximum ten minutes to refill with petrol and diesel, not hours as is the case with EVs.
I do wonder if the energy density of batteries has nearly reached the maximum (unless there’s a significant new battery chemistry discovery), so there’s nothing on that score that’s fixable.
” Not until they have a more acceptable battery life and cost” … that’ll be never.
‘Driving an electric car should be a win-win, saving money and the planet.’
Wut? Why is that?
They are hugely expensive.
And just what is this ‘saving the planet?’ This big old dirt ball will keep flying around the sun, NO MATTER what Man does.
Meanwhile, insurance bills are tangible.
Spot on!
Except for some inflation, there has been no big change in the cost of EV repairs. Certainly not 940%. So what is going on?
Gamecock’s theory is that the insurance companies, being friends with governments that are pushing EVs, have been eating the added cost of EVs. They have reached the point where they have to follow their actuaries’ data.
And this could start a cascade. Other industries might tell government they aren’t going to play along anymore.
There are a number of possible problems with EVs.
1. They cost a lot to make
2. They cost a lot to repair
3. They are difficult to tow and move around
4. They may well experience a lot of damage in relatively minor collisions due to the weight and so inertia of the batteries
5. They may cause disproportionately more damage to other cars due to the weight and inertia
6. They may cause many more pedestrian deaths because of the lower noise, and so less realisation they are there, particularly by children.
7. They are prone to go on fire, and then cannot be put out. That may mean that even a simple fire, in a car park, on a dirve or ferry results in the complete destruction of the car park & ferry and all the cars and (with a house) any attached building. So, even very infrequent fires may be much much more expensive, because they cannot be extinguished.
8. The fires a pretty toxic … there may be significant long term risks to health from the effects of electric fires, ones that could include massive cleanup costs (just speculation).
9. Any problems they currently have, will likely get a lot lot worse as they age and become less reliable.
I’ve just realised that there are huge geopolitical risks to electric milkfloats, in that the rare minerals are in short supply and rely on the good will of countries who might not be too keen on the UK’s attitude to “global peace”. As such, whilst you might buy the car for £50,000, the cost of a replacement could increase to £100,000 within a matter of days, if someone decided to do to the UK what the UK tried (and failed) to do to Russia.
To put that in context, after the US baiting China by sending the speaker of the US house to Taiwan, Taiwan is now making a growing number of incursion into air space that it deems as “its” territory. And, it’s not like the US or UK are in a good economic position to fight such a war, so the geopolitical risks of a product reliant on the good will of china may be high.
Mr Sceptic, which one of the 9 is new?
Well, none of them.
If insurance rate increases are justified, the insurance companies have been eating the extra cost for years. The nature of EVs hasn’t changed.
I suspect the car manufacturers were wearing the cost – offering two years free insurance as part of the sale to lots of people. But more importantly I think it is only now that there is sufficient data, that insurers are understanding that what used to be £1,000 repairs after a small collision are total write-offs for EVS because the battery has to be replaced. And as the second-hand market for EVs has now become more mature, they see that the second-hand value is much lower than they thought so repairs are not financially viable.
I cannot conceive insurers of EV vehicles giving NfO – if so, it surely will rapidly disappear. Write offs from battery failures will increase, and people will be just as rapidly pissed off when their previous NfO cover is now mandatory “market value” cover only. If that turns put to be so, if it is not the case already, people claiming for what the insurer says is a right off will get to understand what “market value” means – shock number 1 – and the deduction of “salvage” if they try to buy the W/O back will be shock number 2…….
This says that the UK auto insurance industry has massively erred in their estimates of EV damage and liability costs until 2022. That’s very surprising to me, as EV battery fires (due to collisions, recharging, or spontaneously!) and loss of value of EVs have been known to the general public for several years.
That 848 is around half of what I pay for comprehensive (with protected no-claims) insurance for my own diesel car, But then
again, it is any driver and the green card is included. No messing about with trying to predict “named drivers” and paying extra for the green card coverage.
>>Meanwhile, for petrol and diesel car drivers, the increase is 29%, or £192, taking the figure to £848.”
” insurance premiums for electric vehicles are 72% – or £402 – higher than this time last year, at a typical £959
”
One of the very few advantages of getting older is that vehicle insurance generally gets cheaper, particularly for interesting British cars and bikes from a few decades ago, the use of which must surely be true sustainability.
Except it doesn’t. It just gets more expensive every year even with maximum no-claims bonus.
>> advantages of getting older is that vehicle insurance generally gets cheaper,
I can refute that notion – in spades; it no longer applies in my experience, if it ever did.
” Except it doesn’t. ”
My first road bike (a 250) cost c£80 for a year’s TPFT insurance in the late 1970s. My current litre bike has just cost me £82 for a year’s fully comp insurance.
There’s no
“No claims bonus” scheme for the insurance for the litre bike.
There are several key factors in 2023, including: be an old git, 20+ year old bike, don’t live near a large town/city.
They didn’t ditch fossil fuels to save the planet, they were emotionally coerced into transferring their money to globalist elites and their faux climate Armageddon cash cow
China is way ahead in sales of electric cars. I read recently that 50% of cars sold at present in China are electric and this is expected to reach 90% in about 5 years. I wonder what they do about car insurance in China?
From 3 yrs ago …
https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/china-acts-to-cut-cost-of-auto-insurance-widen-areas-of-coverage
Don’t forget the impoverished masses in China can’t afford a car – that 50% is 59% of Communist elites, so likely only in the tens
That seems somewhat optimistic. Earlier this year China’s largest EV maker, Nio. had to reduce the cost of its cars to try and shift stocks and ditch its free battery swap out scheme. Other Chinese manufacturers are also likewise affected,
In June China had to extend tax breaks for buying EVs to 2027 at a cost of £56.9bn
Difficult to understand why since the vast majority of the generating capacity to power them is from coal! Perhaps its an air pollution thing, as many cities are pretty bad.
“…pollution thing…”
Very likely. However, I suppose they can pretend – for the benefit of the CAGW crowd – that it is a climate thing.
Actually, BEV production (Battery Energy Vehicles) is only 20% of Chinese car production – not 50%:
https://www.marklines.com/en/statistics/flash_sales/automotive-sales-in-china-by-month
With a total stock of about 350 million vehicles, it is going to be a long, long time before China’s roads are “electric.”
To replace the entire world fleet of vehicles would necessitate manufacturing 1.5 billion new batteries which at, say, £5,000 each* would have an initial cost of £7.5 trillion and an ongoing annual replacement cost of £500 billion. And the cost of the windmills to produce the electricity…
* If new rare mineral deposits are miraculously found!
Watch out for limited liability. They have it in the States and you only have to cover your liability up to the State stipulated level. I don’t know what it is now but I hired a car about 10 years ago and was told the normal liability was $30K and I paid to up that to $1 million. Plenty of people will be driving around with minimum liability insurance. Good luck getting the rest of a $100K claim against a third party. As you can imagine a personal injury claim can be way above that level.
I don’t know if limited liability car insurance is legal here but it would be one way of reducing premiums.
UK: Third Party , Fire and Theft……..cover levels vary significantly between insurers in my experience.
I expect some auto insurance companies coming out with “except battery” coverage.
No, limited liability car insurance isn’t legal here as you need at least (it may have gone up since 2016) £1.2 million for property & “personal injury, policies in the UK must provide unlimited liability cover”
Click to access uksiem_20161193_en.pdf
What will probably happen is they will provide limited comprehensive insurance that will be “miss sold” that only provide scrap value if your car has to be written off or catches fire and the unexpecting owner will then go after the manufacture https://www.themotorombudsman.org/knowledge-base/what-is-the-consumer-rights-act
Just look at the issues 1 wind turbine manufacture is having
https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/01/21/siemens-energ-results
He really has been suckered, or to coin another American phrase, has swallowed the cool-ade
Insurers have to assess the likelihood and expense of a claim. The non-existent climate crisis and saving the planet doesn’t come into it.
In many cases, the insurance isn’t for the owner; it’s for the lender.
You’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh.
There is some comment on social medja re: insurance costs for a BMW CE 04, which is (apparently) battery scooter.
The more the sheep comply to Govt propaganda the worst it becomes for the rest of us who don’t and think ‘independently’ differently 😦
When are they going to take the RED PILL ?
Hmmm ….. If i crash into an ev and i’m at fault then the repair cost of the ev will be bourne by my insurer. Does this explain why my car insurance has gone up hugely this year even though i drive an ICE car?
Any comments?
Right in one!
“…Does this explain…?”
Not really. Since only 5% of cars are electric, only one of the twenty collisions you cause this year will involve one. Hence the premium for your third party risk should not go up much. Now, if all cars were electric, and ‘worth’ say 20% more
than equivalent ICEs, then everybody’s premiums would indeed have to go up by 20% – since the function of insurance companies is to spread risk among their customers, not take the risks of society upon themselves.
It might be a valid use of State power to FORBID people from driving BEVs as being unnecessarily breakable cars! Just as the State forbids* babies from wandering in traffic, at least partly because of the risks to innocent drivers’ peace of mind.
* Indirectly, through rules for responsible parenting.
Absolutely correct to quote ‘worth’ in “‘worth’ say 20% more than equivalent ICEs”. To most people, EVs are not ‘worth’ anything.