The news item in the Guardian on Saturday regarding the insurance of EV's is very hard to come to grips with. A s a person thinking of buying a EV it makes me stop and think.
Peter
I read an article this morning on a news site that there is an increasing number of punch ups at motorway service stations as people wait to charge their vehicles.
none of the sites I've visted. We have polite chats.
Yes well, in a petrol or other fuelled car, in the main, you need a specific mix of air and vapour to make it dangerous. However EVs store their power in a volatile state at all times, it would be like a petrol car just storing the vapour. The only way around the problem would need to be that each cell should have an instant disconnect, but then again, if it failed due to a crash, what confidence could you have that it would still protect itself? Maybe the answer really is the fuel cell after all. The problem of course is that most fuel cells generate heat to work and thus are not super efficient. Then you find that more money is going into battery technology than thinking outside the box at the moment. There is no true answer, since the power to charge batteries is being generated somewhere, and it is probably not by renewable, and this is why we still see fossil fuel being used. So its cleaner in one place more carbon positive or polluting somewhere else, Echoes of the Victorian idea that the taller the chimney, the less crap fell on you locally. Brian
Not in my experience. Clickbait.
It's bollox from the Grauniad as usual. We paid £400 for ours, fully comp.
Brian, you might want to revise your views.
There's multiple safety systems to kick in to protect the battery and the vehicle's occupants in the event of an accident and the batteries don't spontaneously combust as some would suggest.
According to
Project Director of EV FireSafe in Melbourne, Australia, Emma Sutcliffe, says researchers need more data to determine fire rates conclusively, but preliminary studies indicate fires in fully electric cars are rare.
Research by another firm, AutoinsuranceEZ, says battery electric vehicles have just a .03% chance of igniting, compared to internal combustion engine vehicle’s 1.5% chance. Hybrid electrics, which have both a high voltage battery and an internal combustion engine, have a
3.4% likelihood of vehicle fires according to their study.'As for not being charged by renewables, ours, like many, is charged from surplus solar PV generation at home or, when there's no surplus, from
7.5p/kWh off-peak, fully renewable sourced power from Octopus Energy. Off-peak is 23:30 - 05:30 each day and covers our whole-house draw as well as the EV. Additional 30 minute slots can come available if there's a grid surplus of cheap electricity.
It sounds like there's several things going on:
Teslas are a PITA as far as repairs go because they're awkward about selling parts and letting third party garages work on stuff (they want to be like Apple and do all the repairs themselves). Insurance companies don't like that. Not sure if other vendors are trying to emulate Tesla here.
John Lewis are getting out of many of the side businesses they have because the shops are tanking, and so it's possible this 'we've stopped insuring because we're repricing' thing is because of that. This happens - sometimes things change at the underwriter and your existing insurer can't find a renewal for you. The Smart owner in the piece was easily able to find insurance elsewhere.
The lack of skills is a problem across the industry, not helped by Tesla (the market leader by volume) being a PITA. There are independent battery refurb shops around, but they aren't always well plugged into the insurance company system. I think insurers like companies with a good ability to do repairs in volume with solid paperwork, and independent upstarts reckon this is more pain than it's worth.
Also insurers want to get genuine parts but eg Tesla will only sell you the whole battery pack, while the independent will source battery modules from a scrapyard for a fraction of the price. Insurers are getting better at using used parts, in part because of the Covid supply chain disruption. But I suspect some are more open minded than others, and many insurers typically play it by the OEM's book (step 1: buy whole battery from us, step 2: swap battery).
Some regulations on what parts must be available from EV vendors would help here, I think.
Theo
As far as the question "Have you ever been refused insurance?" goes, does that then become a "yes" or is it merely some form of "not offered", if the former then a refusal from one insurer might domino to others?
That's not refusal, that's 'no quote available'. Refusal is only when you apply and they decide they don't like you for some reason and cancel the policy.
Some insurers won't quote for cars over a certain age or whatever, that similarly doesn't count.
Theo
You may find it credible that 1.5% of ICE cars catch fire every year. I
- and a good few others - didn't. Try asking yourself (a) how many cars you see in an average day and (b) when you last saw one that was or had been on fire.
And lo, AutoinsuranceEZ's figures has been widely rubbished. They cited a source that doesn't even collect stats on car fires.
Coming East along the M3 yesterday afternoon there were no vehicles being charged at Fleet services.
>
Insurance is bizarre stuff.
"The average cost for the most expensive EV, a 2017 Tesla Model S, would cost <=== vehicle price not a factor ??? $200.42 per month to insure. The least expensive EV, a 2019 Kia Niro, averages about WTF ? $165.92 per month to insure."
"By comparison, the most expensive gasoline-powered vehicle to insure, a 2022 BMW M340i, averages roughly $231.75 per month."
It would be interesting, to see what the insurance rate is, on an electric golf cart :-)
There must be some structural difference, between the continents. Either the re-insurance market is trying to recoup losses on "sinking car transports". Or there really is a complete lack of body shops, willing to work on BEV cars, even to replace a dented bumper.
Paul
Which insurance company, may we ask?
They supply you on a separate grid to everyone else, do they?
some 40 years ago, my wife's Fiesta caught fire while she was driving wth 2 small children in the back.
My Zoe (ie not Tesla!) went up from 400£ to 500£ at renewal last month but I think that's about par for the course for all cars at the moment. I'm guessing that the more conventionally-build cars from traditional manufacturers are not so likely to have unexpected repair costs, unlike eg the huge structural casting in Model Y.
nib
Is it a criminal act to refuse to insure EVs? I'm at a loss to understand the legal aspect of this post? Please explain?
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