Drivers report being shocked at the extraordinary cost of insuring electric vehicles – over £5,000 in many cases, if insurance is available at all, as insurers balk at the risks of EVs. The Guardian has more.
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 U.K. 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 U.K. last year – who are finding that, like the Government, insurers are wobbling about the cost of Net Zero.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Britain’s biggest motorway service station provider has brought in marshals to police “charge rage” among electric vehicle drivers battling for access to plug-in points, according to the Telegraph.
Stop Press 2: The Telegraph reports that John Lewis has stopped offering insurance to electric car drivers amid fears over the cost of repairs.
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Oh dear.
How sad.
Never mind eh, at least they are saving the planet.
The Toyota Pious wuld seem the ideal vehicle, surely?
Amen?
Or the Nissan Leaf it sitting on the dealer’s forecourt.
Good one.
They will save it even better by not driving at all. Wait til they try to sell the used EV!
We may regret publicising this. Wait til the FCA learns of it – they will instruct the insurers to give the same terms to all car owners. Just wait.
If I am wrong, wait for the next (Labour) Chancellor to announce a tax payer funded reinsurance facility (like flood re) to reduce the cost.
Its like Sur Kurr Stammer’s policy on VAT on private school fees.
Instead of saving the state money – which is the taxpayer – Sur Kurr Stammer in one fell swoop will add to the tax burden and reduce standards in state education.
It is stupid because it is designed to eliminate the competition for the state system. In other words, private schools have smaller class sizes and tend to get better results so lets get rid of them and then no one will notice state schools are not as good.
It will not lead to an improvement in state education but instead a decline with nothing to compare it to.
Politics of envy.
Plus if we reduce the numbers of kids in private schools we end up adding a few billion to the education budget cos they will end up in state schools for which we all pay.
So keep private schools. Don’t add VAT and keep a benchmark against which we can measure how badly Sur Kurr Stammer will be doing as the next disaster in Downing Street.
Surely, any price is worth paying for the virtue signalling green strip on your number plate?
Oh how I laughed. It almost makes up for the mind blowing tedium when I get together with my EV owning friends who want talk about obsessively their EVs and heat pumps.
Do they express joy about the slave labour, the tonnes of earth mommy dug out, the replacement batteries (£10K ?) every 6-8 years? How do they charge it (with coal, nuclear generated energy, imported French energy)? How are those recharge costs anyways?
I feel so sorry for them.
I applaud your sincerity.
This really is rather good news .I think it must be that the insurers actuaries have been away and done the sums on the true costs of writing off/repairing these things .
I am so glad that we who still use ICE cars are not being used to subsidise them .
This may be a little chink that the real markets in life do come through and show what works and what does not .
Just as long as some Nett Zero twat in Government or the blob suggest that even more taxpayer subsidies are needed !!
Unfortunately ICE car drivers ARE being used to subsidise them. I think you’ll find your premium will go up by 20% or more this year. Mine certainly did.
Hi yes mine did go up up but I think a lot of that was inflation related rather than EV specific…but I have been known to be wrong ..lol
In a properly managed underwriting office, nobody is subsidising anybody else. The risks are underwritten using all the information available, and everybody pays the correct premium.
All that has happened is that the motor underwriters have noticed how expensive it is to repair these cars, and also taken into account their propensity to self-combust. The extra premiums are the inevitable result.
Worry not you saviours of the planet.
There will soon be legislation capping EV insurance – forcing insurers to raise premiums for the rest of us.ie none EV drivers.
Don’t you know yet that is how the RPTB will make the world “work”.
The death of the electric car and the carbon zero nightmare.
It’s over bar the shouting.
Oh how a laughed! A family member of mine has one and he’s an ev cult member, so it makes it all double the fun!
If I remember correctly, if you drop or damage a Lithium battery, you have to dispose of it as it is dangerous due to a chemical reaction that can make them explode/combust. So presumably, a prang in an EV means a new £10k battery, Hence the expensive insurance.
It’s a lot to do with risk of the potentially damaged battery if it is not replaced, it’s essentially impossible to inspect the internal state of these batteries so by not replacing one that may have mechanical shock or impact damage an insurer would be opening themselves up to all sorts of consequential damage claims including other vehicles, houses, offices, car parks etc.
No problem. Government will subsidise and/nationalise the car insurance industry.
Making it less efficient and more expensive.
Only a few years ago, the EU insisted that young male drivers could not be charged higher car insurance premiums than young female drivers, notwithstanding the major difference in risk.
Gazing into my crystal.balls, I predict that charging EV drivers more than ICE drivers, will also be outlawed.
Indeed, as EV drivers are dutifully saving the Planet, it seems likely that EV drivers may be relieved of paying more than a nominal charge and must be subsidised almost entirely by ICE drivers.
Putting the cart before the horse
Until recent times the pattern seems to have been that someone invented and introduced a new technology and if it proved advantageous and useful, society adapted and learned to use it to good effect.
With EVs and Heat Pumps we seem to have put the cart before the horse, we are insisting that society changes in certain ways and are petulantly and ridiculously demanding that inadequate technology drives that change. If we simply ban petrol/diesel cars and gas/oil boilers then eventually people will be very cold and unable to travel, the only solution on offer will be to move to a eco rabbit hutch in a 15 minute city.
With all these articles illustrating the implausibility of EVs there seems to be an underlying expectation that of course people have to have cars and will still be allowed to have cars. So many people seem unable to countenance that underlying all this stuff is the end of personal car travel but yet to my mind that is where all this is heading.
Whilst we see the dark humour in this, there is another more dangerous narrative to pay attention to. If EV cars are being priced off the road, what will the masses drive when ICE cars are no longer able to be fuelled or repaired? It’s another way to stop independent travel by the useless eaters….
Maybe Clive Sinclair had it right all along with his C5.
If I curb bump my £4000 diesel Renault Megane at 4mph it’s a £50 wheel re-alignment at the next service. If a £120,000 EV does the same it’s potentially a slightly damaged battery and 100% write off. They’re rubbish.
I think this issue affects Tesla drivers much more than drivers of other BEVs. The battery assembly process (of the cells made by Panasonic and purchased by Tesla) at their plant in Fremont, San Francisco (the ex NUMMI plant) is fraught with problems. The whistle was blown several times, but Our Saviour Musk has a habit of calling the police, saying that shots have been fired and a terrorist needs arresting. Check out one such whistleblower, Martin Tripp, whose life was all but destroyed by Elon Himself.
Well, nothing like a hard knock to delve the parallels deep within the brow.
That made my day
Profanity and abuse.
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We can test this together.
Profanity and abuse
Indeed. A sense of humour is a wonderful thing.
I’m walking to Greece for my next but ten summer holidays. I’ll let you know when I get there. And then I’m walking back.
Net zero has its advantages.
Think of all the exercise we will get.
Interesting article here: https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/electriccars/article-11891229/Rising-number-electric-cars-minor-battery-damage-written-off.html
In the text there’s the telling statement that “Allianz said EV battery damage makes up just a ‘few per cent’ of its motor insurance claims. Though in Germany, it’s around 8 per cent of claim costs.”
What’s important to note here is that as of 2023 EV’s only make up 2% of Germany’s cars. This means that if EV’s get to become 20% of Germany’s cars then EV battery damage will cost insurers EIGHTY PERCENT of their claims. Insurance companies will be forced into even bigger premium rises. Unsustainable.
First line of the Guardian article is hilarious. Save money (by buying a car that’s much more expensive than its ICE equivalent) and save the planet (by burning gas to make lecky instead of petrol to make power). What a bunch of clowns.
Marvellous, suck it up you virtue signalling wet wipes. The bloody things are environmentally disgusting, and catch fire. The battery thermal runaway cause of the fire,often from damage, is very dangerous and difficult to put out. Got one on your driveway? Watch out your house doesn’t burn down. Is there one in the basement garage of your apartment block? Move!
Serves him right for 1) not having done research into the implications of owning an electric car, and 2) for thinking he’d be in some way ‘saving the planet’. I’m so, so sorry for him.
Shame it’s in the Guardian – I never read the rag.
So even IF you can afford and want to waste your money on an EV, chances are you won’t be able to afford to insure it.
Looks like my plan to keep my little i10 for another few years and then replace it with another one is the best policy.
I suppose you might get third party and theft but not third party, fire and theft.
Before getting too excited about the problems with electric vehicles, it’s worth considering why they didn’t come along much sooner. Why battery technology hardly advanced for over hundred years until very recently. Why smelly and noisy internal combustion engines, with their clumsy clutch and gear change transmissions (and initially even hand-cranks to start them) were favoured for so long over electric alternatives. Why wars were fought over oil to fuel them. Why decent electric trolley buses, trams and railway lines were closed and historic city centres and countryside bulldozed to ensure dependency on oil based cars (not to mention ridicule of traditional medicine to ensure dependency on oil based drugs). And crucially, the oil, mass-production and construction interests behind it all who are now seemingly trying to re-brand themselves as environmentalists.