Electric Car Insurance Premiums Set to Soar
Electric vehicle insurance premiums are set to soar under a regime shake-up that further penalises EVs for potential damage to batteries, it has been warned. The Telegraph has the story.
Insurance premiums for EVs and Chinese-made cars in particular could skyrocket after a new Vehicle Risk Rating (VRR) system was rolled out last month, an expert said.
VRR will eventually replace the group-based system of insurance, which bands vehicles into 50 separate premium categories.
Five key categories go into the VRR rating, including performance, damageability, safety, security – and “repairability”.
It is this last category that will send EV premiums soaring, Chris Rosamond of Auto Express magazine said, because the insurance industry lacks the information it needs to offer lower premiums on EVs.
Mr. Rosamond said: “If the data does show… as many or most of us expect, that there is this increased risk around batteries, then it’s likely that will emerge in, or be reflected in, premiums down the track.
“If you get a golf ball-sized dent in the battery casing of your new EV, for example, there is no sort of technical reference available for insurers to be able to say with 100% certainty that a repair has fixed that and returned it to, effectively, its original condition.”
Professor David Bailey of the University of Birmingham told the Telegraph that Chinese EV manufacturers are struggling to keep up with the demand for spares for repairers.
“So they’ve entered the market [but] not necessarily set up a distribution system in terms of parts for the vehicles, which has meant that actually getting them repaired at all has proven to be quite difficult,” he said.
“Especially on the EV side. I mean, there’s a combination of things there anyway. One is repairers’ knowledge in general of repairing EVs; not all repairers can do that.”
Worth reading in full.
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In a few days time I expect a statement from the economically illiterate government, or proposed by a Tory leadership (sic) candidate, so that EV cannot be taken into account by insurers and we all have to bear the costs.
Certainly TPTB will be doing everything to ease the path for EVs and make it difficult and expensive to keep running an ICE car. I rather expect that the forthcoming budget will be a bit of a hit on ICE cars.
What is not being discussed is that, in my view and given current technology and costs, the UK cannot manage to operate anything like as many EVs as it currently has ICE cars. I reckon that once we get to around 5 million EVs on the UK roads we will hit max EV capacity. If I am correct? it means most current motorists will never have an EV and if they ‘drive’ ICE cars off the road we will all be on the bus.
Of course, in the future, EV technology could improve and change all this but that is a big unknown at the present time.
Quite a few bus companies seem to be going along the battery electric route these days. Here’s a story that made the MSM today: https://wrightbus.com/en-gb/wrightbus-goahead-historic-deal from the manufacturer’s site.
Removing cars full stop, and therefore travel is suspected to be the actual objective… EV’s are merely a step to destroy the motor industry on the way
I’ve come to think that the shorthand TPTB should really be TZTB – The Zealots That Be. Nobody expects the Fossil Fuel Inquisition, but it is just around the corner.
Well good.