I hate that I need to pay Uninsured Motorist insurance. And that this implies that there are sufficient number of accidents in this space to require the insurance, let alone insured motorist accidents.

The other mitigation is to reduce the cost of repairs for EVs. Like low cost battery systems that don't have appreciable replacement costs above and beyond an ICE repair.

What are the options for reducing expensive accidents if EV repairs are high? Take the control away from bad drivers. Remove privileges from bad drivers. Other?

I don't know. But at the moment, this is just one more aspect of EV that I dislike.

The primary driver of insurance costs is medical bills from injuries, not repair or reimbursement of the vehicle. I doubt EV’s will move the needle that much. A $50k Tesla probably doesn’t cost that much more to fix that a Lexus, save the battery itself.

Hope this will be correct. But the article suggested otherwise. I wonder what percentage of accidents fall into this category.


Auto experts have said repairing EVs is more expensive than fixing gasoline vehicles. We penned a note in March titled Not ESG-Friendly: Insurers Junk Entire EVs For Minor Accidents. It only takes one minor accident to damage a battery pack, and if that occurs, it must be replaced at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars.

Headlight assembly on a 90's Honda Prelude was $400. One for a 2008 Lexus IS350 is $1850.

A friend with a 2019 Suburu got side swiped and two doors badly damaged. Quotes for that are $10,000 to fix two doors.

Cars seem to be turning into commodities where most damage totals them and you need to buy a new one.

They always carry a higher premiums, like other expensive cars - I suspect this is a "whine for hire" article from the insurance companies, about how unfair it is when they have to cover a more expensive car.

They know the math. They work at an insanely high profit rate. They do not need any "support" from the populace.

A fender bender with the old hand-built Ferraris or Porsches was always quite expensive as well.

Its just a piss poor design by the vehicle manufactures. All auto manufactures know vehicles will need body panel replacements. Why do you design a vehicle with one panel that covers 50% of the vehicle? I get you want some super slick, futuristic design but does that mean common sense gets thrown out the window. Add on to this the only repair shop is 500 miles away.

We still have supply chain issues. Why reinvent the wheel. Make an EV of your current production vehicles similar to the F150 Lightening. You can still use exterior body components and have a replaceable shell for common repairs.

I believe the system that would work is pure No-Fault laws in every state, in that instance you only buy insurance to cover damages to your own vehicle, regardless of fault.

Therefore a Ferrari, Rolls Royce, Aluminum F150, or EV owner would bear the burden of repairs, and theoretically the cost of insuring said burden.

The effect might be the same as the insurance companies raising rates on "muscle cars" in the 70's and ending the HP war of that era, which was as much to blame in the Mustang II and Pintos of the world as OPEC. It could eliminate EV's due to insurance costs where your monthly premium is greater than the car payment.

I agree. There is something wrong with historically simple repairs turning into complex and expensive repairs. Especially ones that don't affect the powertrain. It's like taking apart engine to change the oil (oh wait, didn't 911 require one to drop the engine to change the oil?).

If the batteries of an EV are damage, it costs tens of thousands of dollars to replace? I'm not sure any collision in my ICE cars/trucks under comparable conditions would require tens of thousands. Maybe up to $10K.

It's just idiotic that fixing cars cost so much now. Another disconnect between the elites making these decisions and the rest of use who suffer from them.

In all fairness if I remember right tesla sold almost a million cars last year. I'd say they're mainstream now.

A simple statement of fact. For 10 years I used a 1986 Olds Cutlass supreme as my daily driver. Never did get any real break on the insurance for a car with a value of about 2000 dollars. Cost started at 1275 per year and ended up at 1700 bucks in 2018. Just of jollies sometime around 2015 I asked my insurance agent to price out the coverage on a brand new Mercedes S300 with the 5 litre V8 and compare it do what I was paying for that Cutlass. The total difference came to 300 dollars per half year.

There is a very simple conclusion here, the insurance rates on high dollar cars is actually subsidized by those driving much less expensive cars.

quote:

Originally posted by konata88:
As with everything, there are exceptions. I'll assume that your EV will not drive higher premiums for the general ICE populace.

But if your EV, despite the relatively lower price and absence of incentives, still requires significantly higher repair costs than comparable damage on an ICE vehicle and also driving up premiums in general, than it's part of the conceptual problem.

This is no different than buying a 30k hatchback vs a 100k luxury car. Same principle as 100% ICE. Which one of these two vehicles will cost more to fix? It’s pretty obvious. The 100k car is going to be a lot more expensive to repair.

And no, my car doesn’t require significantly higher repair costs than comparable damage on an ICE vehicle, wrong again. And my insurance rates reflect that. It’s a Nissan, the batteries are at the bottom of the vehicle, skateboard style, and it’s a relatively simple car (so is the current Nissan Leaf). There isn’t an engine in the front so in the event of a head on impact, no engine to replace, etc, so cheaper to fix in that kind of accident. Pros/cons to everything so in other words it’s not more expensive to fix than ICE. Now that isn’t the case with a Tesla, a Rivian, etc, which is why I do not own any of those. The only EV’s, to me worth it, are Chevy Bolts and Nissan Leafs. Daily driver type vehicles, hatchbacks, and pretty simple designs. Also, relatively inexpensive. These over complicated, expensive, luxury type EV’s are abominations to me. EV’s make great local daily drivers to me. But that’s if they are affordable to acquire.

In other words there is a vast difference to simple electric hatchbacks on the low end of price/scale vs. these expensive complicated luxury EV’s. If my car was expensive I wouldn’t own it. If it was expensive to repair I wouldn’t own it. If the insurance costs were expensive I wouldn’t own it. IE, don’t paint everything with the same brush.

Again, I think your case is an exception - not the generalizations in context here. If in general the repair costs for all EVs were along the lines of your situation, this wouldn't be a topic.

So, to be fair, I wouldn't paint this topic w/ your brush either.

If the fact remains that a particular collision would only cost, in general and for concept only, $5k for any ICE care but $30K for an EV, that's a problem. That means the average cost of repair is now $30K rather than the current $5k when the majority of people have an EV.

Today, perhaps the costs can be peanut buttered across the populace. That won't be the case later if most EVs result in significantly higher repair costs.

If at that time the repair costs for most EVs are transparent relative to ICE costs, then there is no issue. It's not the same as in your $100k car example - those aren't the majority of cars. We're talking, say, $30K cars that cost $20 to repair (again just for concept) when a similar damaged ICE car would only cost $3K. And the latter is no longer the exception but the norm (installed base is largely EV and minority is ICE).

I think the entire topic boils down to cost vs. complexity. Both in new MSRP vs. fixing said vehicle. I also think all EV’s are slammed here, across the board, all lumped into the same thing. This decision, almost 10 years ago, was purely financial by me. For other people though, it’s all politics. All electric propulsion is the big bad boogey man. I have almost a decade of experience with an EV, insurance costs, purchase price, maintenance, name it. It’s cost me almost nothing to maintain. EV’s go through 12v batteries a little quicker than gas counterparts. In 10 years I’ve had to replace the 12v a couple times, obviously tires, in cabin air filters, and I flushed the braking system 2 years ago and put in fresh fluid. That’s it. Insurance on mine is pretty cheap, comparatively. It’s just not the same vehicle as a Rivian, or a Tesla. Night and day, but since it’s electric powered, lumped into this argument. Bolts, Leafs, are just not the same thing.

Insurance repair on everything is up. Modern vehicles have radar, cameras, etc. Boutique vehicles such as a Rivian costing an arm and a leg to repair, just isn’t real news. Teslas are also quite expensive to repair and you have to a Tesla approved or authorized body shop. At the end of the day, expensive cars are expensive to fix, including gas variants. But ahead with the political boogeyman stuff. My next DD will be another Leaf, just the newer one with more range. They are relatively, maintenance free, aren’t expensive, both in terms of purchase price or repair. My gas truck is more expensive to insure than my little electric toaster.

Personally, I have to believe the designs and repair-ability of EV's will work themselves out over time. ICE cars are cheaper to fix when damaged because the infrastructure is there, at scale, that makes it so.

Now if we want to talk about forcing people over to them so fast without bothering to increase our energy production, THAT is by far my biggest gripe.

The title is what happens when EV's are mainstream which I take to mean 50+% of the vehicles on the road, regardless of Teslas million unit sales figures, overall EV's are less than 1% of the total vehicles on the road.

I doubt as well that with less than 1% that the EV cost to repair is skewing the total claims costs overall when the OP states that State Farm had a $13 billion underwriting loss on autos only.

In the past few years the prices of new vehicles have skyrocketed, some of it dealer greed, much of it is manufacturing companies putting the expensive models on the floor for sale with less chips available they just build the more expensive units and put the chips in them, and EVs, the average new car payment is over $800 a month, and average price in 2022 was just over $46K.

Repair costs in the past decade are soaring because of all the super high tech electronic gizzmos we all want, cameras in the front, back, mirrors, sensors for blind spots, auto drive systems that need sensors at every corner, windshields that have to be recalibrated on replacement.

quote:

Originally posted by Aglifter

They know the math. They work at an insanely high profit rate. They do not need any "support" from the populace.

You’re completely wrong about the insurance industry. They have never operated on a high profit margin, it is always narrow.

Did you read the part in the article where the company is at a 28% loss this year to the tune of $13b! How is losing $13b equal an insanely high profit rate?

I work for a different major insurance company, our numbers this year are worse. I doubt any insurance companies are profitable this year (or last). USAA posted it’s first loss in their history last year.

Insurance companies can’t (are prohibited) raise rates high enough to be profitable in this current environment. State Farm and Allstate just stopped writing homeowners insurance in CA all together.

They are totaling cars now that less than 10 years ago might have been repairable, thanks to airbags, their control systems & wiring, and especially all the "nanny" and "squeeze out an extra quarter mile a gallon" crap that has to be replaced and recalibrated. The calibration equipment is $30-100K, a lot for a small independent body shop to swallow.

Paying for insurance is a form of legalized gambling..... With the EV"s the pure added dead weight of approx 2500lbs to 3500lbs or possibly more weight for just the batteries compaired to to a ICE vehicle of the exact same model will probably cause more damage to any vehicles involved causing higher repair cost on both sides. ....................drill sgt.

quote:

State Farm and Allstate just stopped writing homeowners insurance in CA all together.

Farmers just stopped writing new HO policies in Florida

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:

Farmers just stopped writing new HO policies in Florida

Some other companies are not renewing existing policies here in Florida. Happened to me, couple years ago.