Reply With QuoteQuick question if I may, was/ is the reported high insurance cost for EV's a real thing or a bit of a scare story...More general observation, Insurance seems to have gone through the roof in GB cf other nations...
I think he meant 25% retained value rather than 25% depreciation. Part of your problem arises from the fact that Tesla have reduced the price of an equivalent new car.Originally Posted by wileeeeeey
Quick question if I may, was/ is the reported high insurance cost for EV's a real thing or a bit of a scare story...More general observation, Insurance seems to have gone through the roof in GB cf other nations...
Elno put his thumb on the scale, the cost of trying to steady the Co. / the share price was passed/ fell onto the existing owners like W and their autos as assets, took a plunge in value.
Elno's a bad man. Old saying, sup with the devil bring a long spoon.
Insurance is up generally on everything, I’ve just renewed mine to start in a few days fine, it was circa +25% although I could have got it for a similar price going with a company I’d never heard of from a well known comparison site. I also do 25k miles a year, and one of the named drivers made a claim recently.
My wife renewed hers before Christmas, a fabled Tesla, and it was pretty much the same as last year.
One of my Brothers got a renewal for his Evo 6 last month of £1275, up from £400ish. The insurance market seems to be all over the place, but it was always quite circumstances/postcode dependent as well as the vehicle.
Thanks T.
Purely out of interest, my wife’s Tesla M3 LR is now 3 yrs 2 months old, with average mileage.
I just popped it into Motorway and WBAC and they’re saying £23.5k, which is about 46% of its list price.
That feels about right to me, not so sure about iPace values though…
We put a deposit down at 41k then it went up to 49k at the peak before going back down to 41k. Anyone who paid cash at 49k is going to be yelping.You live and learn. Or watch others learn from their mistakes, much cheaper.
I may have misunderstood Adrian thought he was was saying a 4 year old ev's worth just 25 per cent of original price, gulp...
I traded in a GLC when I got the model 3. In Nov 2020 WBAC offered £19,355. At the time of trade in (Dec 2021) WBAC (via Tesla trade in) paid ~£26k with it due a service, four tyres and an airbag issue on the passenger side.
Ultimately you can’t buy new cars and be shocked when they depreciate.
41k up to 49k then back down to 41k with the new model coming out at 40k was interesting to say the least.
Saw a new one yesterday and it looked quite nice but I couldn’t buy a new Tesla without a physical gear selector or indicators. That is bonkers to me.
It probably depends on what you are comparing. I ran a few dummy quotes for a BMW 340i Touring and a Tesla Model 3 - the insurance costs for the Tesla were always higher (£1200 vs £800).
Well, a couple of months ago my wife hit a pheasant on a country road whilst driving our Cupra Born. Initially I didn’t spot any damage, but on closer inspection the lower grille had popped in slightly (looked like it would pop back if a could get to it tbh) and the sensor behind the black plastic square in the middle of the grille had fallen off and was dangling by a wire - with a message ‘front collision sensor impaired’ on the dash. Ultimately I was told the sensor (which obviously didn’t do its job well enough to save the pheasant!) would need replacing and/or recalibrating - and the recalibration alone was over £500 (!). The car was at the garage for about 5 days and we had a loan car in the meantime. Anyhow, as I was renewing the insurance this week on our other car I rang the insurance company to ask for the cost of the repair, if it was a fault claim etc. total cost was just over £1000. In the current scheme of things I don’t think that’s too bad?
To add, I also had a puncture a week ago in the same car, lots of sucking of teeth over having to wait for a new tyre from Kwik Fit (it was a run flat which apparently they can’t repair) - the wait was precisely 1 day! So in my experience that’s 2 myths busted!
Appreciated thanks.
I'm sorry but £1000 for a piece of plastic trim, remounting and recalibrating a sensor sounds like a lot to me, and highlights the point I made on page 1 about how owners are being bent over regarding the cost of ancillary repairs.
My GF had a similar incident recently with her Toyota Hybrid that 'needed' a new tail light cluster as the lens had a small crack in it - €535 plus the labour to fit. I said "WTF!", but her response was "It's a lease car, what do I care?" Unfortunately, it's that kind of attitude which is giving manufacturers the green light to implement their 'think of a number' pricing.
It’s crazy isn’t it; my van was written off before Christmas and I had to replace a tail light (part LED) which cost £210 from Nissan. My CLS350 has LED rear lights and the indicator stopped working so would fail an MOT. That one was £200 second hand off eBay. Previously I would have paid a couple of quid for a bulb.
It’s obviously not an EV thing though, manufacturers scalp everybody for parts (and Labour if you can’t do it yourself, although that’s the main dealers).
I agree £1000 is ridiculous (and there was no damage to the grille, just replacing and reprogramming the sensors) - but only last week a friend hit a small (muntjack) deer in his 2 year old Fiesta and a new grille and front bumper plus ancillaries has been quoted at nearly £2700. Sure he must also have a sensor in there too. My point was that whilst £1000 is ridiculous, I don’t think it’s any more than I’d expect with a modern ICE car. If the same accident had occurred driving a modern Golf - which has a similar sensor in the front grille - I suspect the cost would be much the same. It’s the computerisation of cars that is the issue. Mind you I had a previous Volvo that slammed on the brakes for me when a small child cycled out between parked cars - I was only doing about 25mph but it virtually stood the car on its nose and helped me as the driver avoid a potential nightmare scenario. If £1000 is the cost of that kind of progress it’s definitely worth it. Didn’t help the pheasant though - he made a direct hit on the sensor and was brown bread before the car knew what had happened!
Last edited by RobDad; 26th April 2024 at 15:30.
My car had a parking ding caused by a neighbour catching a bumper, chips away said £400, the neighbour who did it wanted to go insurance. Had I come back to it in a car park I wouldn't have bothered repairing as it was that slight.
My insurers approved repairer took the job on and charged £3300 for the fix and hire car...it took a month! They even changed a tyre for some reason despite there being no damage and the car passing a mot at a main dealer between accident and repair.
Axa didn't care as I guess they were passing the bill on.
Its a scam, a massive scam.
I read an article recently that electric cars of all makes are starting to be produced with an all in one space frame that everything is mounted on that are very difficult and expensive to repair after an accident but cheaper to produce instead of being modular where individual pieces can be replaced at the moment see what that does to insurance prices.
Most new cars have led lights and some older cars have them failing already dread to think how much it will be on something like a bmw suv if a couple of led headlights pack in and can’t be repaired
I’m only aware of Tesla (Model Y), BYD and CATL using structural battery packs, and there’s no doubt it’s a good option for lowering manufacturing costs and making EVs cheaper and/or more profitable. Like every new technology though, you can view it as a problem or accept that in time and when there’s money in it they will be as easily repairable as any other vehicle. To be fair, any vehicle in a serious enough collision that the structural battery pack is damaged would probably be written off whatever construction method or whatever was powering it.
Most current EVs are built like ICE variants, such as the BMW 3 series EVs, all of the Stellantis (Opel/Citroen etc) or built on an EV specific ‘skateboard’ chassis such as the VW MEB platform. All are easily repairable.
You may have noticed thousands of Tesla’s on the roads already running ‘giga castings’, they certainly aren’t uninsurable or unrepairable. They’re not cheap to insure, for sure, but that’s mainly because even the basic RWD ones are powerful sub 6s to 60mph cars, and no performance car is cheap to insure really.
There’s a good wired article about structural battery packs, might have been the one you read?
https://www.wired.com/story/cell-to-...tric-vehicles/
- - - Updated - - -
Yes, certainly starting to see more ‘one eyed’ cars about with a failed DRL or some such.
And to think that less than a year ago we were being told that battery tech would stall and mileages wont increase that much…experts on here, what do they know hey.
That sounds an awful lot like a monocoque chassis, neither new nor irreparable.
Glazing never used to be structural, but has been for decades now, using a battery pack as structural seems a sensible packaging and assembly decision while aiding rigidity.
"Bite my shiny metal ass."
- Bender Bending Rodríguez
The thing I saw was like a complete pre formed structure including all the pillars and roof structure all in one
That still sounds like a fairly standard monocoque which is how practically all modern cars are made.
Nailed it.
This is what EV's are all about.
For anything else, particularly long distance, pretty much useless.
I partially agree - but after all that’s the sort of journey an extremely large proportion of drivers undertake 99% of the time. And probably the most polluting type of ICE driving. It’s also nice to have instant heat and performance over short distances like my commute. I’m not sure why they’re useless over long distances though? I’d certainly plan my route a little in advance, but I suspect it would be well worth the savings in fuel costs alone over say a 200 mile each way journey - the first leg very cheap, the second would require 40 mins charging. A bit of a faff, yes - but useless? - it just requires a different mindset.
Lots of people seem to have decided against EV’s and I’ve no idea why. I find myself looking at new luxury or mid range petrol, diesel and hybrid cars and thinking why on earth did you choose that? - the only reason I’d go back is if I didn’t have a drive to charge it on, or I wanted a cheap runaround. Or I commuted to Aberdeen and back every day.
Last edited by RobDad; 28th April 2024 at 11:45.
I guess it depends on what you’re terming long distance, and what EV you’re trying to do it in, but I use mine every week for a 400 mile round trip, albeit with an overnight before the return journey.
Several times a year I do 500+ miles in a day though, which is a 10+ hour trip in whatever car I’ve done it in.
Most of the time though it’s just a car that’s always ready to go and i use it like any car I ever have.
They certainly seem to have embraced the spirit of ''Supersize me'' in the US, fast food and vehicles. I always see a lot of behemoth trucks and SUV's about when over there. Vehicle mass has been going up for decades, seems the go large idea kicked off in the GO GO 90's...It's the added weight of the EV versions though in a crash, that'll make a difference, I thought this was quite an interesting read,...the HUMMER EV ''WTF mode'' just insane...might be useful during the food riots and the zombie apocalypse though or a Sharknado,
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/01...r-heavier-evs/
''The poster child for excessive EVs is the GMC Hummer EV, a monster truck with a monstrous 9,063 lb (4,110 kg) curb weight. The vehicle is still powerful enough to hurl itself to 60 mph in three seconds. Appropriately, that feature is called "WTF mode." Indeed, Homendy drew attention to the gigantic Hummer in her speech.
"Its gross vehicle weight rating is a staggering 10,550 lbs. The battery pack alone weighs over 2,900 lbs—about the weight of a Honda Civic. The Ford F-150 Lightning is between 2,000 and 3,000 lbs heavier than the non-electric version... That has a significant impact on safety for all road users," Homendy continued.
The problem is one of simple physics: All else being equal, a heavier vehicle imparts more energy during a crash than a lighter one. Speed matters, too, of course—small increases become big increases in kinetic energy during a crash. But while municipalities and states set speed limits, there isn't a similar restriction on passenger vehicle curb weights.''
Last edited by Passenger; 28th April 2024 at 12:08.
I wouldn’t say a Hummer of any variant is typical for a passenger car even in the US though, and no more representative of a general car than a Lamborghini Huracán for example?
Many diesel Ford Transits are 2 to 3 tonnes, I wouldn’t want one of those to run into me either!
Before somebody comes along and quotes Gordon Murray, all cars have been getting heavier for decades, it’s probably why relatively fewer people die in them as they’re now packed with active and passive safety equipment, and construction has evolved with high strength steels etc.
It seems some folks are only concerned about the weight of a vehicle when they’re EVs. We’ve discussed this many times ‘in the other thread’, yes EVs are heavier like for like (generally 2 to 3 Passengers worth - no pun intended!), but they’re not typically 4.1 tonne Hummers either, and most weigh a lot less than the ubiquitous and popular Range Rover or VW T6 vans.
But anyway, and back on topic, the Cyber Truck is crap and shouldn’t have been designed or built.
https://x.com/TriTexan/status/1784327866445963761
Looks broken, considering how few are on the roads there are a lot going wrong.
What a pos it is
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What you are referring to is the gigacasting construction method used by Tesla. Whereas a typical monocoque construction car is made up of dozens of pieces welded together, Teslas are made of just a handful of very large components. Quicker and cheaper to manufacture, but potentially much more expensive or impossible to repair if one of those large components is damaged in an accident
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Thanks for the heads up. I’ll have to let my brother know, he drives all over the country in his Tesla.
Last edited by Dave+63; 29th April 2024 at 07:50.
That's it gigacasting article said a lot of manufacturers are going down this route for electric cars and the problems with accident damage and insurance costs
Watch the Munro video on gigacasting.
If you have an accident bad enough to damage it, you’d have twisted a monocoque and it’d have similar levels of repairability.
"Bite my shiny metal ass."
- Bender Bending Rodríguez
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