It is hot and bright beneath the high intensity lights in a cavernous crash and safety testing laboratory, hidden away in a business park outside Newbury. A siren blares and a disembodied voice counts down: "Three, two, one." A small white car trundles into view, rolls across the floor, and bumps into a barrier set against the wall. At just 6mph, it replicates the kind of annoying prang you might get in a car park. But raise the slightly bent bonnet to look underneath, and the hidden damage is significant.
This is an electric vehicle – a Dacia Spring – and the high-voltage charging port mounted at the front is badly broken, as are components it is attached to. Senior test engineer Sean Hoad explains: "This is all one big unit, meaning we can't just replace the front charge port. We have to replace the charger itself, the inverter, and some of the cabling." Repairing all that would cost about £4,000, he says, and with other damage to consider, "it's more than likely this car would be written off."
“Crash tests reveal EVs cost 30% more to repair, pushing insurance premiums up to 25% higher than petrol cars.”
Thatcham Research, which works on behalf of the insurance industry, is carrying out tests like this to understand why EVs typically attract higher insurance premiums. On average, it says, EVs cost 30% more to repair than petrol or diesel models, and take 14% longer to fix. This feeds through to the insurance price: it can cost 10-25% more to insure an EV than a petrol or diesel car, depending on the make and model.
According to the latest data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), EV sales have surged to the point that they made up almost one in every three new cars sold in the UK in June. Ian Plummer, chief customer officer of car selling website Autotrader, says the rising EV demand is "driven by intensifying competition and rising consumer interest in plug-in cars". However, he adds that "the wider context remains fragile, with ongoing uncertainty around policy, incentives, and wider external pressures".
The insurance cost is one of those niggling concerns that could put off would-be buyers. "It's absolutely crucial electric vehicles become cheaper to insure," insists Steve Fowler, co-founder of the car review website Carblah. "They are expensive – though not as expensive as some people might think – but by making them easier to repair and cheaper to insure, more people will buy them."
Whether manufacturers will redesign components to avoid such costly write-offs remains an open question – one that could determine how quickly the EV transition accelerates.
