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, a voice counts down, and a small white car trundles into view. At just 6mph it bumps into a barrier – the kind of annoying prang you might get in a car park. There is no flying glass or torn metal. But raise the slightly bent bonnet and the picture changes.
This is a Dacia Spring, an electric vehicle (EV). Senior test engineer Sean Hoad points to the high-voltage charging port, mounted at the front and badly broken, along with the components attached to it. “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,” he explains. Repairing all that would cost about £4,000, and with other damage besides, the chances are an insurer would not bother. “It’s more than likely this car would be written off,” Hoad adds.
“A 6mph crash can write off an EV, costing £4,000 to repair, fuelling 30% higher repair bills and 10-25% higher insurance premiums.”
Thatcham Research, which works on behalf of the insurance industry, is carrying out tests like this to understand why EV premiums are so high. On average, it says, EVs cost 30% more to repair than petrol or diesel models, and take 14% longer to fix. That feeds through to the price of insurance: 10-25% more to insure an EV, depending on the make and model.
The problem matters because EV sales are accelerating. According to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), battery-electric cars 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 demand is “driven by intensifying competition and rising consumer interest in plug-in cars”. But he warns the “wider context remains fragile, with ongoing uncertainty around policy, incentives, and wider external pressures”.
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.”
The issue, it seems, is not just the price of the car but what happens when it breaks. A minor bump can cascade into a total loss, and until repair costs come down, EVs will carry a premium that many drivers find hard to ignore.