The Tesla brand is inextricably associated with the development of viable and performance electric vehicles.
They and one or two other manufacturers, have taken electric vehicles (EVs) from design and laboratory concepts into production. They have revolutionized the motor industry to an extent that hasn’t been seen for many decades.
If you’re a Tesla owner, you probably consider yourself fortunate but you might also have experienced some difficulties in finding insurance cover.
The explanation
Many motor vehicle insurance providers have been rather caught out by the speed with which these vehicles have suddenly arrived, in numbers, on the market.
The insurance industry typically places great emphasis on building and pricing policies based upon hard fact metrics and specifically past insurance claims. In the case of many EVs, those statistics hardly exist. As a result, some companies have struggled to develop viable policy propositions and some of those that have, might typically load the premiums due to the fact the risks simply aren’t quantified.
In particular, it’s worth specifically mentioning here the questions of the battery.
Tesla batteries are complicated to discuss because there are numerous purchase and leasing options. In addition, Tesla’s pricing model for them is subject to regular change and many argue that KWh prices are falling.
Even so, if your battery is damaged in an accident, the replacement costs may easily run well into 5 figures.
The bottom line is that as the costs involved in battery replacement are high and subject to rapid variations, some insurance providers have decided not to enter the market at this time and they may not do so until a degree of familiarity has been developed.
Cover is available
Insurance for Tesla cars is available. You may, however, spend a lot of time engaged in fruitless searching unless you have a specialist in the area to assist you. This is also important because, as stated above, some providers who notionally offer EV policies are, in fact, offering very restricted cover. Others are applying very heavily loaded premiums.
In other words, it’s important to know what you’re doing in this domain. The good news is that at Specialist4ElectricCars.co.uk, we can help. We offer affordable, comprehensive Tesla insurance cover as well as cover for other brands of electric cars.
What the future holds
It’s always dangerous to engage in future-guessing! Most experts in the industry nevertheless believe that EVs are the future. Yet there are some significant things to be achieved before they will become a common sight on our roads:
- battery prices will need to reduce. That will allow what might be termed less ‘top-end’ and more mass-market EVs to be produced. Many argue that this process is now well underway;
- while ranges are increasing dramatically, further progress is needed to make charging faster and the distances between charging longer. Potential ‘in-road’ charging systems may be critically important here;
- there will need to be a massive re-education of the road vehicle support infrastructures to ensure that a typical garage has the skills and tools necessary to deal with EVs should the need arise.
As more and more of these vehicles arrive on our roads, the insurance industry will start to make more cover available and that should only benefit pricing.
