Cyber truck

[Foxy100]

people are buying 7-10 year old model S and leafs, battery warranty tends to be 8 years on most marques, a 4 year old car (EV or ICE) will already be at circa 40-45% of its original value and going to depreciate more, im not sure why you see these as EV issues per se. Id suggest ICE vehicles also have an unknown depreciation curve as they are very much subject to the whims of state interventions.

It's stuff like this that seems to suggest used EV values aren't perhaps going well: https://newsletter.autocar.co.uk/car...values-plummet

I don't have an issue with electric cars, some of the small ones have a place in the world. I do have an issue with ridiculous SUVs, especially things like the 2.8-ton iX, but that's not EV-specific (although the electric ones weigh more than the ICE equivalents). There's not one EV that suits my needs right now so I'll stick with my small ICE car until it's no longer viable. If I had to replace it tomorrow, I'd not consider an EV.

[Passenger]

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...

[Tooks]

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...

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.

[Passenger]

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.

[Ares]

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...

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).

[RobDad]

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...

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!

[Richie_101]

... 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?

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.

[Dave+63]

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).

[Michael 38]

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).

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

[Tooks]

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.

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/

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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

Yes, certainly starting to see more ‘one eyed’ cars about with a failed DRL or some such.

[Michael 38]

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...

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.

[stooo]

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.

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.

[Michael 38]

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.

The thing I saw was like a complete pre formed structure including all the pillars and roof structure all in one

[Dave+63]

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.

[stuie-t]

The thing I saw was like a complete pre formed structure including all the pillars and roof structure all in one

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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[Michael 38]

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


Sent from my iPhone using TZ-UK mobile app

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