Chalk this story up as yet another reason why leftist plans to phase out gas-powered vehicles and force everyone to drive electric cars is a fairytale with no bearing on reality. The insurance industry, which is going to have a final say on this industry in the end, whether anyone likes it or not, is finding electric vehicles to be uninsurable. At this point, insuring the batteries on electric cars is a crapshoot. Plus, there aren’t enough electric vehicles on the roads yet for there to be an accurate risk pool for insurance companies to work with.
Last week, a Scottish couple drove their Tesla Model 3 (sticker price: $59,990 USD) to dinner in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was raining in Scotland, which is what it always does in that country. When they left dinner, their car couldn’t take them home. After a five-hour wait for a service call, their toy electric car was towed to Tesla Edinburgh. Several days later, they got the call for their repair estimate:
$21,166 USD.
This was a typical rainstorm for Scotland, yet Tesla told the couple it appeared that their battery had been “completely submerged” in water. The company also explained to the shocked couple that water damage from a rainstorm is not covered under their eight-year warranty.
The frustrated owner told Tesla, “So, my understanding is, Teslas are unfit for purpose in Scotland?”
Something like that.
Thatcham Research is the motor insurers’ automotive research center in England. It says that the unknowns when it comes to repairing or replacing electric car batteries are driving insurance costs through the roof. Some insurance companies are simply opting to not insure electric vehicles at all. Some electric vehicles are being completely written off by insurance companies after minor fender benders due to the cost and difficulty of repairing batteries. If an electric battery is compromised in a collision, the chances of it exploding or starting a catastrophic fire seem to go through the roof.
This causes costs to skyrocket for repair shops. European regulators now recommend that electric cars be stored at least 50 yards apart in repair shops in case one of them explodes. This comes on the heels of a massive explosion at Tashkent Airport in Uzbekistan, when a warehouse full of electric cars blew up. One person was killed, and 163 were injured in the blast.
The insurance estimators believe it will cost more than $1 billion USD by 2035 to create adequate storage space for electric vehicle repair shops.
Fires from lithium batteries are also the fastest-growing cause of fire department responses in England right now. Last year, the London Fire Brigade was called out to 87 e-bike and 29 e-scooter fires. In Paris, the fleet of 149 new electric buses was pulled off the market last year after two of them randomly caught on fire. A website that tracks Teslas catching on fire says there have been 25 vehicle fires so far in 2023.
Owners are finding that the cost of insuring an electric vehicle is much more than a gas-powered one as well. A person with a good driving record can have an insurance bill of $40 a week or less. For an electric vehicle, as of right now, it costs about $120 per week. That’s incredibly expensive for car insurance. Not to mention the fact that it could cost you $21,000 to replace the battery if it rains outside.
This industry is a joke and it’s not a funny one. If the insurance industry is unable to cover these vehicles, what do you suppose is going to happen eventually to Joe Biden’s electric car mandates? Exactly.
