A practical question – if your 12v battery goes flat, can you jump start your car just like a fossil car?  As there’s no starter motor to turn over (I think) I’d have imagined you could use something like an Anker power bank ?

Apologies if it’s been covered before in thread, I did a man look & could see anything related.

seeing a thread on pistonheads, a few people are claiming massive insurance hikes/ refusals for electric cars.

My diesel golf insurance has only gone up about 7% this year. I start a new job & was thinking of going electric for the commute but if this is a tend I may reconsider.

if your 12v battery goes flat, can you jump start your car just like a fossil car?

Yes, and you only need to provide enough power to boot up the car.

massive insurance hikes/ refusals for electric cars.

Such a huge bunch of misinformation and horsecrap talked about electric cars. It’s become such an emotive topic and I’ve no idea why – is it Saudi bots attempting to slow the adoption down?

I changed from CMax to ENiro about 6 months ago. Insurance change cost me £70, but I took the opportunity to add my 22 year-old lad to the named drivers so I wouldn’t be surprised if the base insurance hadn’t gone down by quite a bit!

BlobOnAStick

is it Saudi bots attempting to slow the adoption down?

lol. I’ve read the same kind of threads over there and it’s people talking about their own renewals going up massively/being refused. Nothing more than that, zero reason to believe there is any Saudi psyops involved!

Virtually all renewals are up this year but not to the extent of those on the relevant threads.

edit- Can’t post a link as STW forum is not correctly processing hrefs with ampersands inside, if you search for Tesla Insurance on their Tesla subforum you will see an example

My diesel golf insurance has only gone up about 7% this year. I start a new job & was thinking of going electric for the commute but if this is a tend I may reconsider.

Not getting into the bun fight above, but it would be reasonable quick to do a quote from compare the market or whatever and see what you get.

A practical question – if your 12v battery goes flat, can you jump start your car just like a fossil car? As there’s no starter motor to turn over (I think) I’d have imagined you could use something like an Anker power bank ?

There’s a known issue with early Renault Zoes hammering the 12v battery. I’ve had to replace ours twice, with both lasting 3 years. When the batteries were on their way out, I used to trickle charge them overnight using a smart charger.

https://forums.aeva.asn.au/viewtopic.php?t=7234

Yes, and you only need to provide enough power to boot up the car.

Have seen a completely unauthorised “boot kit” at work which is basically a 3s LiPo battery on a stick that you stick in the accessory/lighter socket. Works on cars where the socket stays live after key off (The one in the boot usually does).

And that insurance stuff seems perfectly reasonable for a car that will hit 60 in well under 5 seconds and can be somewhat tricky to repair.

Car insurance is up loads generally – not just EVs. It’s been widely reported

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jul/22/uk-drivers-car-insurance-costs-price-petrol-diesel

Yes, most are going significantly up. Higher labour, materials, energy costs drive up repair costs. Compounding that is many parts take longer to get now, so people are in hire/courtesy cars for longer.

Tesla insurance is high anyway because of the performance but also Tesla aren’t great at supplying parts for repair quickly.

Just check with Mrs OD the insurance on her Soul EV went from £340 to £390.  Which seems to be, if anything, slightly lower than the average increase across all types of cars

I’ve just been presenting in a large motor insurer board meeting today (ooh get me. Important!)

Main topic of conversation with Execs, NEDs and the wider insurance market is the 40% increase in renewal premiums YOY, and what it’s doing to complaints, customer satisfaction etc.

Most of increase is down to rampant claims cost inflation – claims handling, legal costs, parts scarcity and rising cost, scarcity and cost of hire care replacement, rocketing total loss valuation figures etc.  Even with the FCA rules on fair pricing being properly embedded, we’re finding that prices across the market are rising rapidly and few are making any margin.

EV repair costs are indeed high, and driving higher premiums. Parts are still scarce. Fewer garages are trained and tooled to work on high voltage cars (and therefore repair costs have risen). THere’s also a nervousness about the frailty of batteries, which are over 50% of the price of a car, and which are being replaced rather than repaired in a lot of cases.

if your 12v battery goes flat, can you jump start your car just like a fossil car? As there’s no starter motor to turn over (I think) I’d have imagined you could use something like an Anker power bank ?

Yep, known problem on Teslas. I have a tiny 9v battery taped behind the tow hook flap which opens the froot if you connect it to the two exposed terminals, and in there a 12v lithium ion jump pack which I inherited from my Volvo. Not needed it yet though.

Yes, insurance is going up, but people are also reporting being refused insurance on EVs. However it’s perhaps more telling to look at the Cat S that are on the relevant sites and how damaged they aren’t. Of course, there could be unseen damage but it’s quite clear in some cases that insurers are writing off cars very easily. This would of course make premiums go up.

This was on the Leaf owner’s group today – it’s a 2015 car and has been written off for £7k.  That’s the only damage.

mert

And that insurance stuff seems perfectly reasonable for a car that will hit 60 in well under 5 seconds and can be somewhat tricky to repair

It’s not really how much it is, it’s the increase year on year.

As I said almost all of us have seen some increase, but on the EV forum people were posting about their renewal doubling or more, or even being declined.

This was on the Leaf owner’s group today – it’s a 2015 car and has been written off for £7k. That’s the only damage.

Is that because of concerns over the battery?
Our just that’s what bodywork repairs are now charged at?

thats a main body panel thats been damaged.

new bumper – £500
new light – £500
new side panel – £1000
cutting out side panel and replacing – £1000
paint (bumper and side panel) – £1000
total – £4000

scrap value – £5000

would take a value of £9k not to write it off

I’ve heard that the newer Tesla’s are more expensive to repair due to their continuing reduction of subassemblies to save cost in manufacturing.  There are fewer parts but they’re individually MUCH more expensive and difficult to remove if they’re damaged.

Hmm I did not notice the damage to the panel.  And the high scrap value because of the battery is an interesting one.

Let’s hope the fears are unfounded.

Are mk1 Leaf rear bumpers impossible to get? Because there’s one along the road from me (by which I mean a mk1 Leaf, not its bumper) doing its best mk1 Mondeo impression. It’s been doing it for at least six months now.

quick to do a quote from compare the market

I did- all were more expensive than my current quote. Given reports of massive hikes both ICE & EV I thought the 7% was reasonable.

There is a post on the pistonheads thread where someone has had an electric bmw’s cover not renewed by their insurer. Not sure if this widespread or not.

Isn’t the tesla y battery a structural component? So if it gets damaged the car basically gets written off

someone has had an electric bmw’s cover not renewed by their insurer. Not sure if this widespread or not.

I think a huge amount of BMW EV’s will be on salary sacrifice lease plans which include insurance and maintenance, mine certainly is.

Isn’t the tesla y battery a structural component?

Not exactly, it is large but removeabale for service. It’s exposed to being bent, and if it were it would probably need replacing so there’s that. That said, an impact big enough to bend the battery might well write an ICE car off as well.

Direct line wouldn’t quote me for a BMW iX or the model Y.  Quote that I did get for the iX was just shy of a grand.  For reference, currently paying £250ish for a Mondeo.  Value of the car obvioulsy a factor but still extreme.  Cheapest that I could get for the Y was £1300 with a large (£750) excess.  Full NCD; mid 50s; no points on licence

Insurance expensive now. Check money saving expert.

Model Y insurance earlier this year was £800. But that was with about £500 excess of compulsory + voluntary in south manchester.

🤷🏻‍♂️ insurance is what it is.

Isn’t the tesla y battery a structural component?

Not sure it is yet. as far as I know the ‘skateboard’ design of Model S,3, and X is common across the S3XY platform now. The plan is to make the battery a structural component soon.

Irrespective, expensive cars are expensive to repair. That is the case whether they are ICE or EV.

Edit. I understood that some cosmetic repairs to my Model S from another named driver’s mishap amounted to £20,000 of repairs. I can imagine that a chunk of that was paint work. Getting parts was a long haul (several weeks) but a next day delivery comparison to getting a Renault X-brace back in the late 90s which took about 16 weeks!

A practical question – if your 12v battery goes flat, can you jump start your car just like a fossil car? As there’s no starter motor to turn over (I think) I’d have imagined you could use something like an Anker power bank ?

🤷🏻‍♂️
I have no idea where the 12V battery is in my Model Y.

The last time I suffered a flat 12V battery was with a MB. That was under the driver’s floor mat. The Audi I jump started from had its battery under the passenger foot well. It was tricky. Glad I had monster jump cables.

These days I’d just bring up the service/callout option on the Tesla app and pay whatever. In the scheme of things a call out or recovery fee is not much compared to TCO.

Direct line wouldn’t quote me for a BMW iX or the model Y.  Quote that I did get for the iX was just shy of a grand.  For reference, currently paying £250ish for a Mondeo.  Value of the car obvioulsy a factor but still extreme.  Cheapest that I could get for the Y was £1300 with a large (£750) excess.  Full NCD; mid 50s; no points on licence

It’s not really just about the value of the car – not sure exactly what models you’re looking at but aren’t a lot of the iXs and Ys sort of sub 5s 0-60s big heavy cars? The damage you can cause to the car is limited to the value of the car but if you injure 4 occupants in another car that’s potentially millions and millions.

For a more like for like comparison with an ICE car compare insurance with Audi S5s and BMW M5s rather than a mondeo.

^ That. Big fast expensive cars have always been pricey.

Hmm but surely an M5 is more likely to be driven aggressively than a Model Y? These EVs might be fast but they aren’t sports cars and aren’t bought as such.

My Zoé 50 insurance is 420e and my Dacia Lodgy TCE 404e. Both fully comp any driver with assistance/recovery. The list price of the Zoé is about double the Dacia. Both owned from new. The power:weights are Dacia 115bhp/1200kg and Zoé 108bhp/1500kg.

The insurance on the iX and the model Y were bottom end iX i.e. the 40, and mid range Y i.e. dual motor but not the Performnace model.  I can’t imagine (never having owned a properly rapid car) what the M60 and sub 4s Y would cost!

molgrips
Full Member

Hmm but surely an M5 is more likely to be driven aggressively than a Model Y? These EVs might be fast but they aren’t sports cars and aren’t bought as such.

It’s also around twice the price of a Model Y.

molgrips
Full Member
Hmm but surely an M5 is more likely to be driven aggressively than a Model Y? These EVs might be fast but they aren’t sports cars and aren’t bought as such.

Dunno about that. The squirt & go nature of a lot of electric cars seems to lead to some pretty dick-ish driving around here.

Insurance is always based on risk and exposure, so we’d need an industry insider to explain which it is…. surely someone will be along soon:)

Deposit paid on a used E-208 GT Premium, picking it up next Saturday 🙂

Next job is getting a charger fitted. I had placed an order with Octopus, but after taking nearly a grand from me I heard nothing for 3 days and when I rang them it turned out lead time is 5-6 weeks. Have found a couple of other options for Ohme Pro fitting who look like they’ll be much quicker – seemed to spend most of yesterday sending photographs and drawings of my house and elec supply gubbins to them.

When has insuring a big £50k car that will do 0-60 in 5.5 seconds been cheap?

Exactly. My Jaguar XFS was 800 quid fully comp in 2020, a current quote for it is 1000. I don’t know exactly what my Model 3 is, as it’s a company salary sacrifice, but running a quote for it comes in at 900.

While I don’t doubt prices have risen, I think there’s a lot of people (particularly on Tesla forums) who are now insuring cars a lot more expensive and powerful than they used to and that’s causing some price shock.

£900 insurance isn’t the issue, being refused or charged £3k is more of a problem.

As usual I find myself in a dealer looking at the new cars whilst collecting a part for my old one. This time it’s a combined Nissan/Hyundai/Kia place so I had a look at the Ioniq 6 and the Ariya since they both can tow. The Ariya is absolutely lovely inside, possibly my favourite car yet. Really impressed with the dash design and interior quality and material choice – for which I am a sucker. But the Ioniq 6 was also lovely, better than the 5, and it has the advantage of being car shaped which I think would make it a lot better to drive and also more efficient, particularly on motorway trips.

WTLP for the Nissan is 329 from 87kWh usable which is about 3.8m/kWh, whereas the Ioniq 6 is 338 from 74 which makes about 4.5m/kWh. And the charging speed is a lot higher too which would make long trips easier. It’s also big, low and rear wheel drive which I suspect would make it a great drive.