Insurance

[sapphireblack]

I appreciate this is variable for all sorts of reasons.

I've been with the NFU for more years than i can remember. It's not quite renewal time just yet but enquires this week suggest its going to be more than double what its ever been previously. A minimum of £1100 i was warned.

[X5Sport]

Insurance costs have rocketed this year across the board. Spares shortages are meaning people being in hire cars for much longer and insurers have to pay full whack. Someone on the i4 forum had their ‘sandwiched’ between a van and crash barrier with the car in for body shop repairs for over a month. They had an ‘equivalent’ hire car which for the likes of you and I would have cost about £3k/month. Because it was part of an insurance claim, the hire company changed £400/day bringing the hire bill to £11k.

For EV owners it’s much worse. Any damage to the battery compartment means the battery is written off. For mine, BMW charge (in parts costs) a mere £90,000 - more than the price of a brand new car by some margin! Fortunately (and unlike Elon’s products, BMW assemble their batteries in replaceable modules meaning a far lower cost. EVs can (for now) only be fixed by main dealers as the crash repair industry has failed to invest in and train its staff on fixing EVs. That again means huge extra costs. I’ve been warned my insurance will likely be at least double what is was in April so likely to approach or even exceed £2k. The switch to EVs is just going to stall out. If a £20k Chinese made EV (there are a few) is going to need 10% of its value paid annually for insurance, people will not buy them.

I suspect we are about to see an epidemic of uninsured cars on the road.

[sapphireblack]

I was aware by word of mouth that costs had increased generally, thats why i made enquiries.

Yet another unfair solution by the insurance companies to penalise us all for the problems of the few. If EV repairs are the main cause of these rates hikes , what dies that mean for the future

[X5Sport]

EVs aren’t the main cause, hence us owners getting more focussed attention. The issue is that labour and parts costs for all types of cars have rocketed so the insurance companies have taken a profit hit.

Modern cars, regardless of power source, are more like computers on wheels now and so complex that repairs are silly money.. You can’t even replace a headlight bulb without major automotive surgery and if you have LED headlights (as many now do) those lamp units are very expensive. I got told the ones on my 2018 Gran Tourer were north of £2k each, and that was 6 years ago. Given many collisions are nose/tail shunts, it’s easy to see why repair costs in parts have gone into orbit.

Many cars now have to go from the accident centres to the appropriate main dealer for that brand because recoding or specialist additional work needs to be done and that needs special tools and test equipment. Anti-collision systems and ADAS (Automated Driver Assistance System) all need calibration and in many cases that can only be done by a main dealer.

Porsche Taycans are having headlights literally ripped out of the front (plastic) wings because they’re more than £9k each. I can remember discussions a decade ago in here about E53 side mirrors being stolen because they were around £1k each at the time.

Maybe it’s time there was a serious look at how the motor industry works its spares charges out. It’s not a new issue, but just seems to have gone mad recently.

[marti]

Ive just renewed my mothers insurance and its gone down by £12.00 from last yr, maybe because its old (Peugeot 206 2004) I dont know, nothings changed, whilst I was on the site I checked out mine which isnt due til March but at the moment has only gone up by £32.00 so thats sort of normal really and Ive got LED's all round...etc.

[Leslie]

I saw that pic of the porsche with the wings chopped, 9k for a headlight is insane and those cars will be impossible to insure soon.

[X5Sport]

There was an article on my news feed this morning reporting young, new drivers being quoted £9k for their first car, and pointing out that ‘fronting’ is now rife and could potentially put both drivers (say a parent and a new driver) at risk of being incorrectly insured.

I know these companies expect to make profits, but this is getting seriously silly price wise now. Both insurers and the motor industry need to be taken to task.

[StuBeeDoo]

There's no rhyme or reason to it. My X3 is on a multi-car policy with my rarely-used Citroen C3 Picasso. From memory the policy cost me north of £700 when I renewed in June last year. Both cars are insured for myself and dearly beloved (both mid-60s and retired), and the Citroen also has my step-daughter on. The Citroen portion of the policy has historically been the more expensive, probably because of the extra driver......
However, in December we had need of the Citroen being covered for step-d to commute in it. I got on the insurer and gave them all the details, fully expecting the premium to head further north. To add step-d's peak-time commuting got me a refund of over £50, even taking the £25 admin fee into account. So that's £75 cheaper for cover at the most accident-likely time of day.
No rhyme or reason.

[sapphireblack]

I do chop and change, one reason why the NFU have been so good, no admin fees to modify anything.

Normal monthly DD when fully insured hovers around £44. When i returned to the UK in December i reinstated full cover from TPFT or "parked up" cover as the NFU refer to it. They advised it would now be almost £92pm.

I was not happy as you can imagine. Apparently its a new policy, even though it was running May 23 to May 24 as i had made changes. Despite my protests they are not interested.

[X5Sport]

The quote has come through for next year’s cover for the i4, and as expected there’s a large jump. 67% to be exact. I renewed the E46 a few weeks back and that had jumped by almost 40% even though it’s 19 years old with very low annual mileage. Press reporting had been saying there were large increases coming simply because repair costs have risen significantly for all types of vehicle.

I can get cheaper cover, however it’s from firms I’ve never heard of with non-UK registered offices (always makes me nervous), or has very large excesses and exclusions. The bigger (and better known) names are all more expensive with even the usual price comparison websites offering more expensive policies from the same company I use.

[Leslie]

That's a big jump ,mine is due in may and I have 2 other policies due very soon too (nightmare) so if it rises 67 % it will be sorned

[X5Sport]

I don’t expect an ICE powered car to go up that much. Insurers are getting twitchy about EVs because there is a lot of garbage, myth and misinformation around fixing them. Mainly to do with the batteries. Industry’s collective knowledge is still developing, as is the repair industry’s technical ability. There’s nothing tricky, you just need the right training and test kit.

[Leslie]

Ice cars are paying for ev problems too thats why everybody's is going up there are not enough ev's about yet to cover the increased costs yet plus training and expensive equipment needs serious investment and somebody has to pay for that ..us the consumers
They need to make batteries repairable easily and for sensible monies thats the best way to fix these issues .

[sapphireblack]

Ice cars are paying for ev problems too thats why everybody's is going up there are not enough ev's about yet to cover the increased costs yet plus training and expensive equipment needs serious investment and somebody has to pay for that ..us the consumers
They need to make batteries repairable easily and for sensible monies thats the best way to fix these issues .

Hmm, if thats true and mindful of our leaders investment in electricity, thats more than casually irritating. The few spoiling things for the masses. Thats never happened before has it

[X5Sport]

A big part of the problem is that modern cars are just so complex. Something as (relatively) simple as replacing a windscreen now means a trip to a dealership to have the myriad of sensors recalibrated. Spare parts are seriously expensive too. Gone are the days of swapping a headlight bulb. Now everyone seems to use LEDs with beamforming and other whizzy tech. The cost of repairing, never mind replacing, them is just nuts.

As I think I’ve said before, someone needs to take a cold hard look at the industry and its costs. They make vast amounts out of spare parts and that of course hits our insurance regardless of what you drive.