As prices top $4 a gallon, should you consider an electric vehicle? One consideration: They’re more expensive to insure and repair. Here’s why.
Not only are electric-vehicle sticker prices higher on average than comparable cars and SUVs with traditional internal-combustion engines (ICE), the cost to insure an EV outruns its gasoline-guzzling cousins.
Is that because it’s challenging a 100-year-old auto market, and an even older insurance industry with specialized technology? Or because it’s the Roadster, whose speedometer tops out at 250 miles per hour?
The answer is, well, both.
That’s because insurance premiums are built on damage and repair histories, which for EVs is small, yet expanding. EVs are, in many ways, more simply built, with less components, than traditional cars.
But the experts allocated to fix them are still getting up to speed. And parts —semiconductor chips, for starters — can be hard to source, or are subject to trade conditions, even before COVID-19 supply-chain issues disrupted the flow of goods.
“There’s a lack of data or experience with insuring and