The car journalist Maths Nilsson at Carup has recently bought a used Audi e-Tron 55, which is one of the electric cars that has lost the most value and now appears to be an incredibly affordable purchase.
However, when it came time to get comprehensive insurance for the car, he got a shock.
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An unpleasant surprise
On a brand new car, insurance rarely becomes a big problem, as the manufacturer usually offers a three-year carriage damage guarantee, which makes full insurance unnecessary.
It is therefore when the carriage damage guarantee expires that you as an owner of an electric car can get an unpleasant surprise. For Maths Nilsson, the offers for comprehensive insurance from several insurance companies landed at over SEK 4,000 a month, which corresponds to over SEK 48,000 a year.
As a comparison, he requested a price proposal for a corresponding diesel car in the form of a Volvo XC60, and then received a price of around SEK 1,500 a month, or SEK 18,000 a year.
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The diesel car costs half of the electric car
In this case, the diesel car thus costs less than half of what the electric car costs to insure, which can be the difference between the electric car being cheaper to own than the diesel car and vice versa.
Math’s research shows that it does not look better if you buy a plug-in hybrid, or choose Sweden’s best-selling car, the Tesla Model Y. Both for the Volvo XC60 as a plug-in hybrid and the Tesla Model Y electric car, he receives offers of around SEK 50,000 a year from several companies.
“Who will be able to afford it when Sweden’s best-selling car is three years old and needs full insurance”, he asks himself.
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Important to check
The amounts requested to insure some electric cars are undeniably staggering, and can make the purchase of a few years old electric car a really uneconomical deal.
Nor is it about Maths in particular being particularly problematic in the eyes of the insurance companies. I researched what it would cost to insure the same car on myself and got similar results from several companies.
If you are the owner or speculator of an electric car with a carriage damage warranty that will soon expire, it may obviously make more sense to check what the insurance will land on.
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