Tesla owners pay 74% higher premium as insurers often total new EVs with battery 'going straight to the grinder'

Automotive insurance companies increasingly balk at having to pay for EV repairs and are often totalling the whole electric car for rather minor battery damage. Since EV makers are reluctant to share their battery testing and repair data, most major auto insurers prefer to throw the vehicle away even for marks on the battery housing, rather than deal with impossible health tests and cell replacements.

"Allianz has seen scratched battery packs where the cells inside are likely undamaged, but without diagnostic data it has to write off those vehicles," reports Reuters.

The battery pack is the most expensive component in an electric vehicle. So much so that NIO recently said it will rent its long-range 150 kWh unit for summer trips rather than sell cars with it directly. The high-nickel cells offer a hybrid solid-liquid electrolyte (what NIO calls a semi-solid state battery), but the 150 kWh pack with 620+ miles of range on a charge can cost as much as the ET5 sedan itself.

This is why insurers prefer to total even newer electric cars with low mileage that have sustained cosmetic damage to the battery, raising the overall EV insurance premiums way above the average. The price to insure a Tesla, for instance, is the whopping 74% over the national average. Tesla makes the most expensive to insure EVs, but it is also the second most expensive car brand when it comes to premiums. Only the maker of Dodge Charger crafts performance vehicles whose insurance costs more than Tesla's.

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the average monthly premium for a 2022 Tesla is $251 for full-coverage auto insurance. This is more than 70% above the national average of $144 per month in the US. Tesla tops legacy luxury car brands like BMW or Lexus in the unfortunate category of pricey insurance premiums, too.

The battery damage insurance write-off concerns are only going to worsen with wider introduction of the structural cell-to-pack technology in the Texas-made Model Y equipped with 4680 battery. There, the cells are an integral part of the vehicle's chassis and Sandy Munro recently proclaimed the Model Y battery irreparable. "A Tesla structural battery pack is going straight to the grinder" after an accident, he now adds, which would only increase its insurance premiums further.

Get the Tesla Motors 24' Cable Wall Connector on Amazon