If you own a vehicle, car insurance is just a fact of life. Hopefully, you won’t ever have to experience making a claim for an auto accident, but many people obviously do. If you drive an EV, chances are your repair will cost more than a comparable internal-combustion engine (ICE) vehicle, according to a new report. But it’s not all bad news for electric cars.
The study – creatively named Plugged-In: EV Collision Insights Q2 2023 – was done by Mitchell, a claims management and collision repair process company. It found that, on average, EVs cost $1,328 more to repair than an ICE vehicle, costing an average of just under $6,000 in Q2 of this year. In 2020, that cost was just $5,500.
But overall, EVs are less likely to be written off as a total loss in a collision. “In 2023 Q2, only 10.31% of EVs were classified as non-drivable compared to 13.11% of ICE vehicles,” reads the report.
“The relative lack of moving parts means that an EV’s critical powertrain is less likely to be compromised during an accident. While certain ADAS [Advanced Drivers Assistance Systems] components may be disrupted due to an advanced level of interconnectivity, the vehicle still has a higher likelihood of remaining drivable.”
The report states a few reasons for EV’s increase in costs. One is that they tend to need more OEM parts, which are more expensive than the aftermarket parts ICE vehicles can use. And repairs and refinishing on EVs tend to take an average of a half hour more than ICE vehicles.
In Canada, Tesla vehicles are the most expensive to fix, with an average of more than $6,000 overall in Q2 and an average of $1,600 more to fix than an ICE vehicle. The report states that Tesla makes up 70.67 per cent of all EVs in Canada, and three of the top five EVs repaired here are Tesla models: the Model 3 is first, accounting for 42 per cent of EV repairs, with the Model Y second at 20 per cent. The Nissan Leaf (5.9 per cent) Hyundai Kona EV (5.9 per cent) and the Tesla Model S (4 per cent) round out the top five.
