Electric Car Shocker: Auto Insurance in California Costs 45% More for Electric Cars

When people go green, their goal is to help the environment and receive benefits from early adoption incentives. This is included in and encouraged throughout the purchase of electric cars. After all, never having to fill up at a gas station, or worry about the roller-coaster cost of fuel is intriguing. However, the convenience is being dampened by the rising cost of auto insurance for electric cars.

According to a study, electric cars have a forty-five-percent higher auto insurance cost than diesel fuel cars. This is for two reasons: the market isn’t big enough and there isn’t enough testing.

The Market Isn’t Big Enough
If green energy continues to progress to the point governments believe it will, soon, everyone will have an electric car. However, for the time being, the market for an electric car isn’t big. There aren’t enough people with electric cars to justify lower insurance rates. After all, the price of the car is directly related to the rate of auto insurance in California. So, as everyone knows, electric cars are expensive. Until they become mainstreamed and adopted by everyone, those cars will remain expensive. Therefore, insurance companies must be able to cover their investment. If an electric car and a gasoline car get into an accident, it’s still cheaper to insure the gasoline car.

There Isn’t Enough Testing
Time is not on the electric car buyer’s side when it comes to auto insurance. Unfortunately, insurance companies don’t have enough data to accurately predict the risk of insuring an electric car. There are plenty of theories and plenty of ideal statistics, but they don’t know the true effect of how electric cars will have in the real world. There’s no concrete way to get this information, except for the passage of time and the continual acceptance of electronic cars.

In summation, even though these reasons make sense, they don’t necessarily justify the hike for everyday consumers. Therefore, it’s hard to tell which way this will go. This spike will either become a necessary evil or it’ll damage the electric car market for good. At this point, it’s simply too early to tell.