The price advantage of e-cars is crumbling: repairs cost you dearly
Anyone who wants to buy an e-car knows that without subsidies it will usually be expensive. But you save in the following years, after all, the maintenance costs are lower than with petrol or diesel. But as Allianz insurance shows, this is not always the case.
The purchase price of an e-car is usually higher than that of a comparable gasoline-powered vehicle, as the government steps in with the environmental bonus, but the funds are running out. Despite the current high electricity prices, charging an electric car is significantly cheaper than filling it with diesel or gasoline.
E-cars: Mad damage can mean the end
Insurance costs should also be cheaper for e-car drivers – at least so far. That may be true for the annual billing without damage. But if there are accidents or other damage, things can quickly look very different. Because the Repair costs for e-cars are often higher than for conventional cars (Source: dpa via Tagesschau). This is what the Allianz Center for Technology (AZT) found out.
One particular case of damage can hit electric car drivers particularly hard: the maderbite. High-voltage cables, such as those found in electric cars, are particularly expensive to repair. If a madman nibbles on one, the entire cable set usually has to be replaced, explains Carsten Reinkemeyer from AZT (source: t-online). For that would at least 7,000 euros due – and that is still the cheapest case.
Smaller and correspondingly cheaper e-cars, used or older models threatened by Maderbiss economic total loss. In the case of more expensive e-cars, the repair is still worthwhile compared to the purchase price, but owners can still be affected.
According to AZT, the average loss expenditure is with fully comprehensive insurance for pure electric cars by 10 percent higher than with combustion engines. Plug-in hybrids even cost up to 50 percent more damage. For this purpose, data from the years 2018 to 2020 were used.
You can find common misconceptions about e-cars in Video:
Insurance for e-cars: rising prices are a matter of time
The repair costs after a collision are on average 30 percent higher than those of cars with internal combustion engines. You might think that if you have no accidents, you can relax. The higher cost of repairs will be up though reflected in the pricing for fully comprehensive insurance. So it doesn’t hurt to find out more about the follow-up costs before buying an e-car.
The Allianz investigation also showed that the Fire risk is not higher than with burners. However, if a fire does occur, the extinguishing work can often take longer.