What challenges can be when insuring electric vehicles
Electric vehicles are new to the automobile market and provide several challenges for car insurance companies as well as owners seeking to keep their insurance rates to the minimum. One of the major factors that influence the high cost of insuring electric vehicles is that insurance companies do not have much experience in insuring these types of vehicles and tend to classify them neutrally. The lack of experience with not much analysis to fall back on leaves insurance companies with little or no room to satisfy electric vehicle owners with a lower insurance bill.
For the most part, insurance companies are still trying to determine how to price coverage for electric vehicles. There are several factors the need to be considered which include the cost of repairs and replacements, the lack of qualified mechanics, the durability of these vehicles, and more. The number of vehicles on the road is still very few, which means that insurance providers will take time to determine a fair price for coverage until claims are made by owners. Electric vehicle owners are currently eligible for a federal tax credit. However, insurance providers are not keen on taking the reduction of around $7,500 on the base price into account since they are not sure if credit would be available if the vehicle needs replacement. Moreover, insurance companies do not benefit from tax credits if they need to replace portions of an electric vehicle.
Among the most expensive replacements in an electric vehicle is the battery pack. This is one of the major factors that will influence the premium that the insurance provider arrives at. Therefore, insurance providers rely on the Insurance Service Office rating for every electric vehicle manufactured. They use the rating to come up with their own formula and pass on the costs to the consumer.
The only solution for electric vehicle owners so far is to shop around for the best possible rate. Insurance providers vary in the formula they arrive at when calculating premiums for these vehicles built with cutting edge EV technology. Shopping around will help you make an informed decision and find the best coverage at the best possible price. Among the factors that will affect your insurance premium are your driving history, safety and security devices installed in the vehicle, customer loyalty, no claims bonus, and much more. Electric vehicles are cheaper to run and you can hope to save a significant sum when you search for better insurance rates.
What makes a Green car green – How to make sense of Green credentials
If you’re looking for an eco-friendly car, you’ll also be well aware of the fact that calling a car “green” doesn’t make it green in fact. The new Green ratings are an improvement, but you still need to know your stuff to understand the ratings system. Green credentials include calculating everything related to your car, including car service, on road costs as well as energy sources.
The Green rating
Typically Green car ratings are created for a class of vehicles. The ratings are based on standardized testing conducted by manufacturers, a fact not all Green people are entirely happy about.
The basic tests include:
• Greenhouse gases rating- CO2 emissions
• Air pollution rating- Pollutants like carbon monoxide, hydrocarbon (fuel-based) emissions, and nitrogen oxide, another toxic gas
• Star rating- Somewhat like an energy star rating for an appliance, based on the emissions factors
As an example of a rating, the Toyota Prius, the standard bearer for the current generation of Green cars, rates ten out of ten.
Many dedicated environmentally conscious people might dispute these ratings, but the fact is that any rating system has to be based on a clearly defined systemic approach. This system may or may not leave out things like carbon particulate emissions and be short on other information, depending on your level of technical knowledge of particular cars.
Checking Green car credentials properly
The current generation of Green cars are hybrids and the new electric cars now coming on the road. A realistic check of Green credentials therefore involves some number crunching as well as technical information. If you can find out the engine specifications and filter capacity of a car, you can pin down the actual Green factor in any car.
The sad fact is that most older cars put out a minimum about 50g per mile (slightly under30g per kilometer, roughly) of carbon. That includes some of the hybrids, which although they’re at the bottom end of this scale and the Toyota Prius is definitely best of its class, is still a lot of carbon. Fuel efficiency is definitely a factor in Green credentials, and more fuel efficient cars are considerably Greener than the big cars, quite literally every second they’re on the road.
The electric cars are naturally Green in terms of common definitions involving fuel-based calculations, but naturally, the generation of electricity has a role to play in their real Green values. If your source of electricity is solar or another alternative power generation system, your electric car is truly Green. If you’re sourcing electricity from a coal powered electricity generator, the car is contributing to emissions from that source, albeit in a minimal way.
There’s another way of determining Green car credentials- On road costs. Real Green cars, particularly electric cars, are considerably cheaper than gas guzzlers. If you total up your on road costs including car insurance, you should see a notable improvement in your car budget real costs over a time frame of a year.
Check out your car online, and compare with the top Green cars. You’ll soon see where the real Green credentials are.
Top 3 big mistakes to avoid- The basics of cutting your car costs
Have you ever had one of those moments when you’re getting your car insurance quotes when you’ve suddenly remembered all the other incidents and issues you’ve had with your car? Strange how that always happens when there’s money involved, isn’t it? Car costs are no joke, and just about everybody winces when they remember some of the things they’ve had to pay for over the years.
There are some basic, but major mistakes which put drivers behind the eight ball in terms of their costs:
1. Not thinking ahead about costs: It’s ironic, when drivers are trained from day one to look out for developing situations that they don’t think a lot more about their developing costs. Most drivers are their own worst enemies, in this regard. They pay for things when they happen, and don’t think about preventing the problems.
The truth is that most people spend on their cars when they have to, rather than when they should. People quite often know their car has some sort of problem, and will wait until they actually have to do something about it. The result, inevitably, is that the car is off the road, costing money, and costing more money in alternative transport. That’s exactly how not to save money on your car.
2. Not locking in routine car services: It’s a lot easier to manage costs when you have some known prices to work with. If you simply pay for what needs doing when it needs doing, you’re costing yourself big money. Car problems don’t just happen. Most are preventable. A single routine car service will definitely deal with things like wheel alignment, steering, brakes, etc. and other wear-and –tear creating situations. These services are a lot cheaper than the repairs, and save a lot of money by preventing problems. You can lock in your services on the basic 6 month basis and you’ll find your car repair and replacement costs go down dramatically over the life of the car.
3. Not looking for good car insurance: Many people don’t know that there are better ways of getting car insurance these days. The new online insurers are excellent, allowing you to tailor your policy to suit your needs, not the old One Size Fits All approach. You can save real money on these policies, and just get the insurance you need. You can also get comprehensive car insurance which will lay on replacement transport, accommodation, towing, and even extra drivers.
If you’ve seen a few possibilities for improvement in the way you manage your car costs, you’re not alone. Motorists are hit with very high costs for things which really ought never to happen. Just planning your costs ahead can really save you a lot of money, and take the pain out of your car budget.
Shop around; look for better options and better deals. You will find them, and you’ll save yourself a lot of time and frustration as well.