248 The Updated Insurance Episode

Gary:

Hi, I'm Gary and this is episode 248 of EV Musings, a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. On the show today, we'll be looking again at insurance and why premiums have gone up so quickly recently.

Before we start, I wanted to thank everyone who's written in with a topic and episode suggestions. They'll all go into the mixing pot and we'll see what comes out next season. Now I made topic of discussion today's EV insurance. Back in episode 166, we spoke with Alexandra Hammond Chambers Borgniss from LV Insurance. She talked us through the insurance market as it stood at that time. And we discussed things like how to lower your premium and why it's always worth calling your insurance provider when the renewal comes. Since then.

med. An Auto Express study in: 2023

Stephen:

Hi Gary, my name's Stephen Williams. Thanks again for inviting me to be on the show. I've got 25 plus years across financial services, banking, more recently motor insurance for a large UK insurer. I started a new career path from January, looking at how I leverage those skills, experiences and network I've built up over that time to help the variety of businesses face into the changing mobility world that we.we are looking at through electrification.

Gary:

Talk to me about the overall insurance market for cars in general, not just EVs. How has that changed recently?

Stephen:

So you're probably aware as your listeners will be that it's quite a tough 18, 24 months from an insurance market perspective for a range of reasons following COVID and the lockdown and what kind of came out of that. So for example, one of the key reasons that insurance prices have been on that point trajectory over that period would be things like the lack of new cars being available meant that used car prices shot up because

closer to a thousand pound or: 1500

Gary:

Now the overriding impression, particularly for people who don't have electric vehicles and also from people in certain circumstances, is that premiums as a whole have risen higher for electric vehicles than for non-electric vehicles. Is that right?

Stephen:

So I would say it's pretty difficult to look at it through that specific lens. And the reason I say that is because every individual quote is made up of hundreds, if not thousands of different data points. So your insurance quote is not driven purely by the fact that you're driving an electric vehicle or an ice vehicle. So it will be based on information about yourself, how we believe you will drive the vehicle itself. So whilst the electric element of it will play part of it, it's not specific to the end quote price, will see there's a whole range of things that go into that. So not every electric vehicle customer will be paying more than an ice vehicle customer. It will very much depend on the individual's details. What I think it is fair to say is that by comparison, the electric vehicle fleet is much younger than the ice vehicle fleet. So I think the average car age in the UK is 10 years plus. Most people buy secondhand vehicles and clear there are a lot more ice vehicles on the road. So as insurer the model is typically to look backwards, take that information based on both car and individual behavior. That gives us a view of claims performance. And then that's what we use into place pricing for your quote every, every year. Now, one of the common things that people will say is look, nothing's changed for me in the last 12 months. Why has my insurance premium gone up? Which I totally understand. Not many people spend more than, you know, once a year looking at insurance trying to understand the market. And certainly before I started working in insurance, I would have been one of those people asking that same question. Having now spent 10 years plus in that market, I got a better understanding. So as I say, there's a range of factors that will go in. And if you look at the premiums over the previous two years, the reasons that they were going up predominantly were because of claims inflation. So that's the fact that it costs a lot more to repair those vehicles, both in terms of what customers would have experienced themselves. So gas prices, electricity prices, lighting, salary inflation, all those different things impact the ability or the cost of repairing those vehicles when there is a claim. So that will have flowed through. And as I say, because electric vehicles are newer, they will tend to have newer technology. So newer cars have more of that technology are more expensive and therefore are more expensive to repair. Electric cars are relatively new at a mass market scale And therefore more of them will fall into that category. So we'll tend to be more expensive to repair. And probably the final piece I'd add is that in ice vehicles, you don't have a single point of cost failure at a claim level, like you do an electric vehicle. So if you look at an ice vehicle, if something goes wrong with the engine, then typically you can take that engine apart and repair it. So it's not a total sort of lost cost. Whereas in an electric vehicle, if the battery goes, then that's potentially the car written off because it's such a big chunk of the value of the vehicle. So I guess that's a quite a long winded way of saying, yes, some electric car drivers will be paying more premiums, but that's because they're newer, they cost more and we have less insight within insurance to really understand them. So there's going to be a lag between insurers understanding those vehicles and pricing them in a similar way, I guess, to ICE vehicles, but not every EV driver is going to pay more.

Gary:

If we look at something like ADAS, Automatic Driver Assistance Systems, think, in our previous discussion, you mentioned Blue Cruise that Ford have and obviously Tesla, although not in the UK, in the US, are looking at full self-driving. Would I be off the mark to say that as and when those technologies get implemented in a big way, a typical insurance company will be looking at reducing the premium as a result of that? Or is it a little bit too early to make that sort of statement?

Stephen:

So I think at this stage, it's too early to make the statement. And there's probably a couple of reasons why I would say that. the theory, yes. So if ADAS proves to be better than human driving, therefore reduces claims and accidents on the roads, then yeah, that would normally lead to a reduction in premiums. However, we already see, and I'm sure Gary, you've had anecdotal conversations as well about this, which is the technology that is linked to ADAS. So you've got things like lane assist, adaptive cruise control, et cetera, speed limit checkers, all these different things that are aiming to help you become a safer driver. They're delivered in slightly different ways in every different vehicle. So some people will find them really helpful, really intuitive, and it will make them better drivers. You know, I've had conversation with people say, no, it's really annoying. It keeps beeping at me. So I've turned it off. And therefore just because the car has ADAS and a range of potential services that will make you a better driver If you turn them off, then clearly they're not going to have that impact. then within the insurance industry, we're not going to see a reduction in claims and accidents. But we'd probably see in a kind of vicious circle is that the level of accident and claim maintains as it is. However, the cost of repairing those vehicles, as we've already touched upon is greater than it would have been before. And ironically, I'm having to pay to fix the technology that would have stopped you having the claim in the first place. If you hadn't turned it off. So I think the theory is yes, it will. However, we need to ensure that drivers are using it. Manufacturers need to make sure that it's delivered in an intuitive way where it's not, it doesn't become a distraction to the driver. It actually becomes an enhancement to the driver. And equally from insurance perspective, we would ideally need data coming into the industry from the manufacturers that would show, you know, these customers have got that turned on, you know They're using it for every journey or they're not using it counter-intuitively. And then potentially that gets built into insurance products in future to say, well, if you turn that back on, I will give you a discount. If you turn that off, your premium goes up, et cetera.

Gary:

Now LinkedIn with that is the whole area of telematics. So what are the typical sort of things that telematics capture and how useful is that to an insurance company?

Stephen:

So what a great question, Gary. And I've just, one of my last roles with the insurer that I worked with was running our telematics product. So I've become very passionate and focused about this kind of product theory over the last couple of years. And I think it gets a bad press. So as an industry where we've maybe gone wrong is we sell telematics as the proposition. And actually as a customer, should be you a proposition based on the technology, not the technology itself.

And what I mean by that is if I say to you, I'm going to put a box in your car and monitor your driving. Suddenly they will. don't want to be monitored. Yeah, exactly. It's quite scary, et cetera. However, if I said to you, I've got a product here that will help improve you as a driver, will reduce your chance of having an accident that could impact your family. Will improve my ability to retrieve your car if it's stolen and potentially I can reward you for that better driving either through improved pricing or some sort of rewards program. If we leave in particular, if I said by giving me access to your vehicle, I can give you a battery monitoring tool, which ensures that you can extend the lifetime value of that battery and therefore the residual value of your car. If I told you about those things and suddenly it's not a scary telematics, I'm being monitored product. It's a, okay, I can see that if I share my data, I an equitable return for sharing that information.

Now there are products in the market that do that already, but ultimately what we do as an insurer with the telematics data, we're looking at how do you drive and is that reflective of the risk we perceive? Because without that real time data, we are essentially saying, let's use you as an example, Gary. So people who, who look like Gary, who live in the same part of the world as Gary, who drive a similar car, our experience based on a hundred years of people driving means your risk looks like this. Now lots of people will say, I want a personalized quote. Why do you treat me like everybody else? Why do you put me into a homogenous group like that? Well, because we don't have real data that's happening every minute, every hour. Now, telematics is the step towards giving personalized insurance quotes. So if you're a good driver and you feel you're better than the comparator group that we would be using for you, this is your route to say to us, Hey, look, I'm a good driver. I believe I'm a good driver. I'm happy to share that information. And in return for that, you know, I want a better premium lower premium or all the other stuff that I kind of mentioned.

Gary:

And when it comes to telematics and the situation that you've just highlighted there, I think one of the key blocks from my point of view is not so much the big brother aspect and the we're watching you. think it's more the case of you've got access to this data. Do I also have access to this same data or is it just going from the car to you and I'm an impartial third party in this?

Stephen:

You will have full access to various aspects of that data. Yeah. So for example, in my old role, you had an app which gave you a driving score. So you could see whether your score was getting better or worse. And that was split by journey. So you could see every journey. And with every journey, we would ask you to go in and just double check and say, right, is that you in terms of, you driving or were you a passenger in someone else's car? Were you in a car or were you on a train? Were you on a bus?

So again, making sure that every one of those journeys is recorded correctly and is reflective of your driving. And the idea there is to be transparent and give you the opportunity to truly understand what that driving on that journey looks like. Because if we don't do that as an insurer, how are you going to understand, I guess, how we would rate that and how would you improve your score? Because again, ultimately with telematics, what we're trying to do is create safer, better drivers. In an ideal world, we want everyone to be using the character of that product, as in the rewards that come with it. So again, whether that's a reduced premium at the end of the year, whether that's rewards that are linked to that, and there's a variety of offerings in the market. There's a small percentage of people who will be at the other end of that, which is they are the people who will use telematics as a route to try and get a cheaper policy with no intention of recording the data, putting the device or using the app. And they're the higher risk customers. Again, it helps us identify and most insurers then will be looking to move those customers onto a different policy as quickly as they can.

Gary:

Is there a gamification aspect to Telematics? it a case of an insurance company will say, is the app, this is the score. If you can achieve this score consistently over X number of months, we will do this with your premium. And if you go below that by X percent, it will do that to the premium. And that sort of gives the user the opportunity to go, right, I know what the target is and I can work my way towards that.

Stephen:

Definitely is. again, there's a variety of ways people do that in the market today. So you've got some who will offer a discount on your annual premium. So they will say that in, you know, in 12 months, if you achieve a score, then that will reduce the premium next year. Now the difficulty with that Gary is that that is a undefined discount off an undefined premium in 12 months time. So that feels like a long, long time away. But what we do know is that the first three maybe four months of driving are pretty strong indicators of how you're going to drive for that full year. Now there are other people who are doing in life rewards. So to your point, we'll say, you've four journeys of 90 plus as a score. Therefore here's a free cup of coffee or here's a reward, an Amazon voucher or some other elements so that it becomes more about here and now. So every one of your journeys feels like a reason to drive in a better, safer way, because you're going to get a here and now reward rather than that sort of 12 months away benefit. There are, there's a company in America that gives you a reward by changing your premium on a monthly basis. So how you drive in March will directly impact your monthly premium in April. So that's a, you know, that's a real here and now every journey you make today. And again, that will all be fed back to you through the app and it will be telling you where you're making, I guess, poorer driving decisions and therefore you can take that information straight away and take that into your next journey. As I say, ultimately, all of those different propositions are wanting to help you become a better driver that reduces the risk for us as the insurer. And we can reflect that back in the prices, which is ultimately what we want to do.

Gary:

Now that seems to me to be something of a, I'll use the phrase innovative product when it comes to electric vehicles specifically. Talk to me about some of the other innovative products that you're aware of within the insurance market focused specifically on electric vehicles.

Stephen:

So this is a great question, Gary. And I would argue at the moment, there probably isn't enough innovation within insurance for electric vehicles. In my previous life, I was involved with building our ecosystem, which I'll explain a little bit more about in a sec, but I'll give you the reasons why we went down that route. Cause I think it's pertinent to the question you've asked, which is when we looked sort of three years ago at how do we differentiate our insurance product for EV drivers? The main takeaway I think was that an EV driver wants exactly the same as an ICE driver, which is if something happens to them, their vehicle, they want to be put back into the same position they were before. They're not necessarily thinking about the fuel type. They're just thinking, look, I've had an accident. My car's been stolen. The contract between me and my insurers that you put me back in the position I was before. So then if you take that mindset, then we just need to make sure all of our processes deliver that to the customer. And the one thing that's kind of stood out at that point was the key element that was missing was probably being able to guarantee to you as an EV driver that I can put you back in an EV if your car is off the road for repair or has been stolen. And the challenge we had with that was there just weren't enough EVs available via the higher market for me to be to guarantee that. And I knew at that stage it would be important because as someone who's made the switch to an EV, I wouldn't want to have a petrol or a diesel car if my car was off the road because I've made a conscious decision whether that's for environmental decisions, whether that's a cost one, as in I can charge my car overnight for less than a tenner while I'm sleeping, rather than going to a garage and paying 60, 70 pounds. But as I say, the challenge was there weren't enough vehicles available because again, it was post COVID. We obviously knew that there was a challenge with supply in the market. So then we looked beyond that and said, well, actually the other thing here is this isn't just a change of fuel type. So again, some people within insurance and other industries will say, well, all this change in is the fuel type. Everything else remains the same. Why are you making a big fuss about this? And again, my experience of becoming an electric vehicle driver taught me, no, everything is changing. So how people are going to buy the car, how they drive the car, how they refuel the car, how they have accidents, how they crash the car, how we recover the vehicle. All of those things are going to be different. So suddenly you've gone from, yeah, I'll my car up when I go to Tesco or Asda or whatever, because it's convenient. The petrol station is there too all right, my house is going to become the refueling station. Okay. Well, I've never done that before. How would I go about that? How would I choose the charger? And if you go to fully charge or as it is now everything electric, you know, which we did as as a first sort of protocol to understand what's the customer facing and seeing was countless home charger companies saying my charge is the best. It's very difficult to navigate with someone who knew nothing about it at the time. Similarly public charging, you know, you've got plethora of different people saying our charges the best, then you've got different charging speeds, et cetera. So we kind of came to the conclusion that actually the best way we could help our customers was to help them navigate that ecosystem. So we used our size as a business. used the fact that me and two colleagues are full-time roles to investigate electric vehicles and understand how that was going to change the world in terms of how you, the mobility world, how people kind of get around. then that allowed us to partner with a company that could provide an off the shelf ecosystem. So it gave us the opportunity to give our customers discounts for public charging, at home charging, car parks, et cetera, et cetera. So the idea there was to go beyond the insurance product and see this as a challenge and offer our millions of customers the opportunity to navigate that in an easier way. Now in terms of other innovations that are in the market, know, other insurers have added elements to their products. So some will give you a free charge away from home.

If your car breaks down or if you run out of charge as part of your policy. So that's a nod towards innovation for EVs. And then there's probably the one I would cite as being innovative is a company called the green insurer. So their policy is based purely on that kind of green ecosystem again. So their policy will include a tracker. again, that's a telematics based product with an app. So you can track your vehicle. It will then talk to you about your carbon emissions. There's an element of offsetting for that within included within the policy. And then they also have rewards that is based on your driving and the greenness, if that's a word, greenness of your driving. they're probably, they're a new entrant, probably about a year ago launched. So they're very much focused on electric vehicles. So I would say in summary, there is some nods to EV being different and some innovation, but there probably needs to be more and I would say probably more around the understanding of the pricing and underwriting and the differences between, you know, acceleration, for example, the automatic assumption is that because EVs are faster at accelerating, that will automatically lead to more claims. But is that true? Do we know that as an industry as yet? Do we have enough evidence to say that's true? Likewise, do we understand where the range and charge anxiety mean people will drive more conservatively and therefore might lead to a reduction in claims? We don't necessarily know the answers to those yet. And again, it goes back to that kind of discussion we had earlier, Gary, which is insurance typically base the future pricing on the previous historical pricing. don't have anywhere near as much pricing for EVs because we're still early into that adoption curve. And that will come with time.

Gary:

Talk to me about risk management with EVs. Are they inherently riskier as a vehicle to ensure? And I think I'm kind of pushing towards the whole EV fires aspect. What's the insurance market's opinion on the risk of a fire in an electric car versus an internal combustion engine car, for example?

Stephen:

So in terms of risk management, as we kind of touched upon, we're very much in the early stages of trying to understand that. There's very little claimed experience yet by comparison. I think specifically on the fire element, we're not seeing any kind of plethora of claims related to battery fires. If anything, guess our data is reflecting what has been shared more recently in the Y video, which is there seems to be less likelihood that a car will catch fire from a frequency perspective from a battery electric vehicle. mean, it's interesting that we've driven around on tents of highly flammable liquid for a hundred years and no one's really said anything about it. And yet where we'd have a technology that doesn't have the same inherent risk of frequency of catching fire, a pretty severe accident or incident for that battery to catch fire. And then yes, we all accept that if there's a thermal runaway, then that's going to be a very difficult position for fire service and related services to deal with.

But the frequency of that happening seems to be much, much lower. And certainly so far in our data, we're not seeing ratifiers. It's not something that we are particularly concerned about at this stage from the data that we have.

Gary:

Interesting. I was listening to somebody discussing a conversation that they'd had with the police force and the police force have now started using electric vehicles as their high-speed pursuit vehicle of choice. And of course, one of the maneuvers that they can do in a high-speed pursuit is if there's a risk of danger to life, they can actually ram the offending vehicle with their patrol car. And as the police officer in question said, I'm not going to start ramming a Tesla into another vehicle if I think there's a chance of a fire on that. So police force obviously have a view on that and they seem to be quite happy with it. So it's always worth bearing in mind, isn't it?

Stephen:

Yeah, yeah, but definitely,

Gary:

I just want to come back on something that you've talked about a few seconds ago. We have the situation as I understand it, where there's not a lot of history of some of the things that can happen with electric vehicles. We've got a hundred years of internal combustion engine. But the flip side to that is now we have vehicles like the Tesla Model 3 and the Tesla Model Y, which are the biggest selling electric vehicles on the face of the planet. And there are millions of them out there there are hundreds and thousands of them in the UK. As a result, they're probably involved proportionately in more accidents than some of the other electric vehicles that are out there. Does that mean that the knowledge base that the insurance industry has related to that particular brand will be higher than for some of the ones that are maybe not as widespread in the country?

Stephen:

So, so your logic plays out Gary, hasn't it? If there are more of them, we'll have a better insight into how they perform and, and, and risk what claims we see repairs, et cetera. think part of the difficulty though is may have never been said this before, Gary, which is in old world, if I had a hundred Ford Fiesta's or VW Golf, every time they came to renewal, or I did a quote for insurance, I knew that car was going to be the same. Nothing changed inherently about that vehicle.

With the advent of not just electric cars, new cars, but with connected vehicles and software updates, what we now have is a situation where that 100 Model 3s or Ys or Ionic 5s or whatever it might be. I might insure them on the 1st of January as I did in the same scenario previously, but within weeks, that is 100 individual vehicles because it depends on what software update you're on. It depends what subscriptions you have. It depends which of the safety technology you have turned on, turned off, your regen, do you have it turned on? If you do have it turned on, to what degree do you have turned on? There are so many new elements with those vehicles today. And that's again, few agnostic, but will it will impact EVs because inherently they are newer vehicles that as an industry, we're having to start to think about the implications of that. So how do I know that this model three has got all of the safety kit turned on? Whereas that one's got it all turned off. How do I start to differentiate between hen a software update lands, what's included in that, how does that change the nature of the vehicle, that acceleration, whether that's breaking, whether it's people turning ADAS safety technology off or on, et cetera. So I think the very nature of how we are going to manage a risk, see risk, and then price it back to the customer is going to evolve pretty dramatically over the next 10, 15 years because the technology is going to drive that.

Historically, we were ensuring the customer who was driving the car, again, as we move forward with technology, increasingly that's becoming that the car is playing more of a role in the driving of the vehicle. Certainly, as we move towards assisted driving, you've already got the Mach-E, which is doing some of the motorway driving, you can slide up a blue cruise. So we're starting to see elements of that. So again, how we view risk, how we monitor the risk will change and it's already starting to change from the thought process.

Gary:

I'm going back to something that we talked about earlier in terms of how much the premium has increased. Something that I don't know whether I read or I heard it relating to premiums is to do with the fact that because a lot of electric vehicles are sort of fairly new, the knowledge within the industry about how to deal with a certain issue isn't there. So, you know, if you're taking a Ford Fiesta and you mentioned the thing earlier, you you're prang the bumper, it's a well-known replacement, it's very easy to do. whip this one off, you put the other one on and there's a certain amount of cost. But because that level of knowledge isn't there for some of the electric vehicles and potentially we're talking some of the Chinese ones that have come in, rather than knowing what to do to replace a bumper, you may end up having to do a lot more work to actually get that repair done. And as a result, potentially the cost associated with that could rise to the point where you end up writing off an electric vehicle, whereas a similar repair on a non-electric vehicle wouldn't have written it off. that, am I talking nonsense or is that something that actually plays into it?

Stephen:

So I think there's a lot of elements that play into that scenario there, Gary. So I some of the challenges we've seen, again, it's not specific to electric vehicles, which will be all kind of vehicles in the last couple of years, is availability of parts. So for a vehicle, clearly there's a number of costs we take into account. If it's a significant repair, then we will look at, yeah, what's the cost of that repair compared to the value of the vehicle. And there will be a point where you have to say, well, look, there's no point in repairing that vehicle because the amount of cost it will take to repair the vehicle.

It is outweighs the value in the end. But other things that we will have to factor in is things like, know, that customer being in a higher car for a specific period of time. You know, hopefully we get cars back to customers within days, weeks, not months and months. There have been scenarios with vehicles where, yeah, you might be told by the manufacturer that parts not going to be available for three, six months. And therefore you're like, well, by the time you add up the cost of higher car every day, and then you add on the cost of repair.

You might then get to a point where you say it's not equitable to repair that vehicle and you might have to write it off. Again, that's not fuel type specific. That's just a scenario of any vehicle. think with EV specifically, some of the relatively unique challenges to EV will be, as we touched on, the number of new manufacturers that are coming to market, especially ones that not been in the UK before. Do they have repair methods available? Do they have robust supply chains that we mean we can mirror key to key times, or the time we take the key off the customer to when we get the car back to them, that allows us to manage our processes in the way that we're used to with more legacy automakers where we've got really robust parts supply and repair methods. So there definitely would have been the last three, four years, incidents of manufacturers coming to market and those things not being in place. And there will have been instances where probably insurers may have had to write off a vehicle because they cannot access the parts as per my kind of example, if we're saying, it's going to be three months or six months together. Well, that times the repair times higher cost. Actually, they, that's not equitable to repair that vehicle. You know, ultimately no insurer really wants to write off a vehicle. want to get that customer back in their car. In certain instances, that's not going to be possible. I think we started to see certainly now with new entrants. I was at an event with hosted by Thatcham where they had the cherry manufacturer there displaying a motor and JQ brands, we got to go out in the vehicles, we got to speak to the manufacturer themselves and Thatcher. So it's really encouraging for me from an insurance perspective to see new manufacturers engaging with Thatcher research, making sure they've got things like repair methods that they're talking to about the robustness of their supply chain. That means we can take a bit more confidence that as these new manufacturers come into play, that there's less and less risk of that scenario of I can't get hold of that part, it's going to take X amount of time. I'm to have to write that vehicle off because ultimately, no insurer wants to write a vehicle off because they can't get hold of a wind barrier or a side panel. We shouldn't be in that position. So it does mean that we're having to, as an industry, guess, connect and work with manufacturers probably in a way we've not had to before, which I think will be really healthy in the round. We touched on data, more data transactions between manufacturers and insurers. I think will be a good thing for them and for customers and ultimately that's what we want to do. We want to help customers and get accurate pricing out into the market.

Gary:

Anything else you want to say about the insurance market and EVs before we close?

Stephen:

Yeah, I think from an insurance perspective, we don't want to be a blocker to the EV transition. know, insurers aren't sat here wanting to charge high premiums for any vehicle other than that reflects the cost. And again, we've seen the recent publication of details for either end of year results or from the ABI and other bodies that say, you know, the insurance market is not making money from motor insurance in the last two years.

So it's not that premiums are higher because insurers want them to be. It's just a reflection of where we are in the situation. And certainly we don't want to be seen as a blocker to the EV transition. We're working very hard to make sure that's not the case. I think we're really open to working with manufacturers as we talked about and redefining that relationship to make sure we can be supportive and we can be a way to help them sell their vehicles and get customers into those vehicles because we want to pay our part and be in the solution to air pollution and the other elements that will be hopefully solved by that transition to EVs. But also from a customer perspective, speak to us, us how you find it. Because we're a very good telling insurance companies how they feel about things that don't work. But where are the ideas around what would make a difference to you as an EV customer? So, you know, what would make you choose one insurer over another if you're an EV driver? You know, is it elements of the insurance cover? Is it something in addition to the insurance cover? Is it peace of mind around some of the elements we talked about earlier, Gary, around trained engineers, know, liability cover, et cetera. What would you want from your insurers and EV customer that would mean you choose my brands over somebody else's? I'd welcome that feedback.

Gary:

And how would anybody get that feedback to you?

Stephen:

Via my linked In profile

Gary:

Thank you very much. Steve Williams, I appreciate your time. It's been fascinating conversation. Thank you.

So what have we learned here? Well, firstly, technology is a key driver to insurance premiums in both directions. More technology is making cars more expensive to insure, both electric vehicles and internal combustion engine. But more technology, if used correctly, can lower premiums through the use of telematics, for example, to track and monitor performance. Secondly, insurance premiums for EVs are being guided very much by historical precedents for EVs. The problem being, of course, that there aren't a huge number of historical precedents.

for many of the electric vehicles out there, especially with the rapid changes to onboard tech that can affect the risk associated with the driver. If the car that's insured at the start of the year is radically different to the car that's insured at the end of the year due to software updates, et cetera, this should affect premiums. If you've got safety aids on board and you're not using them or ignoring them, then that's worse than not having the aids there in the first place. I was particularly interested in the telematics discussion, particularly the aspect of how that will be presented

as a benefit to the driver. Now, I don't know about you, but personally, driving well and being rewarded by a cup of coffee or an Amazon voucher is far inferior to doing a year of good driving and getting a substantial reduction in next year's premium. But I also acknowledge what Steve said about it being something of an unknown deduction on an unknown future premium. Maybe it should work as a premium refund at the end of the year. What do you think? Let me know.

I will also remind you of what we learned from our last episode about EV insurance, or any insurance really. When your renewal notice comes in, call your insurer and ask for a lower premium. If they want to keep your business, they'll always drop the premium. If they don't want your business, it's a great opportunity to get out and try someone else.

It's time for a cool EV or renewable thing to share with your listeners. In a creative fusion of sustainability and innovative design, a Dutch design studio has transformed a decommissioned wind turbine nacelle from Vattenfall into a charming tiny house. This unique project not only showcases the potential for repurposing industrial materials, but it also highlights the growing trend eco-friendly living solutions. It's obviously small and obviously not suitable for everyone. But the pictures look amazing and there's loads of potential there. It has a full bathroom, kitchen, living area that doubles as a bedroom, a heat pump, solar panels etc. Check out the link in the show notes for more.

I hope you enjoyed listening to today's show. It was put together this week with the help of Stephen Williams. Thanks to him for his time. If you have any thoughts, comments, criticisms or other general messages to pass on to me, I can be reached at info at evmusings.com. On the socials I'm on bluesky at evmusings.bsky.social. I'm also on Instagram at EvMusings where I post short videos and podcast extracts regularly. Why not follow me there? Thanks to everyone who supports me through Patreon on a monthly basis and through coffee.com on an ad hoc one. If you enjoy this episode, why not buy me a coffee? Go to coffee.com slash EvMusings and you can do just that. And it takes Apple pay too.

Regular listeners will know about my two e-books, so you've gone electric and so you've gone renewable. They're 99p each or equivalent and you can get them on Amazon. Check out the links in the show notes for more information, as well as the link to my regular EV Museums newsletter and associated articles. Now I know you're probably driving or walking or jogging, but if you can remember and you enjoyed this episode, please drop a review in iTunes. It really helps me out. If you've reached this part of the podcast and are still listening, thank you.

Why not let me know you've got to this point by tweeting me at MusingsEV with the words, an EV premium for a premium EV. Hashtag if you know you know nothing else. Thanks as always to my co-founder Simone. You know, as he ages, he's starting to mellow a little with respect to the sorts of personal transport things he rides. He still loves the electric unicycle and his e-scape. But could you get him on an e-bike?

Stephen:

So I think at this stage it's too early to make the statement, and there's probably a couple of reasons why I would say that

Gary:

Thanks for listening. Bye!