What caused the premium increase in new energy vehicles?

Author: Li Dong'er

With the popularity of new energy vehicles, people's acceptance of new energy vehicles is getting higher and higher, but new energy vehicles and traditional fuel vehicles after all, there are many differences, want to make new energy vehicles further popular, there are many places that need to be improved, insurance is one of them.

On December 14, 2021, the China Insurance Industry Association issued the "Exclusive Clauses for Commercial Insurance of New Energy Vehicles of the China Insurance Industry Association (Trial)". On December 27, the Shanghai Insurance Exchange officially launched the new energy vehicle insurance trading platform, and the first batch of new energy vehicle exclusive insurance products of 12 property insurance companies listed on PICC Property & Casualty, Ping An Property & Casualty, and CPIC Property & Casualty insurance provided support for the landing of new energy vehicle exclusive insurance products.

Although the launch of new energy vehicle exclusive insurance has further clarified the insurance responsibility, many past mutually exclusive situations have clarified whether to settle claims, which is a good thing, but many new energy vehicle owners have found that the premium has also risen, some netizens said that up to 80%, it is better to change the fuel car.

What's going on here?

Some new energy insurance policies rose by 20%.

Before the emergence of new energy vehicle insurance, car owners who purchased new energy vehicles often could only buy the same car insurance as fuel vehicles, which led to many problems that would not occur on fuel vehicles, such as battery problems, which insurance companies often refused to settle claims.

However, after the advent of new energy vehicle captive insurance, these problems are being solved.

For example, the scope of protection and exemption of new energy vehicle insurance is expanded, such as batteries and energy storage systems, motors and drive systems, factory equipment, spontaneous combustion, etc. are included in the coverage, and the main insurance does not include battery attenuation, losses caused by external grid failures, etc., and three new special additional insurance for new energy vehicles has been added. From the perspective of protecting rights and interests, new energy captive insurance is obviously more conducive to car owners to protect their interests.

However, it is just that this still needs to be improved, or to enjoy more convenient services, it needs to add more costs.

Recently, many car owners have found that if you buy new energy vehicle exclusive insurance, the premium will also increase a lot, of which, the most widely circulated on the Internet is a Tesla owner posted in a certain insurance company system calculation of the quotation, according to the quotation, the same Model Y in December 23 when the purchase of the premium is still 8278.62 yuan / year, but to December 27, 2021, its premium rose to 13952.52 yuan / year, an increase of up to 80%.

From the quotation alone, the main reason for the nearly doubling of the owner's premium is the increase in motor vehicle loss insurance, which rose from 5797.92 yuan / year to 12736.42 yuan / year, resulting in a significant increase in the overall premium.

Perhaps there may be some other factors in the growth of the owner's premium, but from the statements of netizens on social platforms and the reports of major media, new energy vehicles do have a general increase in premiums.

According to the International Finance News, the current increase is more in some models of Tesla, BYD, Roewe and other brands, and the premium increase of models of brands such as Weilai Automobile and Xiaopeng Automobile is relatively small.

However, the premium is determined according to the actual situation of each person and each car, so while most car owners say that the premium has risen, a small number of car owners have said that there is no obvious change or even a slight decline.

At the same time, commercial insurance companies are not charities and need to make money through insurance products, so the expansion of the scope of claims Premiums will naturally rise, but the fundamental reason for the high increase in new energy vehicle insurance is that the industrial chain of new energy vehicle insurance is not perfect, and the cost of its claims is high, and even the new energy vehicle market itself is waiting for further development.

The real problem: the cost of compensation is too high or the main reason

"There is no love for no reason and no hate for no reason."

The high insurance of new energy vehicles is also related to the high cost of compensation.

According to Shenwan Hongyuan Research Report, the current loss rate of new energy vehicles is generally above 85%, the industry is facing greater pressure on underwriting losses, small and medium-sized insurance companies due to poor pricing ability, weak customer screening ability, new energy vehicle insurance comprehensive cost rate of more than 110%, head enterprises rely on the advantages in pricing, customer reserves, manufacturer cooperation and other aspects, basically maintain breakeven.

Although it is inevitable that insurance companies will have individual insurance policies or products that lose capital, products such as new energy vehicle insurance that only lose money and do not earn money will certainly be difficult to exist for a long time. Therefore, with the popularity of new energy vehicles, even before the landing of new energy vehicle insurance, many analysts or practitioners believe that it is difficult to increase prices, but it is difficult to stop the determination of car insurance companies to increase prices for a long time.

So, why is the loss rate of new energy vehicles so high?

Compared with traditional fuel vehicles, the biggest difference between new energy vehicles is the source of power. The current new energy vehicles mainly refer to electric vehicles, the three-electric system accounts for about 60% of the cost of the vehicle, which is very different from the fuel vehicle, especially the key components such as batteries, because it is not the parts of traditional fuel vehicles, which leads to the need to repair once an accident occurs, basically to find a 4S shop.

The maintenance cost of the three-electric system is not low, and the 4S shop occupies a dominant position in maintenance, especially when it comes to the maintenance of battery damage, the maintenance price is often higher, coupled with the current battery technology is highly blocked by the manufacturer, the difficulty of maintenance increases, resulting in a further increase in maintenance costs.

According to Shenwan Hongyuan Research Report, the depreciation rate of new energy vehicles is also higher than that of traditional fuel vehicles, compared with the depreciation rate of 0.6% per month for fuel vehicles, the depreciation rate of plug-in hybrid and fuel cell vehicles is 0.63% per month, and the depreciation rate of pure electric vehicles is reduced with the growth of prices, but the lowest also has a depreciation rate of 0.68% per month, and the depreciation rate of new energy vehicles below 100,000 is 0.82% per month.

The main reason why the depreciation rate of electric vehicles will be significantly higher than that of traditional fuel vehicles is still in the battery, the battery damage of new energy vehicles is irreversible, and it can only be replaced to a certain extent, and the lower the price of pure electric vehicle batteries, the higher the proportion of pure electric vehicle batteries, so the higher the depreciation, the lower the retention rate.

Unfortunately, many of the common accidents of the current new energy vehicles are related to batteries, such as common bottom collision accidents often hurt the battery, and compared with the traditional fuel vehicle, the maintenance price is obviously higher, and the compensation price is much higher than that of the fuel vehicle.

In addition, some special circumstances or individual models also lead to excessive compensation costs. Such as Tesla with a higher premium increase, because it uses an all-aluminum integrated body, it is not easy to repair the sheet metal after the collision, once an accident occurs, it must be replaced as one, compared to other cars, the same accident Tesla needs to pay more, coupled with Tesla's relatively high claim rate, so after the launch of new energy vehicle insurance, Tesla's premium has also risen more.

Therefore, according to Sina Technology, some netizens said that tesla's claim rate and claim amount are too high, reaching 1:1.4, which is equivalent to charging a dollar premium to lose 1.4 yuan, so tesla's entire series of models have increased in premiums.

The rise in premiums does affect the enthusiasm of consumers to buy new energy vehicles, and even some car owners joke that the fuel money saved is not enough to pay insurance premiums.

Essential reasons: New energy vehicles are not perfect

On December 20, 2021, Shen Hui, the founder of WM Motor, said on Weibo, "Every time I hear the owner complain to me about the difficulty of installing the charging pile, the mood is very heavy. This year, WM delivered more than 40,000 vehicles, but nearly 20,000 charging piles distributed with the car could not be delivered. ”

Shen Hui lamented that although the sales of new energy vehicles in China are increasing, they cannot even meet the current electric vehicles in many supporting facilities.

According to CCTV Finance, from January to October 2021, the national sales of new energy vehicles exceeded 2.5 million, an increase of 1.8 times year-on-year, and the cumulative number of new energy vehicles in the country has exceeded 7 million. At the same time of green travel, charging queues and difficulties in installing charging piles also occur frequently. Because of the insufficient capacity of charging facilities, some communities have stopped installing charging piles.

Statistics show that of beijing's 12,000 residential areas, 2,700 are old residential areas, and the average household parking space is less than 0.5, that is to say, nearly 40% of private electric vehicle parking spaces do not have the capacitive conditions to install charging piles.

In addition, unlike traditional fuel vehicles, the coverage of the current public charging pile is far less than that of the gas station, and the charging time of new energy vehicles is much higher than the refueling time, and under the current supply conditions of charging piles, it is difficult to meet the charging needs of car owners, coupled with factors such as weather, buying a new energy vehicle is just charging and breaking the heart. Although many new energy vehicle companies will send charging piles to car owners, even if they are sent for free, they cannot be used because they cannot be installed.

In the case of the rise in the ownership of new energy vehicles and the increasing contradiction of charging, the power exchange mode has been mentioned again. It is difficult to know which is better or worse than charging and replacing, after all, many technologies related to new energy vehicle batteries are not mature enough, the policy is not perfect, and it will coexist in a short period of time.

However, compared with the charging efficiency of the current charging pile, it is obviously more convenient to change the power without considering the coverage area. Therefore, many car companies have also tried to change the power.

However, although the substation has the advantage of high charging efficiency, the investment cost of the substation is much larger than that of the public charging pile, so in the past, in the case of relying on the car company to build the substation, the construction progress of the charging station is very slow, and it also faces the same coverage problem as the public charging pile.

At the same time, batteries are different from fuel, and the standardization of new energy vehicle batteries is difficult to guarantee, so even if the coverage of the replacement power station is guaranteed, it may not be able to meet the power replacement needs of new energy vehicle owners.

Therefore, the rise in the premium of new energy vehicles is only a manifestation of the imperfect relevant supporting facilities in the current new energy automobile industry, and if you want to promote new energy vehicles, you also need to comprehensively improve the supporting facilities.

(This article is for reference only and does not constitute investment advice, and you do so at your own risk)