Gecko Risk – Electric Vehicle Data Insights

It was announced in last month’s budget that from April 2028 EV drivers will have to pay a tax of 3p per mile and drivers of plug-in-hybrids will need to pay 1.5p per mile. Thereafter the rates will increase each year to reflect inflation. Chancellor Rachel Reeves has said “Everybody uses the roads and so it is right that we ask people with electric cars to pay in”. It can be argued that the Government have taken away a further incentive, when they need more drivers to switch to EVs than is currently occurring and forecasted, should they wish to meet their own ZEV mandate. Rachel Reeves has however stressed that this new tax is about “half the fuel duty rate paid by drivers of petrol cars”.

Vehicles on the Road Data

It will be interesting to see if this tax coupled with the benefit in kind tax, that is being applied to Employee Car Ownership Schemes, hampers EV new registrations and the 2nd had market in the coming months. The average miles driven per year in the UK is 7,000 miles which for a BEV driver would equate to £210 per year but would not doubt have greater implications for those who use their cars for work purposes. In any case the month of November saw 42,764 new BEV registrations, over 2,000 more than the same month last year. There were also a further 39,281 new hybrid registrations. For the 3rd month in a row BEVs and hybrids combined have outsold that of petrol and diesel new registrations.

After a relatively poor October, Tesla are back up to the top of the pile for BEV new registrations with 3,722 recorded. Ford find themselves in 2^nd place with Audi dropping out of the top 5 altogether. BYD achieve their highest place to date of 3^rd, with 3,309 new registrations. Notably, European manufacturers did not feature in the top 3, but Volkswagen and Renault were 4^th and 5^th respectively.

In terms of the new registrations over the last 12 months, there has been little change in the top 6, but Skoda have moved up one place to 7^th, Kia have moved up two to 8^th, Mercedes drop down to 9^th, Hyundai move up to 10^th and Peugeot drop out.

Crash Repair Costs Data

Average repair costs for BEVs were a record low for the month of November, standing at £3,195 and down 11% from the same time last year. The caveat always being that we will realise further lengthier more expensive repairs further down the line that have occurred in November but are yet to be completed. Nevertheless, looking back over the last six-month repair costs are clearly trending down.

Audi repair costs edged up by 2.8% last month, to be the most expensive of the top 5 tracked manufacturers. Mercedes moved down, as did Volkswagen, which has continued to be the least volatile of the five since June-25. BMW moved up by 5% and tellingly Tesla were cheaper to repair than all three of Mercedes, BMW and Audi for the first time. This seems to have been driven by their labour costs edging down.

As with all makes not being born equally, nor are all models. For example, there is over a £1,000 difference in average repair costs when looking at two different Tesla models over the last 12 months.

Despite Tesla repair costs trending down over recent months, they still average out as being more expensive to repair than the other four manufacturers over the last 12 months. However, we expect this to change to reflect their ever-improving monthly repair costs. Volkswagen remain over 10% cheaper to repair than their nearest rival, BMW.

Average Accident Repair Costs by Manufacturer – Last 3 Months

n.b. Repair Costs are inclusive of discounts, but excluding tax.

Other News

In other news, Waymo have announced that they will be bringing their fully autonomous fleet of taxis to London as early as next year. Waymo’s self-driving ride-hailing service is already available to people in the US and Tokyo, with their California service having already driven over 100,000 miles on public roads.

Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said: “We’re thrilled to bring the reliability, safety and magic of Waymo to Londoners.

“Waymo is making roads safer and transportation more accessible where we operate. We’ve demonstrated how to responsibly scale fully autonomous ride-hailing, and we can’t wait to expand the benefits of our technology to the United Kingdom.”

The vehicles themselves will be delivered via Waymo’s partnership with Jaguar Land Rover, in the shape of the BEV I-PACE. Tellingly, according to Gecko data, the I-PACE has an average repair cost of £4,580 over the last 12 months. Hopefully, a far lower accident frequency for these all-autonomous vehicles can help to offset the potential severity implications….