Gecko Risk – Electric Vehicle Data Insights

China’s president, Xi Jingping, has criticised the “involution” associated with overcapacity and cost-cutting across several sectors, most notably New Energy Vehicles. Last month several manufacturers were summoned by the Chinese regulators to meetings to address overcapacity. Makes such as GWM and BYD have cut retail costs by up to 20% in China, with BYD’s Seagull model being offered for as little as 55,800 Yuan (under £6,000).

This is also an issue being realised in the UK. The Seagull is yet to launch on British shores, but the retail price is expected to retail at around £18,000. Elsewhere, The Leap Motor TO3 (in partnership with Stellantis) and the Wuhan manufactured, Dacia Spring (Renault / Dongfeng) are even cheaper with both retailing at closer to £15,000. These price points are going to be incredibly hard for legacy manufacturers to compete with, without some kind of Chinese collaboration.

Vehicles on the Road Data

There were over 30,000 new BEV registrations in July, with the top five OEMs all being legacy manufacturers. After a strong June, Tesla recorded under 1,000 new registrations in July dropping out of the top 10 altogether. Hyundai, MG and BYD were in 6^th, 7^th and 8^th places respectively.

In terms of new registrations over the last 12 months, Vauxhall dropped down from 8^th to 12^th, with Skoda, MG and Kia all working their way up the table. Sticking to the theme of Chinese manufacturers, BYD are now up to 11^th for highest new registrations over the last 12 months, displaying that their aggressive price points are eating into other manufacturers market share.

Crash Repair Costs Data

Given the growth in this sector, BEV crash volumes are unsurprisingly up, with Gecko recording over 12,200 accidents for July alone across the UK, 20% up from the previous month. This is the highest number of monthly BEV accidents Gecko have recorded to date, indicating that this is going to need to be a growing area of focus for the insurance and repair sectors.

Gecko have now recorded more than 1,500 BYD crashes, with average repair costs being relatively competitive compared to similar makes and models.

For the month of July BEV crash repair costs are the lowest they have been for more than three years, having steadily been trending downwards since March-25. BMW, in particular, have seen their average repair costs significantly edge down since the beginning of the year, and are now closing in on 10% less than Audi and Mercedes. Tesla repair costs remain the least volatile of the top five manufacturers, showing that this is a manufacturer that repairers are becoming increasingly better acquainted with.

Average Repair Costs by Manufacturer – Last 3 Months

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

EV Repair Costs – Breakdown

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