For most electric cars it is impossible to repair even the smallest battery damage, which means that sometimes the cars are written off even with very little mileage, writes Reuters.
This means that the amount to be paid when insuring the next car increases substantially, and the environmental benefit that should arise from switching to an electric car is reduced. There are already countries with scrapyards stockpiling electric car batteries, a previously unconsidered gap in what was supposed to be a «circular economy». Matthew Avery, a researcher at Thatcham Research, an automotive industry risk assessment company, said: «We’re buying electric cars for sustainability reasons.
But an EV isn’t very sustainable if you’ve got to throw the battery away after a minor collision.»
Batteries usually cost several hundred thousand dollars and account for up to half of the cost of an electric car, which makes battery replacement uneconomical. Some automakers, such as Ford and General Motors, have reported improvements and easier-to-repair batteries, while Tesla has gone in the opposite direction, with experts saying the battery in the Texas-based company’s Model Y can’t be repaired at all.
Unless Tesla and other manufacturers figure out how to make batteries easier to repair or replace, and allow third parties to access battery information, already high insurance premiums will only get higher. Christoph Lauterwasse, head of the Allianz Technology Center, said it was important to sort out the battery issue. He said that because of the batteries, the production of electric cars produces much more CO2 than the production of models that use fossil fuels. Therefore,
an electric car must be driven thousands of kilometers before it evens out the emissions it produces.
Although many car manufacturers state that the batteries are repairable, the technical details of the batteries are often not disclosed. European Union insurance companies, loan providers and garages are already fighting with manufacturers for access to car data.
The battery problems of electric cars also highlight the shortcomings of the so-called circular economy. The manager of the British salvage company Synetiq, Michael Hill, stated that the number of electric cars entering the lot has increased very rapidly in the last 12 months, up to 20 electric cars in one day. There is currently no electric car battery recycling plant in Great Britain, therefore batteries removed from scrapped cars must be stored in special containers. According to Hill,
about 95% of the battery cells are intact and should be repaired.
The British government is currently paying for a study into electric car insurance risk points. On the other hand, the regulations in force in the European Union do not directly touch the repair of batteries, however, the European Commission has been asked to create standards for «maintenance, repair and reuse» of batteries. Insurers have offered a solution to the problem – to make batteries from several small modules, which would be easier to replace, and to provide third parties with access to battery data so that it is possible to carry out diagnostics.