While you might like to think you can fix your car after a crash with nothing more than a hammer and wrench, that’s not really the case. Instead, the vast majority of us will take our beloved vehicles to repair shops whenever we’re caught in a tangle. But while it turns out that most electric car drivers will pay only a little more than their gas-powered counterparts following a crash, anyone that smashes up a Tesla could be caught with a much bigger bill.
A new report from Automotive News has looked into the post-crash repair costs of different vehicles and found that, on the whole, EV buyers don’t pay a whole lot more than anyone who crashes a gas-powered car. According to the report, the repair bill on an EV will be, on average, just $269 more than gasoline cars, despite EVs costing around $10,000 more than their gas-powered counterparts.
However, the disparity in repair costs is much greater for anyone driving one of Elon Musk’s creations. For Tesla, Automotive News reports that the repair bill can be much greater, a whole $1,350 more than similar repairs made to a gas car. The site explains:
Collision repair costs for Tesla models remain significantly higher than for combustion vehicles, but electric vehicles without the Tesla logo are near parity with gasoline cars, according to third-quarter data from Mitchell.
Average repair costs were $5,552 for Teslas, $4,474 for non-Tesla EVs and $4,205 for combustion vehicles in the quarter, the data shows. That means Teslas were higher than gasoline cars by $1,347 while non-Tesla EVs were just $269 higher than combustion engine vehicles, said Mitchell, which provides software for managing collision repairs.
According to the site, the relatively high repair costs for a Tesla are all down to the tech that the company packs into its EVs. Safety tech like cameras are stuck all around the car, and replacing them following a crash piles on the dollars. This, coupled with the complexity of such cars is “pushing repair bills and insurance premiums higher,” Automotive News explains.
Because of this, it should come as no surprise that insurance costs on Teslas are also sky-high. According to analysis from MarketWatch, coverage for a 2022 Tesla averaged 74 percent more than the U.S. average, despite cars like the Model 3 and Y now costing less than the average car in America.