Insurance costs for your leaf

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hackdroot

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 15, 2017
Messages
93
Location
East Bay Area, CA
So I was recently reviewing my insurance renewal policy and my 2013 SL has the highest premium of all my vehicles. The 6 month premium through Progressive is $1651 (or $275 a month). That's with comprehensive and collision and a $2500 deductible. That constitutes half of my policy costs with four other vehicles and 3 drivers.

Just wondering what others were paying for coverage.
 
Your car is worth a couple thousand dollars. WHY do you carry comp and collision on it -- with a $2,500 deductible no less ?
As for why your premiums are high, the answer is usually a mixture of your personal claim history, driving record, your demographic risk profile, and the insurance company experience in your locale.

I carry a $1M/300k (Personal/Property) liability policy on my car for ~ $15 a month.
 
SageBrush said:
Your car is worth a couple thousand dollars. WHY do you carry comp and collision on it -- with a $2,500 deductible no less ?
As for why your premiums are high, the answer is usually a mixture of your personal claim history, driving record, your demographic risk profile, and the insurance company experience in your locale.

I carry a $1M liability policy on my car for ~ $15 a month.

I have a fully loaded SL in immaculate condition, 45k and 12 bars. I would hope it's worth more than a couple thousand.

My car is financed. I have to carry C&C and $2500 is as high as I can go on my deductible.

I just spent the last few hours getting quotes from other companies, some more, some less. Switching to Geico which dropped my premiums by about 1200 a year.
 
You might want to consider a home equity or other loan to pay off the car, so you can drop the extras you are carrying to make the financing company happy. IIRC, I'm paying about $700 every six months for my Leaf. I'm Old, though, and have a clean license.
 
The smart move if you can do it would be pay off the loan and then drop the C&C.

Here are retail prices for 2013 MY LEAFs from a Sacramento area dealer.
https://carportal.co/buy/page/2/

Note that the higher trim cars do not command higher prices, and battery health is not part of the valuation. As owners we feel very differently but that is the market value upon which your insurance company will base its liability towards you in the event of a C&C claim.
 
Some insurance companies like the Leaf, others hate it. For example, AAA wanted FOUR times what my then-insurer Allstate was charging me. I actually had to read the email multiple times as I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Rate quotes in subsequent years was giving me the same result, so it wasn't a fluke. I know it wasn't me, as quotes from AAA pre-Leaf were not much more than Allstate.

All I can say is...shop, shop, shop around.
 
That seems ridiculous. My 2018 SV with Tech is only costing me $940 a year. That is only $215 more than my 2004 Honda Odyssey that I just sold.
 
I pay around $80 per month for full coverage with a $1,000 deductible on AAA. It did come in handy when the wife didn't see a small rock wall. A rather small dent in the door ended costing nearly $4,000. I still had to cough up the $1,000 deductible though.

hackdroot said:
I have a fully loaded SL in immaculate condition, 45k and 12 bars. I would hope it's worth more than a couple thousand.
My car is similar with a bit more mileage. (Premium Bose sound system, four cameras around the whole car, auto-dim, CHAdeMO, etc.) I've been trying to sell it for $8,000 to $10,000 for the past month and a half but have only been offered at most $5,000. I did some research on a 2013 fully loaded SL Leaf with 50,000 miles and came up with this:

Kelly Blue Book:

Trade-in
  • Range
    • Fair $5,397 - $7,860
    • Good $6,330 - $8,859
    • Very Good $6,330 - $8,859
    • Excellent $6,780 - $9,313
  • Average
    • Fair $6,629
    • Good $7,154
    • Very Good $7,595
    • Excellent $8,047
Private Party
  • Range
    • Fair $6,449 - $9,358
    • Good $6,972 - $9,933
    • Very Good $7,442 - $10,389
    • Excellent $7,922 - $10,857
  • Average
    • Fair $7,904
    • Good $8,453
    • Very Good $8,916
    • Excellent $9,390

Edmunds

Trade-in
  • Rough $4,373
  • Average $5,046
  • Clean $6,053
  • Outstanding $6,543
Private Party
  • Average $4,373
  • Average $6,396
  • Clean $7,680
  • Outstanding $8,289

NADA Guides

Trade-in
  • Rough $6,250
  • Average $7,250
  • Clean $8,075

Black Book Portals

Trade-in
  • Rough $6,525
  • Average $8,360
  • Clean $9,475
 
We pay $1300 yearly for our 2017 S, for comparison we also have a 2014 Sienna minivan for which we pay $1100. This is in the SF bay area, both with $500 collision, $100 comprehensive deductibles. FWIW.
 
So after evaluation and price shopping, it appears an accident I had 4 years ago is apparently still an issue. My only at-fault accident in 30 years of driving (backed into someone driving too fast through a parking lot). When I originally quoted with Geico, my premiums were quoted at less than half what I was paying currently. Then the final price increased when I processed the policy after the accident lookup, but it's still $100 a month cheaper than my current policy AND with better coverage and lower deductibles. With Progressive, I just didn't see the reason behind the heavily weighted Premium on the Leaf alone in contrast to my other vehicles.

The private party values are pretty much in line with what I was thinking. I didn't purchase the car for it's resale value, but more of an affordable experiment on EV ownership. I really had no intention on selling it anytime soon as it provides adequate range for my commute.
 
IIRC Amica looks back 3 or 4 years but I think you can call and simply ask them.

The insurance industry's approach to past at fault accidents can be ... creative, and it is not symmetric. By that I mean that the company may quote you widely different premiums depending on whether you are a new customer or staying with them. Second, each company decides how far to look back in the claims history and the threshold values for claims risk stratification vary. And last but not least, I'm not at all sure that a company that has bumped up your premiums due to claims has an automatic re-evaluation mechanism when the lookback period has passed without further claims.

All told, this boils down to a couple things:
When you shop, outright ask how far back they look for claims
At 3,4 and 5 years past a claim x-shop again or at least ask your issuer if the past claim has dropped off your record and your premiums have been recalculated.

The better insurance companies will just outright answer your questions. The companies that have more shady marketing tactics will give you a song and dance about how they cannot tell without preparing a quote for you. Those quotes are likely to be a waste of your time.

----
My experience with these vagaries:
I was deemed at fault in an accident that resulted in a $30k Personal liability payout to vendor #1. That claim took I think around 18-24 months to sort itself out and was not part of my record for months after the accident (I learned this later*) Mostly by chance, I switched to vendor #2 during that honeymoon period on my record, and after the claim was recorded on my history vendor #2 did not raise my premiums. In retrospect I don't think they knew about it. Later I went shopping again and ran up against the mark on my history and found that every competing offer was considerably more expensive than what I was carrying, but I also learned that Amica's lookback period was almost over. So I waited the 3 months or so and then requested a new quote from Amica (vendor #3) and ended up with my current cheap policy. Periodically I get a quote from vendor #2 and get high premium costs because they still note that claim. It will fall off at five years with them.

*Although I notified vendor #1 of the accident immediately, I don't think a claim was filed for quite a while and I can remember thinking that none would be. The eventual claim was borderline fraudulent but as it turned out I benefited from the delay and learned a thing or two along the way.
 
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