Bought one of those shiny new Chinese EVs and feeling smug about the price? You might want to get an insurance quote before celebrating. Fresh research suggests UK insurers are getting decidedly twitchy about covering some of the newer Chinese-made electric and hybrid models — refusing quotes outright in some cases, or charging eye-watering premiums when they do.
The investigation comes from car sales platform Carwow, which obtained quotes from 10 of the UK’s biggest insurers for four Chinese models, comparing them against equivalent European, Korean and Japanese cars. The insurers contacted were Admiral, Aviva, Direct Line, Hastings, LV, AXA, Ageas, AA, esure and Allianz.
With the Jaecoo 7 — one of the best-selling cars in the UK so far this year — five of the 10 insurers contacted were unable to provide insurance. Among those that did provide quotes, the average price was £858, around £165 more per year than the comparable VW Tiguan.
Other comparisons told a similar story. Just five companies were able to provide quotes for the XPeng G6, with the highest being £1,569 from the AA, which would insure a comparable Kia EV3 for £1,171. The average across all the quotes was £1,102 for the G6 and £827 for the EV3.
The plug-in hybrid BYD Seal U fared best of the Chinese models. Only three insurers were unable to provide quotes, and the average of those received was £645.
But the Skywell BE11 was a different story entirely. It could only get cover from esure, which quoted £2,203.38, while two insurers declined to provide a quote at all.
The numbers also vary widely depending on how the comparisons are run. In a separate Carwow profile of a 27-year-old driver based in Hampshire, the average cost of covering the Jaecoo 7 was £1,103 a year — almost twice what it would cost to cover a Skoda Karoq at £577, an SUV picked by Carwow as a petrol equivalent.
So why the reluctance? It comes down to data — or rather, the lack of it. Stephen Kennedy of the financial information service Defaqto said EVs tend to be more expensive to repair after crashes, and that insurers may not have enough data on the new vehicles to price policies yet. He described it as a chicken and egg situation: if insurers haven’t sold policies for these types of vehicles, they don’t have the data to work out how much they should be charging.
The insurers themselves are saying much the same thing. Axa, which did not provide any quotes in the Carwow study, said some Chinese brands are new to the market and it does not have enough data to cover them. Aviva said it reviews pricing as more data becomes available, and Admiral said insurance prices have risen over recent years generally but that it had not increased EV premiums more than those for petrol cars.
Iain Reid, Carwow’s editorial director, summed up the squeeze for drivers, saying it is still harder to get insurance quotes for newer Chinese models than for more established European and Japanese alternatives. On paper, he said, Chinese cars come in at an average of £901 a year to insure — about £255 more than equivalent petrol models at £646.
And it can affect existing owners too. Alessia Groppo from Bournemouth told Carwow that she chose the Jaecoo 7 because she wanted a hybrid and was impressed by its quality. However, insuring the car proved to be a challenge. She said her existing insurer wouldn’t cover it, and most insurers didn’t appear on comparison sites. The ones that did offer cover charged very high excesses — over £500, sometimes £800 — and her monthly premium doubled compared with the Kia Sportage she also owns.
It’s not all doom and gloom. The BYD Seal U has proven to be an outlier, demonstrating that as a brand becomes a more familiar sight on British roads, insurer confidence grows and premiums can fall.
The advice for anyone tempted by a Chinese EV or hybrid is pretty straightforward: don’t put a deposit down before you’ve got an insurance quote in writing. That £20,000 bargain saloon could end up costing you a small fortune to insure — or you might not be able to insure it at all.
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