Claims for repairable electric vehicle collisions increase for the first quarter of 2023 – report | Insurance Business America
Demands are increasing in both the USA and Canada
engine & fleet
By Mika Pangilinan
The first quarter of 2023 saw an increase in the incidence of repairable electric vehicle (EV) damage, according to a new report from Mitchell, a technology and information provider to the P&C and collision repair industry.
The report shed light on EV collision trends, noting that in the US the rate of repairable damage increased to 1.13%, while Canada saw a higher increase of 2.41%.
Comparing data from the fourth quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023, the report also found that the average EV repair cost fell to $4,749 in the United States and $6,406 in Canada. Despite the decline, Mitchell says these numbers remain above the average for internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.
The report also revealed that the use of OEM parts and the percentage of parts repaired increased to 90.76% and 12.68%, respectively.
In addition, the repair time increased to almost an hour longer than internal combustion engine vehicles, resulting in higher damage costs. For the first time, newly launched models are also manufactured in US accident repair shops.
“EV sales broke records in 2022, and the combination of high gasoline prices, government stimulus and increased vehicle production helped fuel consumer demand,” said Ryan Mandell, Mitchell’s director of claims performance. “As more and more electric vehicles are on the road, there will of course also be more claims for damages due to collisions with electric vehicles. This places a burden on auto insurers, who must balance policyholder expectations with higher-than-average vehicle repair costs and cycle times. It also places a burden on the collision repair shops whose job it is to properly and safely restore these vehicles to OE standards.”
“The number of cases will increase, so handling batteries is a crucial point,” Christoph Lauterwasser, managing director of the Allianz Center for Technology, told Reuters last March.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), global sales of electric vehicles are expected to grow 35% this year, reaching an estimated 14 million units by the end of 2023. The market share would go from about 4% in 2020 to 14% in 2022 and 18% increased in 2023.
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