Electric vehicles & the future of collision claims

Accounting for around 2% of global car sales in 2019 and just 1% of global car stock, electric vehicles are anticipated to make up more than half of all passenger vehicle sales by 2040, according to Bloomberg. Will this shift lead to headaches for insurance professionals and collision repairers as they see more of these sophisticated vehicles?

While advanced safety systems are resulting in lower collision frequency, the cost of dealing with higher technology is becoming an issue, according to John Eck, collision manager, wholesale dealer channel for General Motors customer care and after-sales.

“This means that technicians have to be trained more on these electric vehicle repairs,” he said during a Collision Industry Electronic Commerce Association webcast. “At GM, we are looking at a new platform with motors in the front and back, so the build of the vehicles is going to be different.”

From a structural standpoint, save for the cages and build-out to support batteries, the impact on the collision industry from EVs should not be too heavy, Eck explained. He added GM plans to launch 30 electric-powered models in the coming four years and has an endgame featuring only electric vehicles.

“As long as technicians are following our repair procedures and safety protocols relative to electrification, those repairs should be able to be handled as they have been in the past, from a structural standpoint,” he said, explaining the most important safety tip to follow is on disengaging the battery and powering down the vehicle.

Unlike most cars that are repairable following collisions, where the front end is typically damaged, some brands of EVs are seeing rear-ends damaged more often, according to Chris Evans, claim consultant, P&C Claims, for State Farm Insurance. While it is difficult to draw a direct correlation as to why, he said some features might catch drivers that aren’t familiar with the technology off guard, such as deceleration rates.

Conversely, when it comes to EVs that are determined to be total losses, the front ends are typically where the collision damage occurred. Evans noted this isn’t surprising since most of these vehicles’ costly technologies are in the front end.

Insurers, automakers collaborate

As the amount of data generated by connected cars is only going to increase, the ability to process and onboard it will be critical to unlocking savings for consumers and better results for insurers.

“Not only does collaboration with car companies enable us to underwrite drivers better, it also enables at the first notice of loss the opportunity to get information from a vehicle’s commutations systems and prepopulate loss information such as location, conditions at the time of loss, what was happen in the seconds before an accident,” Evans said during the webinar. “That is a real game-changer and can be used to help triage losses and share information with the repair shop.”

To this end, State Farm partnered with Ford Motor Co. during the summer to allow new cars to send details directly to the insurer with owner or lessee consent. This information is used for everything from determining rates to handling claims, according to Evans.

Important to note, for cars equipped with event-data records (commonly referred to as black boxes), federal law stipulates that the data are property of the car’s owner or lessee, Evans explained, and cannot be accessed without the owner/lessee’s permission or court order.

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