Hi, I'm Graham Hill and I'm the author of Electric Cars - The Truth Revealed. If you want a copy of that book, then you can download it by going to grahamhilltraining.com and you can download the book. It only costs a few pounds. If you want to then get the training course, which will be coming out later in 2024, then it's a few pounds more compared with the hundreds of pounds it will be when sold as a stand-alone product. So just pay a few extra pounds and you'll get the training course when it's prepared and it's sent out to every book buyer.
Okay, what I'm talking about at the moment is information. We need more and more information out to people before they're in a position to buy, lease or PCP an electric car. If you’re one of these people you need much more information. This particular subject is insurance. We've already spoken about a couple of things such as what you need to check before you even think about ordering an electric car and we've spoken about what you need to include in the policy when you take out your insurance. It's not as obvious as you might think it is, so you need to watch the two previous podcasts in order to get to where we are now, which is part three, talking about a subject that was discussed during a recent well-known podcast. They have a discussion once a week on a Friday. I wouldn't miss it. It's really, really funny. They're very camp. It's great. They joke a lot and don’t take the subject very seriously. They read out a bit of news out then have a bit of a discussion on it, but we don't get lots of information out of it. This podcast is where you get the information. Get it out of the book and get it from me, because if we don't get this information out, and flood the market with it, we won't get anywhere close to the transition targets. If you're thinking of changing your petrol or diesel car for an electric car, you definitely need to watch these podcasts and you definitely need to buy a copy of the book, because that way you're prepared for all the things that you need to be aware of when you consider transitioning to an electric car.
So, as I say, these guys hosted a podcast a couple of weeks ago and they were doing this myth-busting thing. In my opinion myth-busting is a ridiculous thing to do. It's very negative and all it does is take what the papers and newspapers are saying or the TV is revealing and they're saying well, these are all myths and we're going to bust these myths. Rather than challenging the so-called myths I believe that we should be putting more information out there and beat them to it, rather than wait for the press to say something and then, as many commentators tend to do, argue the toss against whatever is being claimed - and not particularly well either.
Anyway, during the myth-busting session someone had said about charging their car at most charge stations in the wind and rain which was inconvenient enough but what about the inherent dangers? It was explained by the person asking about charging that when we're little kids we're told by our parents that water and electricity don't go together, so we've always been told to keep them apart and stay safe. Now we're suddenly being told that we've got an electric car that we can connect to a charger when it’s pouring with rain quite safely when we’ve always believed that this should be avoided. The person had then mentioned that the situation could be worse after being told that electric cars have 400 volts flowing through them with some now up to 800 volts. This compared to 240 volts at home which is already enough to kill you. With 400 or 800 volts running around the car it was claimed that people were seriously worried especially when charging in the rain with no protective canopy to keep drivers dry when connecting and disconnecting the charge lead. With so many charge stations not protecting drivers it is affecting people's minds and increasing the fear of electrocution. And even if not fearful of electrocution do people want to stand in the rain if they’re on a night out or on their way to work getting drenched. Not to have some sort of canopy over every charger is ridiculous because psychologically it puts you off and it's putting people off buying electric cars. I've had discussions with a couple of charge station operators and those that I’ve spoken to explained that it’s all down to cost. It would cost more to fit canopies and they need to keep costs down. With utilisation running on average at less than 15% I can understand the argument but it won’t encourage the transition to electric.
If fewer electric car drivers are using your chargers because of their fear of connecting a high volt charge lead to their car in bad weather and, as a result of a fault, receiving a fatal electric shock it will hold back sales of electric cars. Operators need to put canopies or some sort of weather protection over the chargers. It's ridiculous not protect customers. There’s protection over petrol stations without the fear of electrocution and I've seen plenty of charge stations with canopies over them and they don’t look that expensive to install, so I’m sure that it can be done without adding massively to the cost.
Now, going back to the myth-busting podcast, when this question was raised, the person that was answering the question said, ‘You don't have to worry about it because obviously there's lots of safety devices inside the chargers, inside your car, inside the lead, the connector at the end of the lead and so on that will stop you from getting electrocuted. And I trust this expert and believe what he said. But that's not to say that someone runs over their charger connector and damages it which could cause a problem without realizing that they've run over it. So I'm a little bit concerned about that, but it was what was said afterwards, because he went on and said look, you know, at the end of the day these cars are fantastically safe and you can even drive them very safely through a flood because you haven't got an exhaust coming out the back of the car. In fact they are probably safer to drive through a flood in an electric car than a petrol or diesel car. What a ridiculous thing to say. That was just stupid.
No car manufacturer on the planet would suggests that it's a good idea to drive any car through a flood, more especially if you've got an electric car and you can't see what's underneath the surface of the water. There could be a log underneath the surface, a lump of concrete that's been washed down from the side of the road or maybe a few bricks and if any of this debris hits the bottom of your battery pack, that could have dire consequences. And you may not even realize that it's happened which could cause all sorts of problems. If this were to happen to you and having driven through a flood you realize that something's gone wrong and after being told that the battery pack is damaged you put in an insurance claim. Whilst the insurance company would cover a damaged battery pack, given the likely cost, they may refuse to pay because you have a duty of care to make sure that you don't do anything that could result in damage as a result of carelessness. Driving through a flood in certain circumstances could be considered to be acting irresponsibly and careless driving. So that suggestion by the myth-buster should never, ever have been made. But let’s assume that the insurance company agrees to pay for the replacement battery pack as they tend not to have them repaired as repairs are not totally reliable yet. Now, if they do replace it, there may be what’s known as betterment charges. I'm going to talk about that in a future podcast.
So let's say, on the other hand, that, due to the cost of replacing the battery they write the car off. What’s known as an economic write off if the cost of the repair is more than the car is worth. They say that the car is damaged beyond repair, so they’re going to write the car off. If they do this when the car is not that old and you have the car on a lease the insurance payout could be a lot less than what the leasing company wants as settlement. If you lease the car and you've not taken out a GAP insurance, so you could be thousands of pounds out of pocket because you've driven the car through a flood. The insurance company says they'll cover it and they've paid out on the insurance but it doesn't match what the finance company wants for the car. So unless you've got financial GAP to pay that difference, you could be seriously out of pocket. The same could apply if the car was on a PCP. You may well find that the payout on the car doesn't match the finance settlement cost.
In the case of a PCP you've got to replace the car. So you've either got to have GAP insurance that either takes you back to invoice (the price originally paid), or it's a replacement new for old, so the car might be six months old but you want to replace it with another new car however the price has gone up since you bought the written off car. New for old GAP will pay the difference between what the insurance company paid out on the written off car and the cost of the new replacement. So you really should consider GAP insurance. Now a lot of people don't take GAP insurance when they lease the car on contract hire. On the other hand they tend to take it with PCPs because the dealer recommends it and he tries to put you in it because he’s going to make more money out of you. The leasing guys don't tend to go down that route because they need additional FCA permissions before you can actually sell insurance products. So if you wanted to take out GAP insurance on your lease car then you will need to arrange it online if you have arranged the lease through a broker. .
So what I'm saying to you is avoid driving through a flood at all costs, because you've now got this big battery pack at the bottom of your car and you don't know what you're about to drive over. The chances are that the water ingress into the motor and everything else is well covered. It's unlikely to happen but the big problem is the very expensive battery underneath and cars are being written off as a result of relatively minor damage to the battery pack. We're seeing it reported in the press now if you Google it. Have a look at it. There are cars being written off just because they've got a damaged battery case. It's not actually gone through to the batteries themselves, but they've got a gash in the battery container and the suggestion is that they can't repair them. They've got to replace them to allow them back on the road. The replacement cost of the battery is so high they're not going to repair the battery pack. So that's another thing that you need to be aware of, and, as a dealer, you need to make sure that the customer is aware that they should not, under any circumstances, drive through a flood, unless it's absolutely life-savingly important that you drive through and the water is only relatively shallow.
So that's the third podcast on insurance. We've got a few more to go and we're just scratching the surface at the moment. These are the sorts of things that people need to be aware of when they buy an electric car. Ok, I hope this is enlightening and you're finding this useful. If it is, then like it, share it. Do whatever you do with podcasts and things, and I will see you on the next one when I'm going to be talking a little bit more about the battery packs. Ok, that's it for now. Thanks very much for watching. I've been Graham Hill, Visit grahamhilltraining.com get your copy of the book and forward order the training. That's it, bye, for now.