Motoring special: Buying electric cars and are insurers gaming drivers?

This is Money Podcast

This is Money

Business News, Business, Investing, News

4.1 • 650 Ratings

🗓️ 8 November 2019

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What’s the best new or used electric car on the market, would buying your insurance on the day you need it drive up the price, and does London’s diesel-crunching ULEZ make sense?

Those are the questions and more on this motoring special edition of the This is Money Podcast. On it, Georgie Frost and Simon Lambert are joined by deputy motoring editor Rob Hull to talk cars and money.

First up, is our exclusive on how insurers are sneakily pushing up prices for those who buy cover close to when they need it - bad news if you want to choose and buy a car and then drive it away.

The team also look at attempts to crack down on older petrol and diesel cars, such as London’s ULEZ – soon to be extended all the way out to the North and South Circular – and ask whether the crop of electric car alternatives available now are enough to tempt people en-masse.

Simon argues that one of the key problems is not how good new electric cars are (albeit they are now pretty good) but the issue of buying second hand and the limited choice and consumer concerns.

Meanwhile, Rob says that although a brand new electric car may be tempting to those committed to greener motoring, many buyers are likely to sit on their hands expecting a better choice of longer range vehicles to arrive soon.

One of those won’t carry a Golf badge, as VW is ditching its trusty model name for its new ID range of electric cars.

But before they arrive a new Golf will. The Golf is a car that has long set the benchmark for family hatchbacks, so with the wraps coming off the next eighth generation one what can we expect inside, outside, and - all importantly nowadays - in terms of tech?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to This Is Money. I'm Georgie Frost and alongside me and editor Simon Lambert today is Deputy Motoring Editor Rob Hull.
0:07.2	And the clue for today is Rob. We have a car special coming up for you. We tackle the insurers taking you for a ride.
0:14.1	Look at the schemes to get us go green. At the latest VW golf, which doesn't look like a golf and does some cool, fandangled stuff,
0:23.1	and would you take to eBay to repair your car on the cheap?
0:27.2	Don't be getting you step to date with all the latest breaking money news,
0:29.7	just go to thisismoney.co.com or download the app.
0:34.1	But first, car insurance is expensive enough.
0:37.1	But at This Is is money investigation has discovered
0:39.4	that when you buy could be seriously adding to your bill. Last minute shoppers, beware. If you're the
0:47.0	sort of person who gets cover on the day that you need it to start, it could set you back up to a third
0:53.1	more than if you wait for a week.
0:56.0	Bit of a pain for anyone who buying a vehicle and actually wants to drive at home the same day.
1:01.6	Rob, welcome. It's been a while, Rob. Good to have you back.
1:06.1	Thanks. Much appreciate it. Tell us more about this investigation car insurance.
1:11.1	Well, this was some number crunching by Will in the off, back in the office.
1:15.7	He was looking at, he got a bit of a tip-off to say about how much insurance goes up if you pay on the day that you're getting it.
1:24.7	And he did a comparison across all the main providers, some smaller providers as well,
1:30.7	to see what impact it had. And it was quite a big difference. It was fairly substantial. I think
1:36.4	some of the, some were charging up to 33% more for getting it arranged for that day. And they all,
1:42.2	their defences was that it's drivers who who insure
1:46.1	in that way are a greater risk which seems very odd considering so many people like you said have to
1:51.7	you know you buy a car and then you have to insure it for that day um also it's not one of those things
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from This is Money, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of This is Money and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.