However you may feel about the brand, we can probably all agree that it’s not a fun time to be a Tesla owner. According to a report published by Guardian Service, two in five Tesla owners have reported experiencing intentional damage to their cars, averaging $1,900 in repairs. Even owners who are not affected directly say they’re feeling the sting, with three in five reporting higher insurance premiums, with an average increase of $340 annually.

Tesla

Tesla, Inc. is an American electric vehicle manufacturer largely attributed to driving the EV revolution. Through the Model S and subsequent products, Tesla has innovated and challenged industry conventions on numerous fronts, including over-the-air updates, self-driving technology, and automotive construction methods. Tesla is considered the world’s most valuable car brand as of 2023, and the Model Y the world’s best-selling car in the same year, but the brand’s greatest achievement is arguably the Supercharger network of EV charging stations.

Founded

July 1, 2003

Founder

Martin Eberhard, Marc Tarpenning

Headquarters

Austin, Texas, USA

Owned By

Publicly Traded

Current CEO

Elon Musk

If you drive an EV then we don’t need to tell you that electric vehicles cost more to insure in the first place, and anything that drives those rates up is worth making a note of. The question is: to what extent are EVs more expensive to insure than ICE vehicles in 2025? Let’s check the data and find out.

EVs Simply Cost More To Insure

In order to get a rough idea of how EV insurance costs compare to ICE costs, let’s compare a handful of electric vehicles to their nearest ICE counterparts.

This is, admittedly, a fairly small sample size, but we’re looking for just a handful of EVs with close (or close-enough, in the case of the RAV4) combustion-based counterparts, like the Ford F-150 and the Ford F-150 Lightning. There’s no such thing as a mass-production ICE Model X or Polestar 2 or Rivian R1T, so we’re somewhat limited in the models we can draw from for this table.

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That being said, the numbers show roughly what you’d expect: EVs cost an average of around 37% more to insure, year after year.

Price Isn’t The Only Thing Driving EV Insurance Rates Up

According to Kelley Blue Book, the average EV in March of 2025 was selling for $59,205, new, while the average gas-powered car was selling for $46,906. Breaking that down by percentages, that sees EVs costing more than ICE by an average margin of 26.2%.

The difference in price almost, but doesn’t quite, account for the 37% difference in insurance costs across segments. The rest of the math has to do with demographics.

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Some key points driving EV insurance rates up include:

• EV drivers skew young, and younger drivers pay more for insurance. 10% of 18-29-year-old Americans in a Gallup poll own an EV. That number falls off to 8% in the 30-49 and 50-64 brackets.
• EV drivers tend to have more money to buy more robust insurance packages, with 14% of those polled above the $100,000 annual income line owning EVs. At $40,000 to $99,999 in annual income, the number is just 5%.
• Nasdaq reports that men are six times more likely to buy an EV compared to women, as of an article published in late 2023. Men tend to pay more for insurance, on average.

We Can’t Know Everything Without Looking At The Books

Insurance companies set their rates based on internal algorithms, and we can’t be certain of what, exactly, is driving insurance costs up for one driver versus another without looking at those algorithms and knowing exactly how they crunch their numbers. No insurance company, to our knowledge, makes those algorithms available to the general public. All we can do is backwards-engineer the data we have available.

A young male driver will tend to spend more on insurance than a middle-aged female driver. We’ve got the numbers to back that up. What the insurer thinks of their height, weight, and hair color, we have no clue.

But, the bottom line is that the factors that we do know play a role in determining insurance costs tend to skew towards more expensive premiums for EV owners, by and large.

How Can EV Owners Keep Their Insurance Costs Under Control?

If you’re buying electric, you’re already committed to spending a bit more on insurance than the next driver. You can only do so much to bring those costs down. Past a certain point, you’d simply be spending less on a gas-powered F-150 than you’re spending on a Lightning, and that’s all there is to it.

But, there’s still plenty that you can do to keep those premiums manageable. Here are a few tips.

Find An Insurer That Offers EV Discounts

We know that some of the major brands, like GEICO, State Farm, and Travelers, all offer discounts of up to 10 percent for EV drivers, but not every insurer advertises their EV discounts, so ask around.

Ask About Telematics Discounts

Telematics, all those internal systems in your car that track things like average trip length, driving habits, and whether or not you remember to use your turn signals, are a whole new frontier for the insurance industry. Insurers take demographics into consideration in order to grade your driving based on broad trends. We all know that this isn’t entirely fair. Telematics will allow insurers to set your premiums based specifically on how you drive. Some insurers, like Allstate, are ahead of the curve on this technology, while others are playing catch-up. EVs are specially suited to these discounts given the advanced tech you have onboard.

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Choose The More Insurable Brands

It’s too early to say to what extent recent vandalism incidents will affect Tesla in the long run, but, as of late April 2025, Teslas already cost around $4,409 each year to insure, which is around $1,700 higher than our own average for electric vehicles. A good driver is expected to pay around $4,864 for annual insurance for a Cybertruck, which isn’t quite twice what you’d pay to insure an F-150 Lightning, but it’s close enough to make your eyebrows go up an inch or so.

The fact that the Cybertruck is something of a status symbol might mean that you don’t mind paying a little extra to insure it, heck you might even brag about it. But if you’re worried about insurance costs, it’s something to keep in mind.

Sources: Guardian Service, Nasdaq, Gallup Polls, Kelley Blue Book.