Is Electric Car Insurance cheaper ?

An electric car is a car that uses an electric motor instead of an internal combustion engine. The car is powered by a battery pack that is on the vehicle. Hybrid cars are considered vehicles that use electric and other types of motors are not considered true electric cars. Plug in hybrid vehicles are cars that can be charged from an outside source.



The electric car has both economical and environmental appeal. Soaring gas prices have caused many consumers to look for alternative modes of transportation. With many of the cars on the road today being SUV's which are big and heavy and are not exactly economical to drive, the electric car can seem like a good option. The increased awareness of our environment and the "green" movement has also contributed to the popularity of the electric car. Pollution is greatly reduced when using a battery powered vehicle. US passenger vehicles use about 400 million gallons of gas per day, and contribute to our global warming situation. Increased usage of electric vehicles could help decrease dependency on foreign oil and they use a renewable energy source. This leads us to ask the question, where do I get one and how much do they cost?

Most of the major auto makers have something in the works for an electric car. Perhaps the most economical one to come along will be the One by the British Bee. This electric car will have an 80 mph top speed and is reported to be able to go around 200 miles before needing to be recharged. This all will be extremely affordable at $18,000. This electric car will go into production in 2011. Chrysler and Toyota both have electric cars available also. If you are going to drive something on the road, then you must have auto insurance for it, but what kind is best for the electric car? Let's take a look at that below.

Source: www.electriccarinsurance.us
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Common Car Insurance Problems

In order to drive, you have to have car insurance. In some cases, it can be one of the biggest expenses in owning a car. Although nobody wants to have to deal with car insurance companies, it’s a fact of life. Unfortunately, people sometimes have problems with their insurance companies. When they do, it’s important to know how to deal with them.

We have put together a list of some of the most common car insurance problems that people have. Whether your insurance company is charging you for a feature that you don’t want, or the company is having trouble processing your claim expediently, there is a solution to most common car insurance problems.

YOUR CLAIM WAS DENIED
One of the last things you want to hear when you file an insurance claim is that your claim was denied. Fortunately, you have rights as a policy holder. As long as you have paid your premiums on time, you have a contract with the insurer, and the insurance company is obligated to fulfill their end of the deal. You have the right to have your claim processed quickly. If you are having trouble with a denied claim, you can follow these steps:

Write to your insurance company, informing them that they have mistakenly denied your claim. Provide them with any necessary documentation to make your case.
Appeal the insurer’s decision with your State’s Insurance Commissioner.
Call an attorney that specializes in insurance cases in order to discuss your case. Many times, an insurance company will be motivated to solve the problem once they receive a letter from an attorney.
If all else fails, call back the insurance attorney and pursue a lawsuit against your insurer for breach of contract, bad faith, or perhaps, violating other aspects of your state’s insurance law.

THE INSURER SNEAKS IN EXTRAS
Some insurance companies will make money by adding in extra insurance options that you don’t need or want. In Colorado, $5000 of medical payments coverage will automatically be included in your policy, but you have the right to refuse this coverage. You probably already have health insurance, so why pay twice for the same thing? By sending your insurance company notice in writing that you don’t want this additional extra, you won’t have to pay the extra premium for it.

YOUR RENEWAL NOTICE HAS SURPRISES
When it comes time to renew your auto insurance coverage, check your new contract carefully. You may discover that the company has added in extra coverage that you don’t want. You may also find that your rates have increased. Check to make sure that you’re still getting the coverage that you want. If you have noticed that your insurer is offering discounts to lure in new customers, ask if you can have the discount too. You can just as easily take your money and go with another insurance company.

YOUR DEDUCTIBLE IS TOO LOW
If you get into an accident, you have a deductible that you will have to pay if you need to make a claim on your comprehensive or collision insurance. Your deductible might be set lower than you would like it to be, such as $250 rather than $500 or $1000. The higher the deductible, the lower the premiums you will pay, so it makes sense to have a higher deductible. Call your insurance company and compare the costs for different deductible levels. Find the deductible that you are most comfortable with, and then put the money you save in your savings account.

THERE ARE MANY INSURANCE FISH IN THE SEA
If your insurance company is not playing fair, by providing you with more insurance than you want, changing the terms at renewal time, or not processing claims quickly, you may want to look for other providers. There are plenty of companies to choose from, and if it is not working out with your current insurance company, it may be time to check out the competition.

Source: www.automobile.com/common-car-insurance-problems.html
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How to Get Cheaper Car Insurance

Here are few ways to save money on auto insurance:

1. Be thorough in researching and requesting all discounts you qualify for
2. Maintain a clean, up-to-date driving driving record
3. Assume more risk in your coverage
4. Choose to drive a “low profile” car with specific money-saving features
5. Find a low-cost insurance provider that can meet your needs

We’ll begin to explain discounts you might qualify for:

Low-Risk Job or Occupation
Insurance adjusters collect information about what type of people get into accidents. Historically, data suggests overwhelmingly that people with certain professions get into far fewer car accidents than other people. For example, a teacher is far less likely to be involved in an accident than someone who is unemployed. Your job may entitle you to lower insurance rates because you are at lower risk for an accident. It is important to shop around for this discount, as different insurance companies use different criteria.

Professional Organizations and Auto Clubs
A membership with auto clubs, such as AAA, or professional organizations offered through your employed may save you money on your car insurance. It is important to ask your insurer if any of these discounts are offered while also pursuing them through your employer.

Combined and Renewal Discounts
If your car is insured by the same company that provides you with house or life insurance, you may be entitled to significant discounts on both policies.

You may not have to switch insurance companies to save money on your policy. If you have been with the same provider for an extended amount of time and had no accidents, you are entitled to renewal discounts, which provide incentive to remain with your insurer.

Automobile Safety Features
Many states have laws that require lower insurance rates for cars equipped with safety features. Some industry-standard features such as ABS anti-lock brakes, airbags, and automatic seat belts may qualify you for insurance discounts. You should research if you live in one of these states or if your specific provider offers discounts for such safety features.

Assuming More Risk
There are two ways in which you can drastically reduce the cost of your car insurance. First, if you have an older, less-valuable car you may drop your collision insurance. In trying to save money by owning an older car it does not make sense to spend more on insurance. If your car is worth less than $2000, you are most likely spending more on insurance than it is worth. Dropping collision coverage will create significant savings on your policy.

If you are not driving an older car, it might make sense to request a higher deductible. A deductible is the amount you pay out-of-pocket before the insurance company compensates the rest. Increasing your deductible from $500 to $1000 could decrease your monthly payments by as much as 30 percent. You might pay more for small fender-benders and dings but will save significantly while still being covered in the case of large accidents.

Low Profile Cars
If high insurance costs are burying you, consider it while shopping for your next car. Insurance companies charge more for high-performance cars because of their increased susceptibility to accidents and being stolen. It might make sense to buy a more modest vehicle and use your savings for other adventures.

Shop the Big Auto Insurance Companies
You should always get quotes from top companies like State Farm, Allstate, GEICO, Progressive and GMAC
Source:http://www.autoinsurancegroup.com/
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How Does it Charge ?

How to Calculate Your Insurance Premium

Depending on the jurisdiction, the insurance premium can be either mandated by the government or determined by the insurance company in accordance to a framework of regulations set by the government. Often, the insurer will have more freedom to set the price on physical damage coverages than on mandatory liability coverages.

When the premium is not mandated by the government, it is usually derived from the calculations of an actuary based on statistical data. The premium can vary depending on many factors that are believed to have an impact on the expected cost of future claims. Those factors can include the car characteristics, the coverage selected (deductible, limit, covered perils), the profile of the driver (age, gender, driving history) and the usage of the car (commute to work or not, predicted annual distance driven).

Gender
Men average more miles driven per year than women do, and consequently have a proportionally higher accident involvement at all ages. Insurance companies cite women's lower accident involvement in keeping the youth surcharge lower for young women drivers than for their male counterparts, but adult rates are generally unisex. Reference to the lower rate for young women as "the women's discount" has caused confusion that was evident in news reports on a recently defeated EC proposal to make it illegal to consider gender in assessing insurance premiums [Women drivers' insurance threat]. Ending the discount would have made no difference to most women's premiums.

Age
Teenage drivers who have no driving record will have higher car insurance premiums. However, young drivers are often offered discounts if they undertake further driver training on recognized courses, such as the Pass Plus scheme in the UK. In the U.S. many insurers offer a good grade discount to students with a good academic record and resident student discounts to those who live away from home. Drivers under 25 are considered at higher risk of having an accident, and insurance premiums tend to become lower above the age of 25. Senior drivers are often eligible for retirement discounts reflecting lower average miles driven by this age group.

Marital Status
Statistically, married drivers tend to have fewer accidents than single drivers. Subsequently, drivers who are unmarried are often charged higher insurance premiums as opposed to married drivers.

Vehicle Classification
Owners of sports cars, muscle cars, some sport utility vehicles, and motorcycles would have higher insurance premiums as opposed to compact cars, midsized cars, or luxury cars. However, in the case of motorcycles, the chance of causing extensive damage to other vehicles is relatively low (as opposed to damage to oneself) and thus liability insurance premiums are often lower.

Driving Record
The better your record, the lower your premium. If you've had accidents or serious traffic violations, you will pay more than if you have a clean driving record. You may also pay more if you haven't been insured for a number of years.

Driving Frequency
Do you drive your vehicle to work or school each day? Or do you rarely use your vehicle? The less you drive, the lower your premium is likely to be. That's because when you spend less time driving, you're less likely to have an accident.

Other Covered Driver
Adding other drivers to your insurance policy will also add cost to your premium. You will, however, pay less if they are experienced drivers with good driving histories.

Annual Mileage
The more miles you drive, the more chance for accidents. If you drive a lower than average number of miles per year, less than 10,000, you will pay less. For instance, some companies will give discounts to policyholders who carpool.

Your Habitation
Insurance companies look at local trends, such as the number of accidents, car thefts and lawsuits, as well as the cost of medical care and car repair in your environment.

Reasonable Estimation
Several car insurance plans rely on a reasonable estimation of the average annual distance expected to be driven which is provided by the insured. This discount benefits drivers who drive their cars infrequently but has no actuarial value since it is unverified.

Odometer-based Systems
Cents Per Mile Now[10](1986) advocates classified odometer-mile rates. After the company's risk factors have been applied and the customer has accepted the per-mile rate offered, customers buy prepaid miles of insurance protection as needed, like buying gallons of gasoline. Insurance automatically ends when the odometer limit (recorded on the car’s insurance ID card) is reached unless more miles are bought. Customers keep track of miles on their own odometer to know when to buy more. The company does no after-the-fact billing of the customer, and the customer doesn't have to estimate a "future annual mileage" figure for the company to obtain a discount. In the event of a traffic stop, an officer could easily verify that the insurance is current by comparing the figure on the insurance card to that on the odometer.

Critics point out the possibility of cheating the system by odometer tampering. Although the newer electronic odometers are difficult to roll back, they can still be defeated by disconnecting the odometer wires and reconnecting them later. However, as the Cents Per Mile Now website points out:

As a practical matter, resetting odometers requires equipment plus expertise that makes stealing insurance risky and uneconomical. For example, in order to steal 20,000 miles (32,000 km) of continuous protection while paying for only the 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from 35,000 miles (56,000 km) to 37,000 miles (60,000 km) on the odometer, the resetting would have to be done at least nine times to keep the odometer reading within the narrow 2,000-mile (3,200 km) covered range. There are also powerful legal deterrents to this way of stealing insurance protection. Odometers have always served as the measuring device for resale value, rental and leasing charges, warranty limits, mechanical breakdown insurance, and cents-per-mile tax deductions or reimbursements for business or government travel. Odometer tampering—detected during claim processing—voids the insurance and, under decades-old state and federal law, is punishable by heavy fines and jail.

Under the cents-per-mile system, rewards for driving less are delivered automatically without need for administratively cumbersome and costly GPS technology. Uniform per-mile exposure measurement for the first time provides the basis for statistically valid rate classes. Insurer premium income automatically keeps pace with increases or decreases in driving activity, cutting back on resulting insurer demand for rate increases and preventing today's windfalls to insurers when decreased driving activity lowers costs but not premiums.

GPS-based System
In 1998, Progressive Insurance started a pilot program in Texas in which drivers received a discount for installing a GPS-based device that tracked their driving behavior and reported the results via cellular phone to the company.[11] Policyholders were reportedly more upset about having to pay for the expensive device than they were over privacy concerns.[12] The program was discontinued in 2000.

OBDII-based system
In 2008, The Progressive Corporation launched MyRate to give drivers a customized insurance rate based on how, how much, and when their car is driven. MyRate is currently available in Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Maryland, New Jersey and Oregon. Driving data is transmitted to the company using an on-board telematic device. The device connects to a car's OnBoard Diagnostic (OBD-II) port (all automobiles built after 1996 have an OBD-II.) and transmits speed, time of day and number of miles the car is driven. There is no GPS in the MyRate device, so no location information is collected. Cars that are driven less often, in less risky ways and at less risky times of day can receive large discounts. Progressive has received patents on its methods and systems of implementing usage-based insurance and has licensed these methods and systems to other companies. Progressive has service marks pending on the terms Pay As You Drive and Pay How You Drive.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
http://www.iii.org/individuals/auto/b/whatdetermines/
http://www.rbcinsurance.com/auto/auto-insurance-premiums.html

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Get Your Policy Rate as Low as Possible.

Steps You Can Take to Reduce Your Policy Rate

Insurers often discount their rates in order to encourage good driving practices and the use of safety and security precautions. Depending on the insurance company, you can often lower your rates from 5 to 35 percent.

Sometimes the investment you make in your vehicle is worth the discount, and sometimes it's simply worth some peace of mind. For example, the purchase of anti-lock brakes merits a discount from nearly every insurer, but the discount probably will not pay for the brakes (which cost several hundred dollars) during the normal life of your vehicle. Anti-lock brakes are touted, nonetheless, as a life-saving feature, it's a serious consideration when safety is a top priority.
Insurers generally offer discounts for:

• Safety Features--Anti-lock brakes, air bags and passive restraint systems (i.e., automatic seat belts), or even ESC (Electronic Stability Control).
• Defensive Driving--Clean violation record, driver's-ed courses for teenagers and defensive driving or accident prevention courses for adults (insurance discounts for the latter are required in some states).
• Security Systems--Alarms, electronic locks (or immobilizer system) and disabling devices.
• Changing Driving Habits--Commuting by public transit, using a company vehicle for work-related travel and car-pooling.
• Formal Agreements Not to Drink and Drive--The availability of a discount for signing such an agreement varies among insurers and states.
• Buying Home Owners and Auto Policies from the Same Company--If you own a home and an automobile and you are insured by two different companies, check into the cost of carrying both policies by one insurer. Your agent can give you guidance as to which insurers offer discounts.

You can also lower your auto insurance rates by requesting higher deductibles of the amount of money you pay before you make a claim. Increasing your deductibles on collision and comprehensive coverage from $100 to $250, or even $500, will bring your rates down. Moreover, you may not need collision and comprehensive coverage if you drive an older car. Ask your agent which discounts are available to you.
Source:http://autoinsurancegroup.com/lower-auto-insurance.html
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Choosing The Right Level of Auto Insurance

Car insurance is a legal requirement and without it you could end up in prison or faced with a hefty fine and a driving ban. People who drive without car insurance are not only putting themselves at risk but others too.

There are many different types of coverage available to suit all needs and budgets, but for most people the level of coverage that they take is based upon what they can afford. It is important to remember that you must have at least basic coverage by law before you can take your vehicle out on the road.

The more comprehensive and feature-rich your policy, the higher your premiums will be, but at the same time you will also have a much higher degree of protection against an array of eventualities.

The three main levels of car insurance cover are:

Third Party

Third party car insurance cover is the absolute minimum level that is legally required. The cheapest of all three options, third party car insurance policies are often taken out by first time drivers that are teenagers without much money to spend on insurance and whose cars are not worth much money. Third party car insurance covers for:

* Injuries to other people including passengers in your vehicle.
* Damage to other peoples' property/vehicle

Third party car insurance does not cover for:

* Damage to your property/vehicle caused by you.
* Theft of your vehicle.

Third party only car insurance is usually recommended to people whose vehicles are worth less than £500 and is ideal if money is tight and you are not bothered about damage to your vehicle.

Third Party Fire and Theft

This is the next level of car insurance and pretty self explanatory. Third party fire and theft car insurance is advised for drivers whose cars are not worth too much but would rather pay the insurance excess than the cost of the car if they had to replace it. Third Party Fire and Theft car insurance covers for:

*
Injuries to other people including your passengers.
*
Damage to other peoples property/vehicle.
*
Theft of your vehicle.
*
Damage to your vehicle caused by fire.

Third Party Fire and Theft car insurance does not cover for:

* Damage to your vehicle caused by you.

Fully Comprehensive

This is the most inclusive level of cover and is recommended for drivers whose cars are worth in excess of £3,000. Unlike third party cover, fully comprehensive covers for most issues that occur as a result of an accident or damage to your vehicle. Fully comprehensive car insurance does cost the most but the excess is often less than on third party car insurance and in the event of damage or an accident you will get more financial assistance. Fully Comprehensive car insurance covers for:

* Injuries to other people including your passengers
* Damage to other peoples property/vehicle
* Theft of your vehicle
* Damage caused by fire to your vehicle
* Accidental damage to your vehicle
* Personal accident benefits
* Medical expenses
* Loss of or damage to personal items in vehicle

It is important to remember that not all car insurance policies are the same - all will cover the basics, but different companies will vary what they offer. For example, some may offer car breakdown cover and a courtesy car as standard on their comprehensive policy, while others may charge extra; because of these inconsistencies, it pays to know which type of car insurance you need for your purpose and to shop around for the best deal.

Once you have decided which level of car insurance you want there are a few other things to take into account. Most car insurance providers will charge extra for legal expense cover, depending on your level of insurance, you must decide if this is necessary or not - legal costs can soon add up in the event of an accident. Another optional extra is often protection for your 'no claims bonus', which can prove useful in the event of an accident. Again, some companies add this to car insurance policies as standard but it is important to check.

Finally, most car insurance providers will expect you to pay an excess in the event of a claim. This means that before the car insurance company pay out you must pay the amount set which can vary greatly depending on your age and experience. Because the excess can often be more than the damage caused it is important to take this into account when shopping around for car insurance quotes.
Source:http://www.fairinvestment.co.uk
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