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[andrewcsp]

Just did a comparison on the meerkats site. 61 year old, 2 years no claims, live in Devon.
2016 DSR = £136.
2019 FXS = £224.
All fully comp.

Wow, that’s impressive. Which insurers were they?

I suppose my problem is that I live in the theft capital of the U.K. (London)

[andrewcsp]

Have also just realised that the OLEV grant for installing a home chargepoint is not available to any electric motorcycles, including Zero. Only cars and vans are eligible. Full list here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/803572/electric-vehicle-homecharge-scheme-eligible-vehicles.csv/preview

The more I look into electric motorcycles the more I feel that I’m getting penalised for being both an early adopter and a motorcyclist.

Petrol: 2, Electric: 0

[WrightWells]

For the SR/F I've tried:

GoCompare via website (no results available)
MoneySupermarket via website (no results available)
Confused via website (no results available)
Devitt via telephone (cannot find the bike)
BeMoto via telephone (too risky to have it parked in London, despite anchor)
BeSure via telephone (no results available)
Carole Nash via telephone (no results available)
Lexham via telephone (£945, fully comp, must use disk lock or chain at all times)
 Wicked Quotes

So who did you end up going with?
Just had a quote from Principle, but they are £100 more expensive than my current 1200cc bike!! WTF

Sent from my SM-N960F using Tapatalk

[andrewcsp]

For the SR/F I've tried:

GoCompare via website (no results available)
MoneySupermarket via website (no results available)
Confused via website (no results available)
Devitt via telephone (cannot find the bike)
BeMoto via telephone (too risky to have it parked in London, despite anchor)
BeSure via telephone (no results available)
Carole Nash via telephone (no results available)
Lexham via telephone (£945, fully comp, must use disk lock or chain at all times)
 Wicked Quotes

So who did you end up going with?
Just had a quote from Principle, but they are £100 more expensive than my current 1200cc bike!! WTF

Sent from my SM-N960F using Tapatalk

No further news as yet. I'm still waiting for my bike to arrive! I'm on holiday now for a few weeks, but expecting to hear more from my dealer towards the end of September. Frankly, I gave up even attempting to speak directly to Zero. Their customer support is mediocre at best I'd say. I've given my insurance details to Dale at Zero about four times now, with the promise that he'll get back to me with more reasonable insurers.

As much as I loved my test ride of the SR/F, I'm not wedded to it and may reassess my options in late September if I'm not satisfied with the state of things. I haven't bothered to check insurance prices again myself recently, but hoping it has gotten a little better in the past few months.

[andrewcsp]

An update...

I'm expecting to take delivery of a shiny new Zero SR/F next week!

I tried another round of insurance quotes recently. Some, but not much improvement:

GoCompare via website (Cheapest 3 options: £805 Lexham, £2761 BikeSure, £2803 MCN)
MoneySupermarket via website (Identical results to GoCompare)
Confused via website (Identical results to GoCompare)
BeMoto via telephone (will not insure any bike this valuable for ANY commuting in London - theft is guaranteed in their eyes)
Lexham via website (£781, fully comp, must use disk lock or chain at all times)

The BeMoto position really annoyed me. In my opinion, electric bikes are perfect for commuting: regular repeated journey lengths; driving through congested cities without adding pollution; low speed stop/start city traffic is more efficient for electric vehicles compared to petrol. None of this matters because of theft risk. Not their fault, but their underwriters are too restrictive.

Then, my Zero dealer (aware of my insurance concerns) made contact with Lexham directly. I've since been in touch with them, and they have kindly gone out of their way to get these insurance prices down. I'm currently quoted £654, and I'm happy to live with this.

So right now, the only reasonable insurance option on the market I have is Lexham. I've been quite impressed with their efforts and have heard from multiple sources that they're very keen to get into the electric motorcycle insurance business. Consider the following history of events, a 45% drop since my initial quote in May:

May 2019 £945 - Initial Lexham quote
Oct 2019 £781 - Second Lexham quote (5 months later)
Oct 2019 £742 - Third Lexham quote via referral from Zero dealer
Oct 2019 £654 - Revised Lexham quote, bearing in mind that I have a history with powerful bikes and a high NCD

So, it's worth pointing out to these insurance agents if you have a long biking history (9 yrs for me), especially if it involves high powered machines (1300cc for me), multiple bike ownership (and therefore multiple sets of NCDs).

I've been quite impressed at the lengths Lexham have gone to in order to get me an insurance quote I can live with! The agent handling the latest set of quotes (I believe Olivia), seemed well aware of biking in general (both petrol and electric), and that was rather refreshing compared to some conversations I've had!

[Crissa]

Even if theft 'is guaranteed' that just means you raise the price based upon incidence.  That's what insurance if for.

If they're not doing that, I don't think they should be allowed to sell insurance.

[andrewcsp]

Even if theft 'is guaranteed' that just means you raise the price based upon incidence.  That's what insurance if for.

If they're not doing that, I don't think they should be allowed to sell insurance.

I think the other issue is that as the SR/F is a new model, there isn't any data for insurers to know how risky it is (i.e. how likely an accident or theft claim will be). So because the value of the bike is high, and they have no claim statistics, they prefer to say no.

Agreed though, what is point of insurance if they won't cover a risk!?

[gnelson]

Having just bought a DSR, I have played the same game with insurers.  Lexham came out the cheapest, but I ended up going with Bennetts because my current bike is insured with them.  I wanted to transfer the no claims discount across from that bike whilst maintaining it's insurance.  I thought this would change the cost of my Tiger's insurance, but they just applied the discount anyway.  It wasn't easy.  Phoning Bennett's direct they said they couldn't insure an electric bike.  I went and did a search on one of the comparison websites and it came bike with a quote from Bennetts!  So phoned them again and got it sorted. 

It is more expensive than my current insurance is/was though.  Feel I'm taking a hit for no particular reason other than they can rip us off.  My recent renewal for a Tiger800 (admittedly  6 year old and only worth about 3-4000) was about £125 and the new insurance for the 2019 DSR is about £400.  Exactly the same cover- in fact slightly larger excess on the DSR.  I am putting part of this down to the value of the bike.  I'm mid forties, male, with a garaged bike, 17 years no claims, 9000 miles a year.

Talking of which, anyone want to buy a nice Tiger800???

[Tom_Ruyter]

So, I bought a SR/F which i'll take delivery of on the 23rd. Thought I'd chime in with the results for myself.

I found the Zero not too bad to insure, based on the fact i'm old (40), have a flawless riding history (so far) and don't live in London, Mine cost £380 for the year, fully comp (SDP&C), from Performance Direct (policy underwritten by Axa), which doesn't seem terible for such an expensive / early adopter thing. I was reasonably happy, and becuse it's a second bike, it only has 3 years no claims avaliable to it. All in, I though it'd be worse, considering what some of you are being quoted.

Comparison sites gave me loads of results (well, 11. ranging from decent to downright laughable).

[Richard230]

I'll never forget the time that I insured my first electric motorcycle, an Electric Motorsport GPR-S, with Progressive Insurance in 2009.  They had no idea what engine size to give it to fit into their premium schedule (which is apparently rated by engine size - and maybe also how many "R"s are in the bike's name  ).  So the insurance agent specified that it had a "0" cc engine.  With that size "engine" I received a year of insurance for only $5. 

Needless to say that didn't last long. Every year since then my Zero's insurance premium has been going up, until now it is more than my BMW R1200RS.    

[SkyYeti]

Hi all,

Going to pick up my SRF on Saturday
Wish I'd seen Tom's post from the 18th as I didn't come across Performance Direct when I was searching for insurance.

I eventually went with Lexham as all the others were +£1200 pa
Lexham charged me £690 fully comp (No option for 3rd Party only) - 0 years NCB, 40 year old, living in Milton Keynes, had my licence since 2001.

Like others have mentioned, the SRF is an unknown quantity so many insurers aren't willing to take the risk (plus I suspect a bit of laziness on their part as the number of Zero SRFs on the road probably accounts for 0.00001% of the bikes so they just can't be bothered

Anyway, glad I found these forums.

[Fred]

Insurance in the UK is the main reason I replaced my FXS with a Ducati Hypermotard. I loved the FXS and wouldn't have replaced it if some idiot hadn't written it off, but when it came to buying another bike I didn't like the fact that there were so few options for insuring it. Lexham had been increasing my insurance every year for no reason at all. With very little ability to shop around it felt too risky to stay electric. It should change soon when electric bikes are more mainstream and if it does I may well ditch the dinosaur juice again.

[petewarm]

Sr/F  got Nov 2019, ended up with Lexham T £850ish.
Just had a renewal notice £590
Pointed out the tracker built into bike, reduced my mileage from 6000 to 3000 (may regret that!)  £530.

If it reduced the same proportion next year I will feel I'm back in the normal zone..

[TheRan]

That's a nice reduction, I'm also with Lexham and have my renewal coming up soon so hopefully mine drops a bit too. I paid a total of £1080 including helmet and leather, legal, personal accident, and breakdown cover. Cover for just the bike was around £650. 28 with 1 year riding experience and 1 year NCB on a provisional licence with a CBT, I'll be 29 with 2 years NCB by the time I renew.

[TheRan]

Got my renewal letter this morning and it's a very good result, £706 including all the optional cover I had before or £462 without them (fully comp still).