The car manufacturers are jumping on to the environmental trend along with everybody else. Cities are trying to decrease emissions into the atmosphere, Chicago has even declared itself a green city. I have a friend in my Sociology class who runs his car on vegetable oil which he bums off a restaurant near his important. Everybody is finding some way to be green, and this has spawned the higher rate of production of hybrid cars, even among manufacturers of high performance and muscle cars. Car insurance companies are not ignorant to this trend, and as with anything new that concerns cars, they have researched it to find a way to see if they can make more money as a result.
Turns out they can, at least in the way of attracting more customers. Meanwhile, if you’re paying all that money for your fancy high performance hybrid, then you can get a relief and a break through discount car insurance just because you own a hybrid car. There are three car insurance companies nationwide which are now offering discount car insurance rates to owners of hybrid cars. Aren’t we non owners of hybrid cars just jealous? I know I am.
A hybrid car by their definition is defined as a vehicle who has a new engine powered by a battery along with an engine powered by gas. So, my friends veggie oil car wouldn’t apply (sorry, Alex), but other cars classified as hybrids would. One company offers a ten percent discount, but not for every type of coverage. While you can apply the discount to your collision, comprehensive, liability, and so on, it doesn’t work with a discount car insurance rate for underinsured/uninsured motorist coverage nor with personal injury protection, which is also called PIP. As for the other two companies, they also give a ten percent car insurance discounted rate for drivers of hybrid vehicles, but it goes for all types of coverage, even personal injury protection. In the state of California, this discount car insurance rate is only dropped by five percent.
Why do they do this? Well, the researchers went to work once the hybrid trend began to rise, and the information they came away with informed them that drivers with hybrid cars, based on who buys them and how many claims are made by them, would be more responsible drivers and less likely to make claims.
The reason for this is because this drivers also have many other characteristics which would have lowered their car insurance rates, even independent of driving a hybrid car, so it’s almost like they’re getting a double discount. These traits include their marital status–drivers of hybrid cars are more likely to be married; their credit–let’s face it, hybrids are expensive and you must have had good credit to get approved to buy one; their age–mostly over twenty five; as well as their driver records and claims history. All of these factors pointed favorably towards drivers of hybrids, allowing high performance car insurance companies to give them discounts.