Electric car insurance: New data reveals the cheapest EVs to insure
Moneysupermarket found that the French supermini was more than £500 per year cheaper to insure than the nation’s priciest EV – the Jaguar I-Pace.
The insurance comparison site examined policies sold through its service in the first five months of this year to uncover the cheapest and most expensive EVs to insure.
Its data showed that Tesla continues to struggle with high premiums, with variants of its two best-sellers accounting for half of the 10 most expensive cars.
It also showed, however, that the average premium across all EVs continues to fall, from £587 in October 2025 to £561 in May 2026.
At the cheapest end of the scale, the award-winning Renault 5 carries an average insurance premium of £418 per year. Just behind it, the Mini Cooper S Level 2 costs £445 per year, while the higher-specified Level 3 is an extra £41 per year. Between the two Mini variants the Volkswagen ID.3 Life, comes in at £477, while the Nissan Leaf Tekna rounds out the five cheapest EVs at £487.
Moneysupermarkt’s data also revealed that none of the 10 cheapest EVs to insure falls foul of the Expensive Car Supplement, which adds £440 a year to vehicle tax and applies to any EV priced over £50,000.
At the opposite end of the scale, half of the most expensive EVs to insure also attract the ECS, pushing up their running costs further.
Jaguar’s now-discounted I-Pace has proved the costliest to insure so far this year, with an average premium of £921.
Just behind it is the first of five Tesla variants – the Model Y Long Range AWD – with an average insurance premium of £895. The Model Y also occupies third place in the table, with the Standard Range model coming in at a similarly punchy £878. Mercedes’ previous generation GLC took fourth spot with an average bill of £872 ahead of another Tesla, this time the Model 3 Standard range Plus, at £868.
Alicia Hempsted, car insurance expert at MoneySuperMarket said falling EV premiums along with recent VED changes made pinning down running costs “a moving target”. She commented: “Whilst some EV drivers will now pay less than they would have done a few months ago, others are paying more.
“The Renault 5, Mini Cooper Electric and VW ID.3 all come in under £550 a year to insure, and also miss the Expensive Car Supplement. For households making the switch from a petrol or diesel hatchback, that is a genuinely compelling running-cost picture.
“At the other end, premium EVs like the Jaguar I-Pace and Audi e-tron can cost almost £1,000 a year to insure, and they are also affected by the Expensive Car Supplement. The threshold rise has spared a handful of mid-priced EVs that would previously have been included, but the lesson is the same: with so many moving parts, drivers really do need to look at the full picture before they commit.”
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