With too many vehicles parked in everyone's garage (including our own), and gas prices going through the roof, we decided to buy a Prius, the little hybrid vehicle made by Toyota. We thought at least one of our cars would be less damaging to the environment. After we waited nearly a year, our car came in and we picked up our Prius for about $25K--a bargain in this economy. We promptly added the new car to our ALLSTATE INSURANCE policy.
Leave it to ALLSTATE INSURANCE to take away an economic gain by charging us $1,500 per year to insure this car! (We have had absolutely NO insurance claims auto or otherwise for more than 10 years). This is more than we pay to insure our gas-guzzling, expensive Toyota Sienna Van. How can a little Prius cost more to insure than a large van?
Allstate says the parts can be costly to repair/install. Now, it costs Toyota less than $25K to build the whole car; why does ALLSTATE consider it so costly to repair? Personally, I think they use whatever excuse they can think of to raise an insurance rate. I give a big THWFFFTTT! to ALLSTATE and plan to shop all of my insurance policies (they are all with ALLSTATE) next year.
Susan is missing something: insurers base their rates partly on the cost to repair the vehicle being insured. As a limited-production, newly designed vehicle, the Prius is expensive to work on and therefore expensive to insure. There's also been limited experience with whether the large battery causes problems in a crash. Insurance companies don't like uncertainty -- ergo, higher rates.
