Any savvy insurance shopper knows that the safer your car is, the easier it is to find affordable insurance. Until recently, however, that rule of thumb has never applied to electric vehicles. Now, that may change.
Last month, in some of the very first safety tests of electric vehicles by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), both the Chevrolet Volt and the Nissan Leaf earned top scores for front, side, and rear-impact crashes and for rollover crash protection.
According to the IIHS, even though both the Volt and the Leaf are considered to be small cars because of their footprint, their battery packs make them weigh nearly as much as full-sized sedans. (The Volt weighs 3,760 pounds, much like the Chevrolet Impala, while the leaner Leaf, at 3,370 pounds is more akin to the mid-sized Nissan Altima.) The extra weight actually boosts the safety profiles of both cars, since heavier cars aren't pushed around as much in a crash.
While both cars are considered electric, the Volt actually has a small gasoline engine that kicks in after about 40 miles of driving on a single electric charge. The Leaf, on the other hand, runs only on battery power, and has a range of roughly one hundred miles.
IIHS representatives said these two vehicles were the first road-worthy electric cars it has tested. For the purposes of research, the institute did test two smaller electric vehicles, the Wheego Whip and Gem e2, but both of those are more like golf carts than real cars, and didn't do well in side-impact crash tests. However, the institute points out, those are low-speed vehicles that are not required to adhere to federal safety guidelines.
While the official crash test results for the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf have not yet been released by the federal government, IIHS chief administrative officer Joe Nolan says, "What powers the wheels is different, but the level of safety for the Volt and Leaf is as high as any of our other top crash test performers."
The IIHS is funded by insurance companies. All of the cars it tests are purchased directly from dealers.
