A son pays around $2500 for 6 months cover on 2023 Porsche Cayenne + 2022 Mercedes GLE.

Very odd insurance in Texas - you have the car value and you choose how much cover for 3rd party damage and medical care for passengers in your car and 3rd party medical care costs.

His X5 was written off in a rear end shunt (he was in middle of 5 cars & stopped) - the blame lay with a Ford pick-up driver who had $25K limit on his 3rd party liability. Son's insurer paid out $64K for the 18 mth old car.

In the UK car insurance is effectively unlimited damages for 3rd party or extremely large damage to property.

I believe there was no insurance requirement at one point in time in Texas.

Say 70 years ago insurance was made compulsory and the minimum 3rd party liability set $25K - enough for say 7/8 small homes at that time. Written into State Laws and never updated!

Decades later $25K paid for the 1st car hit - the rest claimed off their own insurance, if they had it! Nobody was seriously hurt but some were taken to hospital - my D-i-L & grandson were fine. The X5 was written off as the insurer could not get a fixed price repair and garages ware wary of electrical / electronic money pits - the cheapest quote was $45K plus $???? for extras needed.

The driver who wrote off 4 cars had no assets and lived on a "trailer park" - he cannot be sued as there is nothing worth having.

Having $25K cover means he was allowed on the road as he was legally insured, he was fined $400+ for several driving offences! Court room full of aggrieved drivers but he changed his plea of not guilty in court.

I believe there was no insurance requirement at one point in time in Texas.

I was in Australia in the mid 90's and, certainly at the time, insurance was not compulsory.

In Western Australia your vehicle registration covers third party personal injury but not third party property damage.

The insurance industry has massive amounts of data for claims and can sort the numbers for probability of theft or accidents etc down to street level.

My own experience moving from a 10yo Berlingo worth a few hundred (in 2015) to a nearly new Skoda around £10k is that the car's value, ie the cost to replace, isn't that big a factor. Premium stayed around £250/£300.

Where I keep it, usually on the drive and how I use it - including work travel - have more effect. A conviction for speeding must up it a bit judging by how my quotes increased during a period when Admiral wanted to know if you'd been on a Speed Awareness Course.

The thing with EV's needs more research. My daughters e-208 costs a similar amount to the Skoda Octavia she and her hubby use as a family car.

I suspect there's a particular issue with Teslas, or at least some models. However, without going full geek on research I cannot put my finger on why though it looks as though the way they're built and spare parts cost/availability are a significant factor.

I think Einstein could not figure out how insurance companies arrive at their figures, neither could the top 100 "most intelligent" people figure it either.

It is probably true that not many actuaries know much about the internal structure of the atom, or the concept of space-time ?