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There are a lot of good things people tend to say about eco-friendly cars. Without any doubt, the lower or zero carbon footprint associated with hybrid and electric vehicles is a good thing and remains to be the main selling point for all environmental-friendly cars. However, for a number of years the owners of hybrid vehicles had more reasons to appreciate their cars besides the lower emissions and higher gas mileage. If you've ever tried getting car insurance quotes for hybrid drive cars you definitely know that it's actually much cheaper to insure these vehicles. Does this mean that eco-friendly cars are safer and cheaper in terms of insurance? Or there are different peculiarities to such a tendency?

The reason why hybrid cars tend to garner lower car insurance quotes has nothing to do with the peculiarities of this vehicle type. One would assume that they are safer and based on innovative technologies that make the cars less prone to accidents and cause lower liability costs. However, an extensive cross-study of hybrid vehicles and their traditional engine analogues has indicated that there's no difference in the risks associated with the two drive types. Hybrid drive vehicles tend to have the same accident rates, safety features, liability costs and slightly higher repair costs when compared to the same car models with traditional engines. So why do hybrid car owners often get lower car insurance quotes?

It's all about the politics, namely the environmental initiative the Government has adopted in the early 2000's. When the first hybrid drive vehicles have entered the mass consumer market they were much costlier than their regular peers. And in order to stimulate the sales of hybrid drives, the authorities have imposed insurance companies to introduce incentives for such vehicles. This way, it was initially more expensive to buy a hybrid drive car but in the long run it turned out to be much cheaper thanks to lower car insurance quotes and higher gas mileage. The program was a success, and you can easily see that by looking at all the hybrid vehicles in the traffic. Nevertheless, the duration of the program has ended several years ago and some insurance companies have eliminated the incentives, making hybrid drives equal in insurance costs to respective traditional-drive models. At the same time, the prices on hybrid drives have decreased thanks to the growing competition in this segment of the industry. That's why getting cheap insurance for hybrid vehicles has become more problematic, but the overall cost of buying such a car has remained the same in the long run. Ok, but what about electric cars everyone's so enthusiastic about?

Truth to be told, electric drive vehicles still represent an unknown when it comes to insurance. They are still rather scarce to accumulate any significant body of data for insurance analysts to work with. That's why they are generally rates as "neutral" when it comes to assessing the possible risks - there's still not enough data to assign electric cars to a particular risk category. But one thing is for sure: if there won't be any Government initiatives as in the case of hybrid motor vehicles, getting car insurance will be rather costs for electric drives at first. It's very likely that the car insurance quotes people will be getting for their electric cars will jump up when enough statistical data will be accumulated. And let's not forget that the technology is rather new and there aren't so many mechanics able to perform a repair if the car gets damaged. So this will push the average car insurance quotes even higher until there will be more professionals able to address such repairs in mass.