New Consumer Intelligence research into 100 Chinese EV risks across the UK's four major price comparison websites (PCWs) finds an insurance market that is broadly engaging with the segment, but still pricing and covering it unevenly.
Chinese-owned electric vehicle brands are no longer a curiosity at the edge of the UK market. They are now a mainstream force reshaping both the roads and the insurance panels that cover them.
Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) accounted for 27.5% of new car registrations in July 2026, up from 21.3% a year earlier, while BEV registrations rose 44.5% year-on-year. Chinese-owned manufacturers have been a major part of that shift: their share of UK registrations nearly doubled year-to-date, from 11.8% in the first seven months of 2025 to 19.6% over the same period in 2026. Several Chinese-brand models placed among July's overall top 10 best-sellers, with one ranking as the UK's third best-selling BEV.
The question now is whether insurance has kept pace with that growth.
Our bespoke collection of 100 Chinese EV risks, run across Confused, MoneySuperMarket, GoCompare and Compare the Market in July 2026, found that 181 of the 221 brands on the aggregator panels (82%) returned at least one quote for a Chinese EV.
Coverage was remarkably consistent across the four PCWs, with brand quoting rates ranging from 82.1% on one site to 84.5% on another. Chinese EV coverage is therefore not far behind that of other EVs: 193 of the 221 brands (87%) quoted for at least one non-Chinese EV, a gap of just five percentage points.
Still, 40 brands, 18% of the panel, did not return a single Chinese EV quote across any of the 100 risks tested, including several recognisable consumer insurance names.
The pattern becomes more interesting within brand families. One insurer's entry-level tiers have never quoted for a Chinese EV, even though its higher-tier products do. Another shows a similar divide within its product range: its telematics-based product quotes for just 8.2% of Chinese EV risks, compared with 70–74% across its standard tiers.
At group level, quotability also varies considerably. The strongest-performing groups quote for around four in five Chinese EV risks, while another major multi-product group averages just 3.1% quotability across six products, despite quoting for around a third of non-Chinese EVs. That points to what looks like a deliberate group-level stance rather than simply a quirk of individual products.
Among the brands that do quote, availability is also heavily concentrated. The top 10 quoting brands average 82.5% quotability, compared with just 1.4% for the bottom 10, while a third of all quoting brands, 59 of the 181, return a quote on fewer than one in five Chinese EV risks.
Taken together, the results point to a market that is broadly engaging with Chinese EVs, but with very different levels of appetite beneath the headline coverage rate. Some differences appear to be driven by individual products or tiers; in other cases, the pattern is much broader.
There is a plausible explanation for that variation. With insurance pricing and underwriting decisions built on large volumes of historical data showing how vehicles perform as risks, Chinese EVs simply have not been on UK roads long enough to provide the same depth of evidence as more established marques.
In that absence, insurers appear to be taking different approaches to the segment, with some willing to quote extensively while others remain much more selective, and in some cases appearing to take a position across much of their product portfolio.
Price tells an equally interesting story.
Across the full panel, the median premium for a Chinese EV was £1,281, compared with £1,390 for other EVs – making Chinese EVs £109 cheaper.
But the picture reverses when we look at the quotes customers are most likely to notice.
Across the five cheapest quotes returned for each risk, the median Chinese EV premium was £103 higher than for other EVs: £963 versus £860.
A lower overall median suggests Chinese EVs can be competitively priced, but the higher median among the five cheapest quotes indicates that this competitiveness is not consistently reaching the sharp end of the market, the prices most visible to customers when they compare policies.
Telematics products are doing much of the work at that sharp end, repeatedly appearing among the five cheapest quotes across three of the four PCWs. But competitiveness varies substantially between insurance groups.
The largest differences in Chinese EV favour reach an 18-point gap in their share of the cheapest quotes. At least one group shows a comparable swing in the opposite direction, favouring non-Chinese EVs.
So even where insurers are willing to compete for this business, they remain divided on where Chinese EVs should sit on price.
There are also signs that the market could become more competitive as insurers gain more experience with the segment.
The spread between the cheapest and fifth-cheapest quote is wider for Chinese EVs than for non-Chinese EVs: 37% compared with 31%, equivalent to £401 versus £372.
That wider gap leaves more room for insurers currently outside the top five to improve their position and challenge the most competitive quotes as the market develops and more data becomes available.
Compulsory excesses currently provide another point in Chinese EVs' favour. The market-average excess is £334, £37 lower than the £371 average for non-Chinese EVs.
So, while Chinese EVs are not consistently cheaper to insure, neither are they being treated as uniformly higher-risk vehicles. The market response is much more nuanced, and much more fragmented.
Chinese EVs have moved decisively beyond the niche category, and most of the insurance market has moved with them.
But engagement is not the same as equal treatment.
Around one in five brands still won't quote for any of the Chinese EV risks tested. Among those that do, quotability is concentrated heavily among a relatively small group of insurers. And although Chinese EVs have a lower overall median premium, that advantage disappears, and reverses, when we focus on the five cheapest quotes that customers are most likely to see.
The research also shows that there is no single insurance-market response. Some insurers appear comfortable quoting Chinese EVs across much of their range, while others are much more selective. In some cases, the difference is between tiers or products; in others, the pattern appears to extend across a wider group portfolio.
For insurers still deciding how aggressively to approach the segment, the risk is no longer simply being caught out by the growth of Chinese EVs. That growth is already happening.
The bigger risk may be failing to understand where customers are actually seeing competitive prices, how competitors are managing uncertainty, and which parts of the market are already willing to embrace Chinese EVs.
The insurance market has, broadly, caught up with the arrival of Chinese EVs. It just hasn't reached a common view of how to price or underwrite them yet.
Source: Consumer Intelligence Bespoke Collection, 100 Chinese EV risks run across Confused, MoneySuperMarket, GoCompare and Compare the Market, July 2026 (collection dates 15th, 16th and 22nd July); SMMT registration data, July 2026. Analysis by Michael Dingwall, Insight Analyst.
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