US Insurer Hikes Tesla Premiums Due To 'Higher-Than-Average' Claim Rates (theverge.com) 125
An anonymous reader writes: "National insurer AAA is raising its prices for Tesla's Model S and Model X, citing higher-than-average claim rates and repair costs for the two cars," reports The Verge. "According to a report from Automotive News, AAA said it could raise its premiums by as much as 30 percent for the vehicles. Other large insurers including State Farm and Geico told the publication they couldn't say whether or not they would also increase prices, but noted that data about claim frequency is always used to calculate insurance premiums." Musk claims that AAA doesn't know what they are doing, but fails to be specific as to what is incorrect about their data or its usage. [The company says the AAA has made its decision based on faulty information from the Highway Loss Data Institute.]
Innuendo (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been following Tesla's stock price of late.
It's at an all-time high ($347) going into the shareholders meeting, and most of the news is filled with innuendo intended to cause panic selling.
Examples: "Tesla: Could confusion kill model 3?", "Is Tesla Inc Stock Worth All the Controversy?", "Tesla Cars: Easy To Total, Expensive To Repair", and so on.
It's impossible to research stocks by reading the financial news nowadays. Lots of manipulation-driven reporting.
Re:Innuendo (Score:4, Interesting)
Musk said Tesla's stock price is "higher than we have any right to deserve", yet people ignore him and keep driving it up. Apparently they don't trust him when it comes to his evaluation of his company.
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There are some sane reasons that this might be still a good investment.
Tesla is planning to have their autopilot in a state that it can do driveway to driveway from one coast to the other by the end of the year.
At this point, there will be some tens of thousands of autopilot-hardware-capable vehicles on the road.
It could be that they can get autodrive rolled out and working properly before any competitor.
Which could have obvious benefits.
Autopilot in a $30K car somewhat kills other vendors which might have
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I was referring to stock price, not anything else.
As to 'the market not being there' - he has preorders for 400K cars.
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Citation:
Model S costs $30,000 to produce [electrek.co]
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Agreed. I have a two way commute distance of 80 miles today. A Leaf or e-Golf leaves me no breathing room at the end of the day, especially in the midwest winters.
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That's an interesting exploration into fallacy. Pity a negative attribution fallacy is basically the same fallacy as a positive one.
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Sure, because if an entrepreneur doesn't get things 100% right, then he's a failure. But don't let the fact that 8 of 10 businesses fail within the first 18 months let that affect your opinion of Musk. What's his failure rate been?
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GP didn't say he was a failure, but rightfully points out that Musk and his fangirl brigade can't ever accept that Tesla might have done someone wrong.
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Investing vs speculating might not be all black and white, but on a scale where do you suppose Tesla fits? Would it not be reasonable that "research" into a stock primarily driven by speculation, finds mainly speculation?
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Not a Tesla investor here, so I don't know much about it's valuation. But I do want to point out that I see them on the road multiple times a day here in the northern VA area (granted, this is a relatively wealthy part of the country), so that tends to make me believe there's a bit more to the company than speculation.
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Not a Tesla investor here, so I don't know much about it's valuation. But I do want to point out that I see them on the road multiple times a day here in the northern VA area (granted, this is a relatively wealthy part of the country), so that tends to make me believe there's a bit more to the company than speculation.
I see what you did there.. and I tip my hat to you.
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Not a Tesla investor here, so I don't know much about it's valuation. But I do want to point out that I see them on the road multiple times a day here in the northern VA area (granted, this is a relatively wealthy part of the country), so that tends to make me believe there's a bit more to the company than speculation.
I see what you did there.. and I tip my hat to you.
What? Did it move the stock price? This isn't exactly a place where big money hangs out.
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Minor correction: AAA is a non-profit organization.
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Anecdote: My wife has a Tesla, and she has a super-low deductible policy. She takes her car in to get every little micro-scratch repaired. After more than a dozen trips to the body shop, I don't see any way that the insurance company could be making money off her policy. I don't know if every Tesla owner is this neurotic, but if she is any way typical, then that could explain the problem.
Disclaimer: I drive a 19 year old minivan with more rust than paint. My insurance is liability only.
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Disclaimer: I drive a 19 year old minivan with more rust than paint. My insurance is liability only.
Hello,
I have scheduled an appointment for you on Friday 9:20AM. Please come in with your minivan.
-The vehicle inspection Bureau.
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Re: Started to low.. (Score:2)
Huh... Whatcho know 'bout Maine?
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Now if only CA would figure out that they should require vehicles to be inspected every once in a while. It's pretty common to see vehicles litterally held together with string and duct tape here, because there's no legally mandated inspection.
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The only test is a smog test.
A smog test tells you nothing at all about whether the bumper is missing; the brakes are fucked; the lights don't work; the chassis was welded together after a crash; the crumple zones are all already collapsed; ...
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Go figure...
They live next to Quebec!
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Re:This is entirely expected (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if the autopilot requires any calibration to align all of the various sensors?
If I owned a body shop, I would not feel comfortable repairing, and putting my a$$ on the line saying that all the complicated systems on that car were properly repaired without specialized training, equipment, and certification, and I highly doubt there's enough of them around to make it worth the investment.
Let the Tesla service center deal with it!
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I wonder if the autopilot requires any calibration to align all of the various sensors?
If I owned a body shop, I would not feel comfortable repairing, and putting my a$$ on the line saying that all the complicated systems on that car were properly repaired without specialized training, equipment, and certification, and I highly doubt there's enough of them around to make it worth the investment.
Let the Tesla service center deal with it!
If a repair shop doesn't know what liability insurance is, then he probably shouldn't be in the repair business anyway.
Lots of independent garages make safety critical repairs every day (many of which require specialized training, equipment and certification), and they'll continue to do so when it makes sense financially. Though it may not make sense to invest in the tooling to service cars from a manufacturer that has only sold about 500,000 of them in total, versus, say, servicing a Toyota where millions
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You do know that your liability insurance premiums can skyrocket if you have liability issues, right?
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If a repair shop doesn't know what liability insurance is, then he probably shouldn't be in the repair business anyway.
Liability claims always arise by accident but the insurer will most certainly nail you if you even make a slight habit of introducing liability claims. We haven't even mentioned yet the moral hazard of ignoring how he'd be sending innocent people off with cars not working properly. I'm sure you didn't mean to condone that but that's certainly what you made it look like. The guy is just trying to make a point that learning how to repair a Tesla vehicle is an investment he's not willing to make at this tim
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They'd also replace wiring harnesses rather than futz with it like on another car
What? Why would there be any difference there? You repair the harness when it's cheaper than buying a new harness, depending on the number of hours you're going to have to invest. Added complexity in the wiring is irrelevant, you don't work on wires which aren't damaged, or which aren't part of your current problem.
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You haven't done a salt water flood car, apparently. You replace all the harnesses there because even if they work on the day it goes back to the owner, it won't work some time afterward. And there's literally no achievable way to get the corrosion out of the harness once it's tasted salt water.
I wouldn't even think about touching a salt water flood car. Not even for a second. There is no part of the vehicle that does not affect negatively, except maybe the tires. Hell, I passed up a fresh water flood Land Rover.
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That's already the case with any electrical system. You fuck up the ABS or something and the person dies, they'll be in your shop asking you what you did wrong and how much insurance you have within a week.
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The law needs to keep up with tech and make sure that the equipment needed to calibrate the auto-pilot and anything else is available to all garages. Same as the diagnostic codes via OBD-II.
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Aluminum stretches when it bends. It's almost impossible to straighten a seriously bent aluminum part.
Aluminum also age hardens. 50 year old Al cars are brittle. Their panels crack if a person leans on them too hard. Which matters because 50 year old Al cars are rare and very expensive (e.g. AC Cobras).
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Tesla has been providing more training and certification of repair shops. Tesla had to address the problem that there were too few shops that were certified to repair the cars.
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I wonder if the autopilot requires any calibration to align all of the various sensors?
No the cruise control is not supposed to be driving the car on its own in any case. So any misalignment would automatically be picked up by the sensible driver who always keeps his hands on the steering wheel.
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Or, you know, things going underneath the car like debris, potholes, rocks, curbs... have you ever seen the aftermath of a car accident? Things can get really screwed up.
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Why are the batteries going to hold up any less well than the engine block? They're down low and inside the frame. So an incoming car has to penetrate into the safety cage to get far into the battery pack. Classic off-center front end collision with an ICE the impact is taken directly on the engine whereas on the Tesla it just smashes a big crumple zone. Why would the engine, with all those moving parts, do well there?
Having been in that exact accident with my old ICE, I know the engine didn't like it...
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It depends on which tesla and what it hits.
The tesla is built a bit more tanklike (including steel rails) than many other sports cars. If you look on Youtube you can find many accidents where the tesla is drivable to even only mildly damaged and the other car is spectacularly totaled. And the driver in the tesla is in much better shape too.
I don't own a tesla but I was surprised to see how durable they are.
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by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06, 2017 @01:55AM (#54557459)
Dunno, I prefer a komatsu mining truck. I think I will be walking out of pretty much any accident unharmed
Aye.. but the gas mileage is terrible!
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Tesla is NOT a sports car. It is perhaps a muscle car. Far too heavy to be a sports car, to say nothing of the definition requiring two doors and seats.
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The kind of severe accidents you are talking about where the battery might be damaged but an engine block would survive, like rear-end hard enough to "smear" the driver against the wheel or a bad t-bone will write the entire car off regardless. Maybe the law in the US is different, but in Europe you can't even fix badly damaged vehicles in many cases because they can't be proven to be safe in future accidents.
What matters here is less severe accidents where the vehicle is recoverable.
Tesla battery packs are
Send it back to Tesla... (Score:2)
I thought, shit, must suck to have a Tesla in NM that can't even be fixed without shipping it to the next state over... but since the truck pulling it was a Tesla truck (Ford or Chevy pick-up, I think) I figured it was a warranty repair at least. There was no visible damage on the car.
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"I expect a lot of people aren't gifted with common fucking sense. "
I expect that it's not common if less than half of the people are "gifted" with it.
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1) No used parts to pick, no clips to cut off of prior wrecks, etc
Cut clips off? Tee hee. Nobody does that except for project vehicles or exotically expensive vehicles, except most of those are now made out of carbon fiber and you're not cutting a clip off and welding it back onto anything. Irrelevant in this market. Nobody wants a repaired vehicle at this price point.
2) OEM parts are expensive!
Have you priced auto parts? They are stupid expensive. Mercedes parts kind of win this competition, but oddly Ford parts are right up there.
3) Batteries aren't going to hold up well in a crash, not as well as an engine block at least.
The engine is a lot more than the block. In a crash, the average en
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IIRC a Tesla has two launches in Ludicrous mode before the battery needs a charge.
Also, it needs time to cool the engine and batteries after a launch. Heat is why the Tesla ludicrous mode dies at 60 mph. Nothing left.
Do Americans even understand insurance? (Score:2, Insightful)
Over the last decade I have become convinced that nearly all (a vast majority) of Americans don't understand anything about insurance, don't understand what insurance is and how it works as a business.
Lets say I start an insurance company and attract customers by offering car insurance that would have a high deductible and low monthly payments. Say 15,000USD deductible and maybe 50USD/month premium payments, so it makes no sense to approach me until your loss reaches 15,000USD but if it goes over that limi
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way to create and attack a strawman. Nobody was talking about preventing women from buying birth control, the argument is that there is no reason for a client of an insurance company to participate in a pool based on a product that has these 2 properties: 1. the client paying can never benefit from it because he can never get pregnant. 2. the client ends up subsidising another client directly thus turning an insurance product into something it is not, destroying the value of the product, preventing people
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No idea why you were modded down to -1.
Here's what you were responding to:
It's a nice writeup... except.
the next 25 countries provide better coverage at 1/3 of the cost with lower adult and infant morality.
And my medication that costs $180 per six months here costs $30 per six months in those countries (and is included in those lower costs).
You are probably missing the part where hospitals are required to provide health care for people at extremely high cost thru the emergency room. And when those people ca
Re: Do Americans even understand insurance? (Score:2)
If it is too long, and you didn't read it, why would you type a reply?
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If the healthcare industry actually ran like the car industry insurance would be compulsory. The ACA tried to make insurance compulsory. The Republicans fought it in court and the only way to get the indidivdual mandate through was to disguise it as a tax and hence reducing its effectiveness. The Republicans and Insurance lobbyists sabotaged the ACA at every turn and Obama made a series of bad compromises which ended up with the ACA not really solving the problem and giving Republicans ammunition. It would
AAA, why have you forsaken me?! (Score:1)
Some numbers from Geico (Score:5, Interesting)
Just ran a quote for a new Tesla Model S 70 on Geico and it comes out to $270/mo, ouch. My few years old Subaru is only $75/mo with full coverage. Even a new Audi S6 would run me a far more reasonable $130/mo.
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Audi A6/S6 is kind of an outlier with unusually low insurance rates for me, so admittedly I cherry picked that one (even A4/S4 is more expensive). Also never have been in a crash/no speeding ticket (though I did get a ticket for going too slow a year back... a different story). I did find that Geico has a lot lower cost than others in my area, not sure why. Just quoted a 2017 Miata and it's $80/mo with full coverage... even a new Prius would be more expensive... I don't get insurance rates.
Re:Some numbers from Geico (Score:4, Informative)
Insurance rates are based on statistics. If a particular model tends to be involved in expensive accidents, it will have a higher rate, even if the car itself is junk. The statistics don't care why such cars are accident-prone or why they are expensive to repair.
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Based on literally saving 50% by switching between one well known carrier to another I'd say insurance rates are based on bullshit.
I'm tempted to chastise the one I switched away from who was charging me > $600 for 6 months and praising the one who is only charging me $300 for the same period - and who also did a much better job at paying claims when there was a tornado here, but I don't want to come across as a shill.
I'll just say the "good hands" were in my wallet.
I have a theory that since I initiall
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Sounds like Tesla needs to get into the insurance business. lol.
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A Tesla is marketed as a luxury car and has a complex drive system and a expensive battery and also very few third party parts so repairs are probably expensive.
It is kind of the cost of doing business with this kind of car
Prems should go down if/when Tesla's become more common and/or license parts
Makes Sense (Score:2)
What is the first thing most shops do when working on a vehicle...body work or...(mechanical?) ?
Disconnect the battery.
Disconnecting the Tesla Batteries and making them safe is not, I expect, the same as disconnecting a DieHard battery.
Lack of technicians qualified to work on the Tesla is likely driving up the repair costs.
Hell, First Responders are going through special training to learn how to deal with a Telsa wreck and the batteries. Your average body shop guy is starting with much less knowledge.