Self Driving Car Insurance

Not directly related to the topic, I spose, but I have a Model 3, and absolutely love it, but the Smart Cruise Control/Driver Assist is, I hate to admit it, pretty annoying (I think it's gotten worse, too). It's incredibly "jumpy" and over-cautious. A car could pull out in your way 300m ahead of you, totally safely, and the car will shit itself and slam on the brakes to be over-cautious. Same thing with pedestrians who are walking alongside the road, posing no risk.

It's so jarring at times that I'll often omit to use the Cruise Control if I have my wife in the car (so as not to give her car sickness) or other passengers (so as not to make them think I'm a terrible driver!).

I now have developed a totally new skill which is to temporarily disengage it when I see a mistake incoming, then re-engaging it immediately after the moment passes.

NB I am in Australia and don't have FSD so this is all just using Adaptive Cruise Control. Perhaps the much harder challenge of FSD (or near-FSD) is executed a lot better, but you wouldn't assume so.

I'm quite skeptical of Tesla's reliability claims. But for exactly that reason, I welcome a company like Lemonade betting actual money on those claims. Either way, this is bound to generate some visibility into the actual accident rates.

If it autonomous or self-driving then why is the person in the car paying for the insurance? Surely if it's Tesla making the decisions, they need the insurance?

I own a Model Y with hardware version 4. FSD prevented my from getting in an accident with a drunk driver. It reacted much faster to the situation than I could have. Ever since, I’m sold that in a lot of circumstances, machines can drive better than humans.

Tesla have their own Insurance product which is already very competitive compared to other providers. Not sure if lemonade can beat them . Tesla's insurance product has similar objective in place already where it rewards self driving over manual driving.

You're telling me this car insurance drives itself?

I was curious what the break-even is where the insurance discount covers the $99/mo FSD subscription. I got a Lemonade quote around $240/mo (12k mi/yr lease on a Model 3), so 50% off would save ~$120/mo - i.e. it would cover FSD and still leave ~$21/mo net. Or, "free FSD is you use it".

I believe, at the end of the day, insurance companies will be the ones driving FSD adoption. The media will sensationalize the outlier issues of FSD software, but insurance companies will set the incentives for humans to stop driving.

Yes, this is giving away everything about your vehicles driving to a third party for sale or, manufacture. I don't like this personally and I don't like it for my vehicle either. Where I go in my vehicle and when I do it is my business. With vehicles being IoT connected, we are forced to surrender that data as there is no opt-out except for disconnecting the antenna. Not to mention going in to be serviced what kind of data is pulled off.

Hmmm. The source for the "FSD is safer" claim might not be wholly independent: "Tesla’s data shows that Full Self-Driving miles are twice as safe as manual driving"

A 50% discount is pretty damning empirical evidence for FSD being better at driving your Tesla than you are.

Lemonade purchased Metromile and significantly increased prices. 2.5x if I recall correctly. This has forced me to move to Geico. Now, since prices have increased and new self driving car insurance is giving a discount, are you effectively paying same old rate?

99/month is more than I have been willing to pay for FSD, but if it lowers my insurance by 200/month, I could be convinced.

The whole point of self-driving cars (to me) is I don't have to own or insure it, someone else deals with that and I just make it show up with my phone when I need it.

So, here's a thought...

If FSD is going to be a subscription and you will never own our fancy autopilot feature. Why should the user pay for insurance?

The user is paying for a service that they do not control and which workings are completely opaque. How can responsibility ever lie with the user in such a situation?

I wish this was available in Miami! I would switch in a heartbeat.

It would be interesting to see if Lemonade requires a Driver Monitoring System (DMS) to see if the driver/operator is actually paying attention (or, like sleeping / watching Netflix / whatever) while at the driver's seat.

Anybody know??

Tesla FSD is still a supervised system (= ADAS), afaik.

You know what's weird? This is a company that has been using the fleet api for quite a while now to monitor non-professional drivers using FSD on their daily commute, often while distracted doing other things. The latest versions even allow some phone usage.

And yet people are skeptical. I mean, they should be skeptical, given that the company is using this for marketing purposes. It doesn't make sense to just believe them.

But it is strange to see this healthy skepticism juxtaposed with the many unskeptical comments attached to recent Electrek articles with outlandish claims.

What happens if you have FSD turned off and like to drive fast on public roads. Will they see this telemetry and raise your rates?

Marketing stunt

I'm 200% sure it's subsidized by Tesla and they have a deal that any losses they'd get Tesla is going to pay Lemonade for them.

One's first thought is that they ought to be running away from underwriting this as fast as they can go. But then one realizes that it is all profit -- they need never pay a claim, because in accidents involving autonomous vehicles, it will never be possible to establish fault; and then one sees that the primary purpose of most automations is to obscure responsibility.

I have Lemonade for my home insurance. It's been reliable for several years and the customer service is great. I don't have a self-driving car but I wouldn't hesitate to sign up. Their rates are very affordable.

Fleet API gives location data, no? I bet this discount will be paid for by this location data

> automatically tracking FSD miles versus manual miles through direct Tesla integration.

No thanks. I unplugged the cellular modem in my car precisely because I can't stand the idea that the manufacturer/dealer/insurance company or other unauthorized third parties could have access to my location and driving habits.

I also generally avoid dealers like the plague and only trust the kind of shops where the guy who answers the phone is the guy doing the work.

Now all that's missing is a self-insuring car and we're set.

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TL;DR: 50% insurance discount for Tesla vehicles driven by Tesla FSD.

On the surface, this looks like an endorsement of Tesla's claims about FSD safety.