Tesla Gets Into The Insurance Business

Tesla announced its long awaited and much anticipated insurance coverage of its vehicles in California.

Insurance coverage of these luxury electric vehicles doesn’t come cheap, and many companies won’t even offer policies for them because of the high cost to repair damage. But Tesla says that it’s able to leverage the advanced safety features that are standard equipment on their vehicles to offer rates that are up to 20% lower—and in some cases as a much as 30% lower—than comparable policies from other insurers.

It doesn’t hurt that the company also oversees much of the mechanical repair process, and may be able to benefit from this end-to-end case management arrangement.

Tesla often boasts of it vehicles safety record and design, and having earned the top NHTSA safety rating. However it’s also one of the most expensive vehicles to insure. It’s not clear if Tesla will have access to the vehicle’s data, which contains driving history and other telemetry information not typically available to other insurers, during claim management.

The company was unable to answer this question by the time of publication.

For now, only insurance policies are available only to owners in California, but the company plans to expand coverage to other states. In a news release, Tesla says that purchasing a policy should take only a minute. After all, they already have all the information they need about you.