Close-up of Tesla logo on a charger at a Supercharger rapid battery-charging station for the electric vehicle company Tesla Motors, in the Silicon Valley town of Mountain View, California, August 24, 2016. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty
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The debut of the much anticipated Tesla Insurance product in California didn’t turn out the way Tesla had planned. After just a few hours being live, the electric carmaker pressed the pause button on its newest product.
Tesla Insurance was supposed to offer premiums that were up to 30% less than competitors. But that wasn’t the case for many owners.
Almost immediately after it was announced, customers posted on Twitter and Reddit quotes for 6-month comprehensive coverage policies that were often at least 10% higher than the policies the owners currently had, with some being multiples of what they currently paid.
One owner reported to Forbes that his quote was $160 a month, significantly higher than the $120 he paid per month with Nationwide. In his case, Tesla Insurance may have been unable to match bundled rates that include coverage of homes and other vehicles. Based on posts from Twitter users, sometimes the manufacturer’s coverage couldn’t compete with perks such as free windshield replacements offered by traditional brands.
But even customers who received lower quotes ran into problems with the service. One Redditor reported on the ‘TeslaMotors’ subreddit that the site went down before he could enter credit card information to purchase the policy. That’s because Tesla Insurance went offline at around 3:30 p.m. Pacific time Wednesday.
Applications and quotes were no longer being processed due to an “algorithm update in process,” according to the company’s Twitter account.
Drivers like photographer Mac McIntire weren’t be able to take advantage of savings for insuring his Model 3—even though his $147 quote was only 7% less than his $158 policy with Geico.
It’s not clear when the service will be up and running again, though Tesla said it’s correcting “bugs” that caused the higher-than-expected quotes.
“We found a few bugs that were impacting the quoted rates for a subset of customers, and we’re fixing those,” the company said in a statement. “We’ll be bringing Tesla Insurance back online as soon as possible with more competitive rates for those customers.”
Note: The Tesla Insurance website reactivated at 5 p.m. Pacific on Aug. 29.
