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Comment by gw99 | Hacker News Reader

When insurers get on this you know there's a problem. Our insurers void our building insurance if anyone parks an EV in the underground car park...

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Good luck getting insurance at all in Florida these days. All those hurricane claims add up.

how can you even police that? is there security monitoring this or something?

what about hybrid electrics that use li-on. what about ebikes?

> how can you even police that?

Trivially, after the investigators identify the cause of the fire. With all insurance, it’s not a matter of policing, it’s what will be covered when you try to make the claim.

I don't mean the insurance company. That's obvious. I mean how does the owner cover itself.

> how can you even police that? is there security monitoring this or something?

I don’t understand how that applies to an owner. Police and monitor themselves?

Owners cover cars with car insurance, house damage (including from cars and e-bikes) with homeowners insurance. The homeowners insurance policy describes the details and requirements of what’s covered.

Insurance companies do actually do reconnaissance occasionally; my parents had their homeowners insurance cancelled this way.

More commonly, they will deny a claim if, during the claims process, they found there was an EV in the parking lot at the time of the loss, even if the EV isn't related to the loss. Friend of mine is an insurance adjuster and he says he denies claims all the time when he finds out people were violating their policy terms at the time of the loss.

Read your insurance policies, people.

No if the place burns down and there's an EV of any kind in there then they don't pay out. Covers explicitly eBikes and hybrids as well.

Insurers don’t care about your compliance. They simply won’t pay out any claim in case they find out after the fact.

Our insurers void our building insurance if anyone parks an EV in the underground car park...

Got a link that backs that up?

It's the leaseholders who handled it. They sent out updated terms for the apartment building which extended insurance exclusions. Not in USA for ref...

You want this person to post their insurance policy?

That would be a pretty damned important part of the policy's public documentation and advertising, now, wouldn't it?

No? I've never been able to read a policy before underwriting? The same insurance carriers have different sub-companies they put different customers in depending on the specifics of the customer, one sub-company might have the restrictions and one might not. Might also depend on the specifics of the car park - how close to the building it is, if it's attached, etc.

You really don't know what you're going to get until you get your personal quote - For example, my previous insurance policy has a separate, much higher, deductible for hurricane claims which wasn't disclosed until after I got the quote. I shopped around quite a bit because I wasn't happy with that provision of the policy and was able to find one that didn't have a separate hurricane deductible for cheaper.

You really don't know what you're going to get until you get your personal quote

Exactly. You get a quote, you read the attached policy, it says "No EVs can be parked on premises," you have a good chuckle and toss the quote in the trash.

I don't understand any of this "You have to buy the policy to see what is in it" reasoning.

Luckily, FL has an abundance of currently wasted land. It should be easily solvable. In CA, a bigger challenge as the land is actually used efficiently so there is little room to shuffle parking spots around.

Uh, what? Do you mean all the national parks and farmland?

They must be referring to those pesky wetlands. We can just fill those in and convert the entire state of Florida into one giant parking lot.

Ironically, what I meant was the land that is currently undrivable asphalt. Have you ever been to Plantation? It’s just one big tarmac basically.

No, I mean the unnecessary margins around literally every structure “minimum setback requirements.”

If you mark all of FL as uninhabitable (which is true to a first approximation), you would have a whole lot fewer EVs parked in the state, for sure.

There are a lot of people living here considering it is unlivable.

>a bigger challenge as the land is actually used efficiently

You've never seen a population density map of California have you?

Yes, I have driven all over CA and lived there as well. The places EVs are, mainly LA and SF, all the land is being used reasonably, even if it’s not for people. In FL, there is about 500 feet of empty space around every object of interest serving no purpose basically.

Those are drainage ponds usually filled with water because much of Florida is swamp.

I’ve lived in FL all of my life save for 6 years spent in CA. We’re not talking about the same thing.

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