Tesla now factors late night driving into their safety score

Of course they don't want to consider time off the road. Historically they've never had a way to monitor it but now they can they for sure don't want too. It will cut in to their profits. Like my car has been in my garage for 2 months on a battery tender and will probably be there another 2 months before I drive it because I'm out of the country. Even when I'm home stores and food are walking distance. My main driving was too take a fried to work and shopping, but now she has her own car if we go out she drives.

Private insurance companies charge higher amounts for insuring Teslas as their repair costs are much higher than a majority of cars on the road.

I did this when it first came out. At the time, I lived < 5 miles from work and worked offset hours. It did actually lower my insurance, and then when I learned what it was considering hard braking, it went even lower when I eliminated that from my driving habits. All was good until my company moved into the same building I was living. Naturally, my weekly driving dropped to zero with only weekend driving primarily for errands for groceries (I lived on one of those infamous food deserts). Because of this, the battery in the unit was not getting charged because the engine wasn't running enough. They accused me of gaming the system by unplugging the unit and driving around with out it. I told them to check the miles to show it was just not being used. They still argued that I was cheating, and end my trial. They then attempted to charge me an extremely ridiculous fee for not returning their device within their allotted time period.

We use Metromile since we also work remote and don't drive much. There's a base rate per month plus a per-mile rate of a few cents. For us it ends up being a lot less than other options we've looked into.

> So this is only an issue if you get Tesla Insurance.

Yes, the headline is as ridiculous as you'd expect for one with "Tesla" in the title.

For those who aren't aware: Tesla sells its own insurance in some US states. Apparently it's a good deal (I'm not a subscriber and can't testify). And like some other insurers, they have integrated an automated driver behavior metric into the rate computations. Except in this case it's implemented as part of the car and has much more info available.

This is expressed to the user as a "Safety Score" in the Tesla app. Doing dangerous things causes it to go down. Apparently driving late at night codes as dangerous now (which... it probably is?).

No one's rights are being violated. Just buy standard insurance. No one's privacy is being violated that didn't already sign a contract to let Tesla monitor their driving.

Search for "pay-per-mile car insurance". There are some plans that specifically charge you based on how much you drive.

> They said that they don’t consider time off the road so it wouldn’t save my anything.

Driving less means you are less practiced making you a more of a liability. This is the meaning behind "Sunday driver": a slow, haphazard driver who has poor control and is a road hazard as they rarely drive.

I don't drive a Tesla, and clearly don't have their insurance, but have had my rates affected by driving between 12a and 4a.

My insurer (not a cut-rate one) did give me a discount for using, for 90 days, one of their OBDII dongles. That dongle measured a few things, one of which was number of times I drove between 12am and 4am. (Others included number of times I hard braked, but none of them was how fast I was actually going.) I'm a night owl, so the 12am part was frustrating.

At least for this particular insurer, the discount sticks after you send the dongle back.

Driving without insurance is illegal in virtually every state, and the supreme court has ruled that driving is a "virtual necessity" [1] to American life. I am normally very r/fuckcars but this sort of thing affects everyone and as surveillance becomes cheaper and cheaper we may not have a choice.

(if cars are dangerous, which they of course are, the way to fix it is to build walkable cities, not to charge higher rates for the graveyard shift workers who have no say in the matter)

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/430/705

Other telematics programs already consider this.

Also with insurance it doesn’t really matter if people hate a rating factor, if a company starts using one that turns out to be predictive than all other companies will eventually forced to or suffer adverse selection.

Realistically the only way to prevent companies from using unfair rating factors is to regulate it due to adverse selection.

Also, with the next wave of telematics that uses the onboard car sensors rather than dongles or phones, the false positives will get worse. I rarely get a legit lane departure warning because I use my signal and don’t drift, but I get plenty of false ones in construction zones or the mountains. Like on 80 through Tahoe there is a lot of extra lines prominent enough to trigger my car’s lane thing even when it’s not snow lanes.

It’s an automatic feature, I’m pretty sure on mine I have to menu dive to turn them off. The svelte minimalist asthetic of the 3 is cool and all until you start needing to do things beyond turn the wheel until point B. Between things like that and the oversensitive hazard alert feature I’m pretty sure I’m going to ditch mine.

Could be high beam assist or misaligned headlamps like many other vehicles.

How do you tell me Tesla owners are in a cult without saying they are in a cult?

How about "insurance company uses built in surveillance capabilities to fleece users extra for what was previously considered normal usage".

In case you didn't realize it, insurance companies are a shadow control layer, and it is in everyone's interest to stay on top of what information insurers are allowed to operate off of, as all of them indirectsly converge on the same signals.

Premiums should be based on accident rate of the individual driver, especially if you are monitoring each driver's driving habits.

Yet another reason to not buy car insurance that tracks you. FTFY

You got spun badly by a deliberately misleading headline. This is insurance coverage. Lots of insurance providers, including Tesla, offer an opt-in driver monitoring discount. If you don't want it don't buy the product; it's got nothing to do with the car except for where the telemetry comes from.

So many people want this though. It’s very depressing. During the lockdowns there were people who reluctantly complied but many others (even here) were so happy to be under control. They relished the thought of someone else making all the decisions for them where everything was forbidden except what was explicitly permitted.

A huge part of society just begs and begs for subjugation.

When you say you will ban Tesla does that mean you’ll sell the car you already have, or not consider buying one in the future? Or do you want to prevent other people from owning Teslas and using this insurance option? Isn’t the latter case just restricting freedom?

Which of these companies is using open hardware/software in their products? I wish it were true, but somehow I doubt that is going to happen.