Hacker News Reader

Comment by mdmglr | Hacker News Reader

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

I’m guessing private insurance companies don’t consider the safety score?

I work remote and have my groceries delivered. So I’m rarely driving. I called an insurance company to inquire about their CAN-bus OBD 2 port driving monitor to save some money. I drive like less than 2 miles a week. I figured I should have a really low rate since a car sitting in my garage is not a liability. They said that they don’t consider time off the road so it wouldn’t save my anything.

View on HN

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.

sounds like the typical customer support of any large insurance to me.

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.

That's one reason why I have no interest in purchasing a car or even getting a driver's license. If I can live in a walkable area with public transit and just walk or take the train/bus everywhere, I can save an enormous amount of money by not owning a car. If you're not using a car on a regular basis, it is probably much cheaper to just sell the car, cancel your insurance and use Uber or Lyft when you do need a car.

Living in such an area is a luxury. I didn't have access to this stuff until I moved out of the US and into a larger town. Small to medium sized towns in the Midwest aren't exactly known for having public transportation or things conveniently located. Sure, the small towns are walkable, but you might have to drive 25 minutes to buy shoes.

And even here, if I move out of town, I realistically will need a car. But it isnt a given since I'm also more likely to have access to intercity bike paths, trains, and a few inconvenient busses.

You should get your licence and own a car for a year - just a cheap one. Then see how enthusiastic you are about public transport and taxis.

Fancy a day at the beach, a trip to see friends/relatives, just a day off for the hell of it. All of this is a snap decision if you own a car and a pain in the arse if you don't.

Couldn't agree more. Even in a "walkable" city, like say Miami, you still want a car for a multitude of reasons.

American standards for walkable and normal standards for walkable aren't the same.

I had a car for about five years, and now haven't for about ten. I don't miss it in the slightest. Maybe in the days before convenient short-term rental carshares I'd want a car for those rare trips that really benefit from one, but it's not actually a big deal to walk a block or two to pick up a car for the day.

I've owned a car for a decade now. Within the past year I finally moved somewhere with access to transit. It's been the greatest thing ever.

The transit here isn't even that good, but it is entirely liberating compared to driving. I can get basically anywhere I need and I don't have to pay attention to the road at risk of my life. My vehicle is just an expensive toy to me at this point and I'd rather it not exist. I don't want it. At all.

This is hugely dependent on where you are; living in a major city in western Europe, a car is a ball-and-chain for me because the transit is fabulous and dirt cheap (and alcohol isn't a factor).

Someone really needs to pioneer Car-As-A-Service, but I guess that's what Elon Musk is trying to do with Tesla Autopilot... after all, if you have a car that can be summoned in an app, you can just use it when you need it, then send it on it's way once you're done.

I'm in the UK and they've always asked how many miles I expect to drive during the policy. I just bought a policy today and for the first time they asked if I drive during peak hours. This is not a black box policy - they can't directly monitor either of those variables. But if I make a collision claim then they will ask where and when it occurred.

'I'm in the UK and they've always asked how many miles I expect to drive during the policy.'

The other year I put down 10K as rough estimate and after 4 months realized I'd already done 8K. Changing the policy to cover a more realistic 20K incurred an additional fee of something like £7.

From this I reckoned mileage isn't a huge issue.

Driving peak hours, as a risk factor, wouldn't surprise me at all given the general standard of driving by people who appear very anxious about being 30 seconds late to work.

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.

I just tried this approach, using Metromile, as both my wife and I work from home and rarely drive.

Pay-per-mile IS cheaper if you only need liability insurance, but if you want collision and comprehensive, it actually works out to almost the same as a conventional policy with Progressive that doesn't track mileage.

Notably, to get the slightly better rate from Metromile, you must use their ODB port tracking device and subject yourself to an opaque closed source algorithm that can only increase your rates but never seems to lower them more than 10%.

Got it, we only use liability since we drive a cheap used car.

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

> 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.

But it is rather deceptive. Seeing your bill jump after driving somewhere that does not conform to your usual schedule feels constraining. People don't consult their policy before driving somewhere. They expect policies to be somewhat reasonable.

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.

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

No more so than any other car of the same price, in my experience. I mean, yes, Teslas are expensive so collision coverage is expensive. But no, they're not particularly expensive to repair in context.

How about for the main battery replacement? How often does that occur?

Does “in your experience” refer to you actually seeing repair bills for Tesla? What I’ve heard is their exterior design is more heavily complex single components vs a more panel-based approach, and the exterior is all aluminum which can’t be repaired in the same way. I’ve also read that repair parts are ridiculously expensive from Tesla. Here is a recent article about this issue:

https://www.autoblog.com/amp/2023/01/27/tesla-expensive-to-r...

> Does “in your experience” refer to you actually seeing repair bills for Tesla

Yes.

> What I’ve heard

Pretty much, yeah. That's how this always goes.

Model S is aluminum but Model 3 is all steel.

I've only needed one repair of my Model 3: a new side mirror and it was about $725 CDN in parts. My insurance wasn't able to secure the part and going through tesla directly it took about a month before the part was available. On the plus side the part was replaced right in my driveway in under 15 minutes by Tesla mobile service.

I’m not in this space so can’t vouch for this but I remember recently reading an article that for even more minor scratch and dents EVs are occasionally totaled as insurance company can’t guarantee battery system wasn’t somehow affected and wouldn’t catastrophically fail.

“ Reusing a battery from an EV that was in a collision requires mechanics to check the battery’s diagnostic data to make sure it’s functional and safe — and Tesla doesn’t let third parties look at that date. Insurance companies are unwilling to use these recycled battery packs for fear of the repaired or repurposed units causing problems later on, per Reuters:”

Source: https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2023/03/a-minor-crash-can-total-a...

[2]https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reuters.com%2Fbusi...

That's... just not correct. Source: have repaired multiple scratches and dents in a Tesla under insurance coverage without unreasonable costs, much less a total refund.

FWIW: that article isn't about insurance coverage at all, so I don't understand why you're citing it. Tesla licenses auto body shops to do repairs and gives them the needed tools just like every other auto maker. The article is complaining that unlicensed shops don't have the tools, making repairs more expensive. And that's true, as far as it goes, but it's hardly a problem unique to one manufacturer.

In the UK, the main expense is a hire car for several months and legal expenses for when that nice chap you had a slight collision with claims he and all his 4 friends suffered whiplash injuries.

What car you drive and how much it costs to fix are pretty much irrelevant.

In the US at least, coverages for liability and damages are split. The liability costs would be the same for similar sizes of car whereas damage costs would be much higher for a car that’s expensive to repair.

> 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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com