I'll piggyback this to add my own anecdata.

I pay about $95/month for Progressive insurance on my $28,000 Subaru BRZ. I got a quote on a $135,000 Tesla Model S P100D, and for the same coverage (Full coverage + Liability with moderate deductibles), it was $140/month.

The BRZ is a low end sports car frequently bought and wrecked by teenage drivers. Unless we know your age, driving history, zip code, miles driven per year, etc etc... we don't have the picture the insurance companies do.

Here's some actual data: USA Today found the Tesla Model S to be _the most expensive_ car to insure. [1] This was apparently such a problem that Electrek reported Tesla was considering starting their own insurance company. [2] Both of these articles are from 2018.

1: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/budget-... 2: https://electrek.co/2018/05/29/tesla-insuremytesla-insurance...

> The BRZ is a low end sports car frequently bought and wrecked by teenage drivers.

I certainly don't doubt that at all. 200 HP isn't a lot, but combined with being rear-wheel drive and coming with economy tires, it's enough to get you into trouble if you're stupid.

I'm 36 though and bought it because I wanted a car that has some pep when I want it, and good fuel economy when I don't. I average 33.5 mpg when it's stickered at 24 city/30 highway!

> Here's some actual data: USA Today found the Tesla Model S to be _the most expensive_ car to insure.

What I'm hearing is that the area I'm in generally just has really cheap insurance.

This tells me I am in the wrong insurance market. You don't even want to know what I pay for my 2006 car....

Have you shopped around recently for insurance?

I bought this BRZ about 2 1/2 years ago. At the time, I was paying $90/month for an old 2000 Suzuki Esteem for only liability and uninsured motorist with Nationwide insurance. They quoted me $180 to insure my BRZ for full coverage. I decided to shop around and switched to Progressive after they quoted me the $95 for the BRZ with better coverage and lower deductibles.

If you have a clean driving record Progressive is great. My wife got rear ended, wasn't even her fault, and Progressive quickly became more expensive than many alternatives. I'm guessing they get such good rates by heavily penalizing people with a greater risk profile (which is fine I might add, even tho it sucks for me :-) )

Keep in mind that insurance costs vary extremely widely state to state (i.e., market to market, to the parent poster's point). Different states have different risk profiles but more importantly, widely different insurance regulations.

Insurance is based on statistical models and probabilities, and on the actual cost for each option. If in your country BMWs are often crashed then their premiums will go up. But if they are extremely cheap to repair it goes back down. A US only car brand that could be common occurrence in the US might be a rarity in EU and it will cost a lot to insure.

With Tesla one thing is certain: at this time parts and skills are rare, expensive, and time consuming. So unless you live in the Tesla factory, getting the part you need and a person qualified to make the fix will cost a lot and take a long time.

They need to develop the support network just like they did with the charging network. Make partnerships with big car service chains, provide training, ensure a steady supply of parts, etc. That's a big logistical undertaking.

I am with progressing and pay $180 for 50/100/50 with collision and uninsured.

What kind of liability limits. I pay way more for an Odyessey and Pilot.

$250k each person/$500k each accident for bodily injury, $100k each accident for property.

$250k/$500k for uninsured motorist.

As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, though, where you live can make a huge difference. If you feel like you're getting a raw deal, shop around. A lot of people never bother and car insurance companies know this and will creep up your insurance rates even if your driving history is perfect.

I would guess, that they simply do not have enough information to come up with a reasonable estimate of their cost of insurance, so they err on the side of making it affordable because it is such a low volume car that is often (but assuredly not always) a second car that gets less use. I further predict that insurance costs are going to rise dramatically in the next few years. All the anecdata (I know I know) I have seen suggest Teslas are comparatively expensive to service for minor bodywork and other repairs.

> because it is such a low volume car that is often (but assuredly not always) a second car that gets less use.

I always have to provide a mileage estimate to get an insurance quote -- and if I don't go to enough places that sell my mileage info, I have to send in a mileage declaration about once a year; so use shouldn't have anything to do with it.

Your anecdote supports my point and undermines your own. Use has everything to do with it. That is why your insurance company wants that mileage information. I change my own oil and easily go years between visits to the mechanic, so there is no way my mileage info is leaking. There are only two times I have had to report mileage: 1. when I had a special discount from liberty mutual for driving less than 500 miles a year; and 2. now because I switched to metromile.

In both cases (again) use has everything to do with it.

Or you're just ahead of the nightmare service scenario described above and the actuaries don't know how to price it in yet. If so; Model S owners may get assessed in line with a similar price point internal combustion luxury sedan.

Perhaps.

Since their introduction over 6 years ago, well over 200,000 Model S' have been sold, and Geico has insured quite a few of them.

> actuaries don't know how to price it in yet

This is pretty far from my field of expertise, so I can't make any kind of directed comment. I'll just say that it strikes me as unlikely that Geico either doesn't have enough data yet and/or doesn't know what it's doing.

I don't know much about

What percentage of that 200,000 is in California? I don't think the sample size is near large enough, nor properly distributed to build a comprehensive risk model around.

I'm not a subject matter expert either but I would love to hear from someone in the industry.

It doesn't matter how many were sold but how easy/cheap is to fix them when insurance is needed.

For Tesla parts are rare and expensive, authorized service partners are rare and expensive, so fixing the car costs a lot.

Car insurance doesn't cover repairs, it's actually insurance, not an all inclusive payment plan like health "insurance".

There are no parts available from anyone but Tesla. So when the $2,500 plastic lens assembly for your brakes is back ordered 3 months, the insurance company is stuck with your rental coverage.

Why is it that Tesla is the only parts provider when other car companies have aftermarket parts?

My immediate guess is because other car companies outsource the production of most of the parts, and the companies who make those parts are happy to make more to sell on the aftermarket.

Tesla manufactures parts itself, and is still getting their main production lines working right.

Tesla has plenty of parts built by other car makers / suppliers.

https://www.carscoops.com/2018/05/tesla-blames-bosch-recall-...

Tesla does. But builds most of their parts in house. And even outsourced parts may wind up inside of the part you need to replace, and therefore you're still bottlenecked on Tesla.

Ever try to find a service manual for a Tesla?

They want to control everything, but are too hard up to stock parts.

Perhaps you and I use different terminology? Parent comment refers to "full coverage", which I believe includes the costs of repairs no matter whose fault it is.

Full coverage auto insurance still only covers repairs from accidents. It doesn't cover the cost of, say, brake pads needing to be replaced or a window motor going bad.

For covering normal wear and tear maintenance, that would be an auto warranty – or extended warranty, service contract, protection plan, etc.

At least, those are the standard terms in the United States.

Anecdote: last year I was repairing a bumper on my older Ford sedan, this was in Minneapolis mid winter (so tis the season for mild-severe body damage) and one of the body shops I got a quote from was also the only authorized Tesla dealership in several hundred miles. They had an entire lot just for body damaged Tesla's waiting on parts. The owner commented to me that they were getting Tesla's hauled from southern Iowa for repair. Nothing like a 500 mile flatbed ride to really spice up the total cost of repair.

It seems like there's some confusion here with regard to auto insurance, warranties, and regular maintenance.

As far as I'm aware warranties only cover faulty / defective parts (and labour to replace), insurance is intended as accident cover, everything else is regular maintenance.

It does however factor in the likelihood of a crash, and the cost of repairing the vehicle after a crash. So if the 3 is more expensive to repair than other similar vehicles, the insurance would cost more.

from what I remember, most of the cost of car insurance (at least here in the US) is the driver, not the car. Young unmarried men pay the highest premiums because they're the drivers most likely to cause and get into accidents. The cost of repairs and even the value of the car isn't really much of a driver of insurance rates.

It's both the car, and the driver, and the driver's past claims history. An exotic car is going to cost more to insure regardless of who's driving it. Even more so if the driver is young, male, unmarried, or has a record of accidents or violations.

When I added my 16 year old to my insurance, there was quite a difference in cost, depending on which car we said was his primary car.

How'd you figure that out?

Any idea how life insurance companies are dealing with Tesla owners and their autopilot induced fatalities? The number of autopilot -related deaths and crashes seems high considering how few Teslas are on the road.

You're committing a couple of different fallacies there, which let sensationalist media (itself full of fallacies) influence your thinking.

First, Teslas aren't exactly rare. Upthread, someone said 200,000 have been sold (have not fact-checked, but it seems plausible). Second, autopilot related fatalities are covered breathlessly in the media, ignoring all of the other, far more common sources of fatalities, such as drunk driving. And finally, there is no media coverage of the number of accidents prevented by autopilot, which I suspect is pretty high.

Tesla has maybe sold 200,000 cars world-wide over the course of 15 years, by its own estimate. GM sold close to 4 times that many vehicles in the US alone in Q2 of 2018. Teslas are rare.

https://www.gm.com/investors/sales/us-sales-production.html

Tesla Model S outsells the BMWs, Mercedes, and Audis in its class. Those aren't considered rare and exotic.

300,000 as of February: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.

Current production rate is 107,000/year, more than 1% of GMs 10million/year.

However, your point stands: Teslas are, at this point, relatively rare.

Life insurance doesn’t care, the car insurance companies care in situations where you need to figure out who is at fault.

The answer probably depends on state law and other factors. With autopilot the driver is nominally in control — which is why Tesla aggressively does the PR dance to blame the driver. My guess is that due to the newness and arbritration clauses, they have gotten lucky.

States can change that though — for awhile you couldn’t lease a car in New York because the law let someone injured in an accident due the leasing company!

> The number of autopilot -related deaths and crashes seems high considering how few Teslas are on the road.

That’s just an artifact of increased media coverage.

Tesla has only sold roughly 200k Teslas* as of July.

*https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/07/tesla-sold-200000-cars-...

200k US sales as of July, that's correct. They're current production rate is about 107k/year, slightly more than 1% of General Motors 10M/year.