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Tesla Is So Sure Its Cars Are Safe That It Now Offers Insurance For Life (mashable.com)
In the self-driving future envisioned by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, car owners might be saying "goodbye" to a whole lot more than steering wheels. From a Mashable report: Musk is so sure of the safety features bundled into Tesla vehicles that his company has begun offering some customers a lifetime insurance and maintenance package at the time of purchase. No more monthly insurance bills. No more unexpected repair costs. "We've been doing it quietly," Tesla President of Global Sales and Service Jonathan McNeill explained on the call, "but in Asia in particular where we started this, now the majority of Tesla cars are sold with an insurance product that is customized to Tesla, that takes into account not only the Autopilot safety features but also the maintenance costs of the car." "It's our vision in the future that we'll be able to offer a single price for the car, maintenance and insurance in a really compelling offering for the consumer," added McNeill. "And we're currently doing that today."
Insurance for life on Autopilot safety features? Whose life? Mine, or the car's?
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I like to be supportive of Tesla, as the ideas are great, but based on past offerings this is likely get it while it's hot. Remember free supercharging for life?
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Brilliant idea a lifetime warranty that expires upon your death!
Do you also stand at the door at parties to offer couples the odds of them remaining together long-term?
Relax dude, most human beings understand that if the company they get insurance from stops existing, they no longer have insurance from that company. If you don't trust that company, then um don't buy insurance from them?
Dealers were upset at being cut out of the loop by Telsa (to the point of getting state legislatures to draft laws blocking Telsa's stores), just imagine how insurance companies are going to react.
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If you bought a chauffeur service you would expect the service to pay the chauffeur, maintain the car, and maintain the insurance. This isn’t much different (other than you own the car). Tesla is large enough to create the shared risk pool that insurance is founded on. Better yet, by also being the insurance it incentives them to make their cars as safe as possible. I don’t image regular insurance companies are too happy about this and will propose various strawman arguments in an attempt to keep Tesla and others from doing this once self-driving cars really get popular. In fact this all in one model is about the only way self-driving cars will be able to work. Self driving cars will only be safe as long as they are always maintained in top condition. Sensors have to be functioning and calibrated. Brakes have to be in good working order to maintain the cars safe expected stopping distance. Software upgrades are needed. Etc...
Once driver error is not the major factor in accidents it just doesn't make sense to keep the old insurance structure as the fault will almost always be with the manufacturer. This does of course reduce the insurance company's incentive (in this case the manufacture) to really go after claims due to negligence, though that will still be a private legal suit option. Let make sure providing the insurance doesn't also take away your right to sue.
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I think this is probably Tesla's way of varnishing over the fact that most insurance companies aren't going to insure SDC's or aren't going to ensure them at rates people want to pay.
Good thinking. No point taking chances when you know the regular insurers will never screw you over.
There's no such thing as for life. If Tesla wants to bail, they can change their name to Tesla Motors 2 and get out of it.
They could, I won't completely contradict you on that, but in recent history both GM and Chrysler went through bankruptcies essentially launching new companies, but they did not use that as an opportunity to drop warranty promises that they made. Chrylser in particular had offered lifetime warranties on vehicles in the mid Noughties and they still acknowledge their coverage even though this could have been an easy way to get out of commitments to several million vehicles that were far past what a normal warranty periould would be.
If automakers shirk responsibilities like that then it's going to be harder to make sales down the road. Things would have to be pretty dire to back out of commitments like that.
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Do you also stand at the door at parties to offer couples the odds of them remaining together long-term?
Hell, most of the parties I went to, predictions would've been, "Tomorrow morning, tomorrow morning, tomorrow evening, Sunday morning, Tonight at 11:03pm following two minutes of strong apologies..."
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Like GM did when they crashed, burned and were revived a few years ago - they got to wipe all their old debt and recall liabilities off the books.
Except in the airline industry, part of a pilot's training is to ground check the plane before taking off. A person owning an automated car can be expected to maintain the pressure in the tires etc. but never will they spend 20 minutes checking their vehicle before leaving the driveway. Also, airplanes have many people monitoring their safety. Where I usually fly from, planes have to be completely de-iced. With all those sensors, automated cars will likely need to be de-iced as well to work properly but who is going to do that in their driveway. So automated cars will need to work with the same reliability as an airplane in all weather with a fraction of the maintenance and oversight that airlines get. And they'll only become safe if the manufacturers don't get sued into oblivion first.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
But it has to get out of the driveway to get serviced. Has anyone taken a car fully outfitted with lidar/radar/cameras, left it outside in a blizzard overnight and then tried to get every sensor working in the morning? Say the frost messes up the cameras and the lidar but the radar is still working, can the car limp to a service station like that? Also you can't be paying a service station every time your car doesn't work due to cold.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Things are rather different for airplanes than cars. Airplanes are far more complex in terms of what can go wrong, however for the most part autopilot is simpler. My model S already checks the tire pressure. If the car is iced up it likely won't drive itself either, since obviously all the cameras need to work as well as the ultrasonic sensors and radar.
The reliability of a car also does not need to match that of an airplane since with a car you can usually just pull over. With an airplane carrying a lot of passengers it's a whole different story. It's not like it can just pull over and stop at 30,000 feet.
Mechanically they're night and day. The number of moving parts in a Tesla's drivetrain is a small fraction of what it is in a gasoline or hybrid vehicle which is a lot simpler than an airplane. The car already monitors just about everything as it is such as battery temperature, current/voltage, coolant temperature, air temperature, tire pressure, traction control, stability control, etc. There's even a rain/snow sensor. The autopilot feature also won't work if the car can't see the road clearly and it's not supported if it's raining or snowing. The car even monitors the state of the 12v battery. In my model S it warned me before it failed, and my car is a first generation model.
The car also is paying attention to a lot more than a driver can, since with 8 cameras and other sensors it is constantly looking all around the vehicle. It doesn't get distracted either by kids in the back seat, changing radio stations, or cell phones. The software will continue to improve as time goes on.
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I have a 4 year old Tesla model S with 50,000 miles on it. I have not noticed any loss of range or performance. The general consensus among owners is that there is a 5% loss of range at 100K miles. Now Tesla has a much better battery thermal management system and a better chemistry than a number of other manufacturers (i.e. Nissan, GM, etc.)
Degradation turns out to be around 23 miles per 100,000 miles driven.
Here's an excellent talk by one of the foremost experts on lithium ion battery degradation.
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The existing lidar in my 15 year old car has heaters in it specifically to deal with that kind of instance (funnily enough, so do the wing mirrors and they're hot enough to not just melt ice but to cause noticeble water evaporation if the vehicle is stationary.)
Yes, you need to brush the snow off, but running for five minutes take care of the rest - and in those kind of environments you're a bit of a tool if you don't have your car garaged/covered/ plugged into power to preheat overnight and if you can't do any of that, using a webasto heater to bring the car up to temperature BEFORE trying to crank the engine.
Cars only get unreliable because you LET them get unreliable.