- Lemonade’s new “autonomous car” insurance gives Tesla owners a huge discount.
- Tesla owners are entitled to a 50% discount on their insurance policy.
- hunting? The discount only applies to owners using Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software.
Tesla cars have some stigma regarding real-world costs. While the vehicles themselves may be fairly affordable up front (as far as new EVs are concerned, anyway), there are some variables that increase the overall lifetime cost of the vehicles. One of the biggest out there Insurance cost.
Enter Lemonade, an insurance company looking to shake up its business Tesla’s big bet on full self-driving (under supervision) Driver assistance suite. The company announced Wednesday that it will offer a huge discount on your Tesla insurance policy — as long as you let FSD take over the driving.
Photo: Mac Hogan/InsideEVs
Insurance is a game of risk. The more an insurance company can anticipate risks, the more accurately it can assess how much a driver should be charged to insure their car. Lemonade says it’s convinced Tesla’s FSD software significantly reduces crash risk compared to a human driver behind the wheel.
lemonade New partnership with Tesla It provides the insurance company with vehicle telemetry data that helps Lemonade feed its risk prediction models. This includes the ability to differentiate when FSD is enabled and predict risks based on the accuracy of the sensor as well as the version of FSD installed in the vehicle. This “reduces per-mile rates for FSD-compliant driving by approximately 50%,” according to Lemonade. (Lemonade charges a variable per-mile fee for auto insurance, in addition to the base rate.)
“Tesla cars with FSD are involved in significantly fewer accidents,” Shai Winninger, co-founder and president of Lemonade, said in a statement Wednesday. “By connecting to Tesla’s onboard computer, our models are able to ingest incredibly accurate sensor data allowing us to price our insurance with greater accuracy than ever before.”
FSD aims to drive a vehicle along a route to a pre-planned destination, while controlling acceleration, braking and steering. But it still requires driver supervision and is far from perfect. So it’s not truly “self-driving” despite Tesla’s promises for many years. The automaker’s in-house insurance product also offers discounts to owners who have an FSD and use it for at least half the mileage, though only at 10% compared to Lemonade’s hefty discount of around 50%.
Lemonade says it expects FSD to further reduce driving risks over time as Tesla implements additional updates to the FSD software.
“Along with today’s product announcement, we are also announcing our commitment to the Tesla community – the safer our FSD program becomes, the lower our prices will be,” Weninger said.
Lemonade’s so-called “autonomous car” (which… FSD Tesla is not) Lockdown begins in Arizona later this month, followed by Oregon in February. Tesla also plans to remove the ability to purchase FSD as a permanent software license on February 14, meaning drivers who want a discount later may need to purchase a FSD subscription at $99 per month instead.
What’s not immediately clear is what data Lemonade relies on to prove that FSD is safer than a human driver. Tesla released its FSD safety report late last year, which claims the system leads to fewer crashes. But some self-driving car experts have I wondered how useful or trustworthy this data wasBecause it has not been peer-reviewed and may be misleading.
We’ve reached out to Lemonade to get more details there. But what is clear is that auto insurance will have to be reformed for the future era of autonomy. And Lemonade wants to be at the forefront.
