Why I Love To Blog -- Reason #45 -- June 5, 2017

Updates

Later, 7:56 p.m. Central Time: BusinessInsider has the same story. AAA premiums could surge as much as 30%.   

Original Post

This is really, really interesting. I happened to catch this "consideration" when reading an article on Tesla over at SeekingAlpha just a couple of days ago. A contributor to SeekingAlpha predicted this would happen, and here it is, from Jalopnik: AAA raises insurance rates on Tesla vehicles because repairs are so costly.

National insurer AAA said it’s raising rates for Tesla Model S and X vehicles, due to a high frequency of claims and costly repairs.

Tesla decried the move in near Trumpian-fashion as being based on an analysis that’s “not reflective of reality.” AAA based its analysis off data from the Highway Loss Data Institute, Automotive News reports, and said premiums for some Tesla vehicles could spike as much as 30 percent.

Other insurers, like State Farm and Geico, wouldn’t tell the publication if Tesla owners would see an increase in rates, but said that claims data is a significant factor in calculating a rate.

Ouch:

The issue appears to boil down to how the Institute analyzed the Model S and X. The News says the S is classified as a “large luxury vehicle,” placing it among the Volvo XC70, Audi A6 and BMW 5 series. The Institute says that the Model S and X were both involved in more than 40 percent more claims than the average vehicle in their class.

Tesla says this is bogus, and compares the S and X “to cars that are not remotely peers, including even a Volvo station wagon.”

Ouch. If the vehicles were compared to similar brands, Tesla claimed its crash data wouldn’t be nearly as high.

From the linked SeekingAlpha article above:

Insurance Problems:

Due to its quality problems and high repair costs, Tesla also has an insurance problem. We predict that Tesla cars will end up having some of the highest insurance costs. These costs drive up the cost of ownership and further drive down the desirability and resale value of older Tesla cars.

And then that article links to this SeekingAlpha article: Tesla May Face Negative Growth In 2017 As Insurance Troubles Mount And China EV Sales Suffer.

Over time, many (most?) SeekingAlpha articles are archived and require a subscription to access.