Tesla is starting to offer insurance discounts for people who drive more using its “supervised Full Self-Driving” suite of advanced driver assist features.
For years, Tesla has been claiming that its “Full Self-Driving”(FSD) suite of advanced driver-assist features is “safer than human driving.”
The company faced a lot of pushback on that front – primarily due to the lack of data to support the claim.
The only data Tesla has been sharing is through its quarterly “safety report”, which has been heavily criticized for being misrepresenting through too heavily weighing highway driving versus city driving and for comparing Tesla’s fleet to the much older broader US car fleet.
Also, despite the name “Full Self-Driving”, the system is not self-driving and requires constant “supervision” by a driver. It means that when Tesla claims that “FSD is safer than human driving”, it is actually claiming that a human driver with FSD is safer than just a human driver, which is obviously a big difference, and again, there’s no evidence to prove it.
But Tesla is now at least putting some money on the claim.
Tesla’s own insurance product, which is available in a few US states, is starting to offer a small discount if you use FSD. The company wrote:
Tesla Insurance offers a discount to Tesla owners who have purchased or are subscribed to Full Self-Driving (Supervised). The more you drive with FSD (Supervised) enabled, the bigger the discount is on your insurance premium.
The offer is currently only available in Arizona and Texas.
Tesla says that if you drive more than 50% of the time with FSD, you can expect an up to 10% discount:
The more you drive with FSD (Supervised) enabled, the bigger the discount is on your insurance premium for certain coverages on your Tesla Insurance policy. You can earn up to a 10% discount on those coverages when you drive 50% or more of your miles with FSD (Supervised) enabled.
However, Tesla also says that if you have ” comprehensive, UMBI or UMPD on your policy”, you might not get up to 10% even if you drive more than 50% with FSD.
Electrek’s Take
If Tesla were really confident about its FSD, it would offer a much larger discount, but the truth is that it is not confident, and it shouldn’t be based on the latest data.
Ashok, Tesla’s head of FSD, claimed just last week that the safety report proved that Tesla with FSD is “8.5 times safer” than human driving without Autopilot technology.
It’s a ridiculous claim and if it was really the case, the discount should be way more than maybe 10%.