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IIHS: Model S has higher collision claim frequencies than comparable luxury cars
- dogma1138 9y agoI can’t say much about the accident rate but the loss can be attributed to the fact that anything more than a scratch on a Tesla is often counted as a total loss just look at the various Tesla salvage channels on YouTube and you’ll see how silly it is. This is what happens when no one can fix your car but Tesla and Tesla doesn’t repair what most body shops would fix in a day.
- lsc 9y agobut the non-tesla electric cars also had more severe (though fewer) claims. Part of that is probably that an electric car is just plain more expensive than it's ICE counterpart right now, and my experience is that repair cost of a vehicle scales with the capital cost of a vehicle.
- greglindahl 9y agoYou also need to compare Tesla aluminum-bodied cars with aluminum-bodied cars. Which are more expensive to repair. The IIHS article doesn't say what cars they compared Model S to, and aluminum-bodied cars are rare enough that it's likely not very comparable. Mind you, that doesn't affect the claims-per-mile statistic.
- MrFoof 9y agoThe IIHS considers the Tesla Model S a "Large Luxury Car" in its classification system. Other "Large Luxury Cars" as classified by IIHS include... * Acura RLX * Audi A6 * Audi A7 (not rated) * Audi A8 (not rated) (aluminum body) * Bentley Continental GT (not rated) (aluminum body) * BMW 5 Series * BMW 6 series (not rated) * BMW 7 series (not rated) * Cadillac CTS * Cadillac XTS * Genesis G80 * Genesis G90 * Infiniti Q70 * Jaguar XJ (not rated) (aluminum body) * Lexus GS * Lexus LS (aluminum body) * Lincoln Continental * Maserati Ghibli * Maserati Quattroporte (not rated) (aluminum body) * Mercedes-Benz CLS-Class (not rated) * Mercedes-Benz E-Class (partial aluminum body) * Mercedes-Benz S-Class (not rated) (partial aluminum body) * Porsche Panamera (not rated) (aluminum body) * Volvo S80 * Volvo S90 ----- The main issue is the IIHS doesn't test many vehicles that can exceed a $100,000 MSRP, as they're a small portion of the overall market.
- jd20 9y agoAnd the Tesla is furthermore an outlier, because for a long time it was the only luxury EV in widespread use. In a couple more years, the data on "luxury electric vehicles" should have a lot more data points.
- Spooky23 9y agoTesla refuses to allow third party repair or parts and has difficulty making things. So costs are crazy. A colleague had to have his towed 300 miles and wait forever, for a rear end fender bender which necessitates a claim as the cost was a few thousand bucks. With a normal car, he’d probably just lay out of pocket to avoid the insurance bullshittery.
- greglindahl 9y agoThis is not correct. Tesla does not do body work.
- nnf 9y agoNot to correct you but to add context: I recently had body work done through the Tesla service center. I dropped my car off, got a loaner, and they took mine to a nearby body shop. (They told me up front they would be doing it this way.) Picked it up a couple days later where I dropped it off.
- dogma1138 9y agoTesla does cosmetic body work they don’t do it in house but they do handle it for you anything more than that they will refuse to touch it and it will likely get totaled by your insurer. You can ry to repair it on your own and recertify it with Tesla but it takes quite a bit of time and it ain’t free.
- greglindahl 9y agoI've had 1 body repair to my Tesla. My insurance didn't total the car, and there were several local certified body shops to choose from. It was the same process as with other cars, I've never had a dealer do body work.
- nradov 9y agoIt seems silly to avoid filing an insurance claim when the other driver is insured and at fault. Even a minor bumper repair on a cheap vehicle is >$800 now. I've been rear ended 3 times in California and the amount of insurance bullshittery was pretty low.
- mikeash 9y agoTesla doesn’t do collision repair. They have a program to certify third party body shops for that.
- dogma1138 9y agoTesla handles that for you afaik and even then it’s limited as those body shops can’t get replacement parts form Tesla other than windshields and lights so if you need to replace a body part you’re out of luck.
- mikeash 9y agoTesla doesn’t handle it for you at all, and a full range of replacement parts is available, although sometimes they can take a long time to arrive.
- hliyan 9y agoI'm starting to feel like this whole thing is a case of competitors in the auto/energy industry smelling blood in the water after the Model 3 production issues. I'm seeing a spike in "Why Tesla is doomed" type articles recently...
- jd20 9y agoI don't know for other areas, but here in bay area Tesla only does service, not collision repairs. I took both my Model S, and my wife's Porsche to the same repair facility, and I can tell you that both were eye wateringly expensive, and so well over my deductible that I really just didn't care. So, I'm not sure whether to feel bad that the Tesla's claims are higher on average, or take pride that I'm getting more for my dollar from the insurer when I get it fixed?
- dogma1138 9y agoAs far as I know Tesla handles minor cosmetic damage for you they will hand it off to a local body shop but the problem is that anything that won’t buff out can’t be repaired as you for example as a body shop even a certified one can’t get say a buy a new door from Tesla. The only way to fix a Tesla is essentially via salvage and there are plenty of people who buy scrapped Tesla’s and make a frankencar some might opt to recertify it with Tesla so they can’t get updates and service but you don’t have to do so for the car to drive and even charge from the network.
- jd20 9y agoSo in your example, sounds like Tesla is still not doing any body work, they're just referring the customer to a local body shop, which sets their own prices. Repair centers can certainly buy brand new official parts from Tesla. When my nose cone was fixed, the entire front bumper assembly (including new Autopilot sensors) was ordered from Tesla. This is pretty much the rule, not the exception, and Tesla seems to operate no differently than other car manufacturers when it comes to the repair process, from what I've seen. I don't see much about the Tesla that would make it more likely to salvage other than the battery pack though. Structural repair to a Tesla seems about the same as any other aluminum bodied car, and while there are shops that will do it (and get all the certified parts from Tesla), it just often doesn't make sense to spend $20-30k to fix a car whose used market value with a salvage title will be maybe double that?
- koolba 9y ago> Under collision and property damage liability coverages, the seven electric vehicles with exact conventional counterparts had lower claim frequencies and higher claim severities than their comparison vehicles. I bet the higher frequency of claims is either because people who buy electrics are worse drivers or simply more litigious. Probably both.
- lsc 9y ago>I bet the higher frequency of claims is either because people who buy electrics are worse drivers or simply more litigious. Probably both. I think you should re-read what you are quoting. My reading is that the electric cars that were not made by Tesla had fewer claims than their ICE counterparts.
- koolba 9y agoIndeed. I misread it as “higher” on both. In that case it’d be the reverse, with electric drivers being statistical better drivers.
- zzzzzzzza 9y agoInteresting in light of tesla's claim that autopilot improves safety
- dangrossman 9y agoTesla compares their crash rate to, and I quote, "all vehicles from all manufacturers" [1], rather than to comparable vehicles, or even just western vehicles. The IIHS statistics say they're more accident-prone than other luxury cars and other electric cars. It would be interesting to compare Autopilot's crash statistics to other driver assist / AEB systems, rather than to all the 10-year-old base-model cars on the road. 1: https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-last-week%E2%80%99s-accident https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-last-week%E2%80%99s-accide...
- newnewpdro 9y agoTesla's PR department is obviously full of shit. Edit: Which PR department isn't? Didn't Edward Bernays invent PR as a form of commercial propaganda for use in times of peace?
- buvanshak 9y ago> Tesla's PR department is obviously full of shit. Elon Musk; Is full of shit. Little by little more and more people ll come to understand that.
- dangrossman 9y agoI'm not surprised. Tesla's Model S replaced Toyota's Prius as the eco-conscious high-tech status symbol vehicle to own. Owner surveys show a lot of people came over to Tesla from ordinary cars rather than from other luxury cars or muscle cars. Someone coming from a compact hybrid that does 0-60 in 11 seconds, to a huge sports car that does it in 2.5 seconds, is probably more likely than the average driver to get into an accident.
- newnewpdro 9y agoClearly the vast majority of Teslas on the road are P100Ds in ludicrous mode 100% of the time. If memory serves the average model S is more like 5 seconds 0-60, which is quick but there's a _world_ of difference separating 2.5s from 5s 0-60.
- greglindahl 9y agoI've been to a talk by the Progressive guy with all of their data, and he says the only strong predictor of accidents is sharp braking. Not acceleration. Do you have any data points to offer?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mdorazio 9y agoI don't have actual statistics I can share, but work in the automotive industry and have talked fairly extensively with insurance companies about data sharing as part of usage based insurance. There are actually multiple predictors of accident-prone drivers. Sharp braking is one, but so are frequent lane changes, insufficient following distance, and abrupt speed increases. Distracted driving is a bigger issue than all of these, but is very hard to actually detect as a first-order effect with current cabin sensors.
- jd20 9y agoI'm really skeptical of this theory being pushed in the article, without further data to back it up. Maybe the Model S has a higher claim frequency because its owners would be more nitpicky of their $100k+ car, than a $30k Leaf? Shouldn't there be other data showing that performance of luxury cars also leads to higher frequency claims? Personally, I see a lot of Tesla's on the road every day, and the people who were used to driving a Prius or minivan, seem to drive their Tesla in pretty much the same manner.
- Someone1234 9y agoThis isn't great news for Tesla. This 30 second video also recently surfaced where someone reproduced the fatal accident involving autopilot from this week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QCF8tVqM3I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QCF8tVqM3I This could also be bad for Tesla if this is what occurred. Interestingly in this video the chevron lines exist, something people have been claiming would have averted the accident, also interesting that no warning alarm sounded at any stage.
- saudioger 9y agoHoly shit, not sure I would have been so interested in proving the problem that I would have taken my hands off the wheel like that. I can really see why Tesla would try to deny this so hard, seeing it happen yourself is frightening.
- oska 9y agoWhat evidence have you seen of Tesla ‘trying to deny this so hard’? I've read both of their press releases on the incident [1] [2] and I didn't see any attempts at denial in them. [1] https://www.tesla.com/es_ES/blog/what-we-know-about-last-weeks-accident https://www.tesla.com/es_ES/blog/what-we-know-about-last-wee... [2] https://www.tesla.com/es_ES/blog/update-last-week%E2%80%99s-accident https://www.tesla.com/es_ES/blog/update-last-week%E2%80%99s-...
- sgustard 9y ago"Our data shows that Tesla owners have driven this same stretch of highway [thousands of times with no trouble]" reads as a denial, implying the crash was a one-off non-reproducible fluke, which the video certainly disproves.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y agoWith the advent of this video I'm expecting Telsa to disable Autopilot across the entire fleet within another couple of hours. Anything less would be denial and warrant some head honcho at some regulator with teeth, and probably the FBI, turn up at Musk's house and drag him away. From your second link, in Tesla's own words: "The driver had about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete divider with the crushed crash attenuator, but the vehicle logs show that no action was taken." What they didn't write is that the car also had an unobstructed view of the crash attenuator. Stop calling Autopilot. It's adaptive cruise control, so call it that.
- ggg9990 9y agoTesla is the epitome of Silicon Valley thinking applied to manufacturing. Tremendous achievements that no one thought possible, but tremendous ugliness under the hood.
- aresant 9y agoThe day that Musk decided to call his driver-assist system "Autopilot" he lost my respect as an engineer and my business as a consumer. It's a great brand for a L4 - L5 system, not for Tesla's realistic capabilities as a L2 (1) - it sets a dangerous precedent in the consumer's mind. Their tepid response to this incident outlining that the driver was not fully engaged so Tesla is not at fault, is EXACTLY how the system is used by the average consumer due to the way it's branded and marketed. (1) https://www.caranddriver.com/features/path-to-autonomy-self-driving-car-levels-0-to-5-explained-feature https://www.caranddriver.com/features/path-to-autonomy-self-...
- cycrutchfield 9y agoI would say it’s pretty accurate if you are familiar with how plane autopilots actually work.
- bdcravens 9y agoWhat % of Tesla owners have a pilot's license?
- King-Aaron 9y agoUnfortunately, most people attribute the word 'autopilot' with the way Otto performed in the movie Airplane!...
- draggnar 9y agoOr a boat autopilot.
- hn_throwaway_99 9y agoHow many car drivers do you think are familiar with the details of how plane autopilots really work? If Tesla had called this something like "lane-assist adaptive cruise control" I think your average Joe would have had much more realistic expectations around how the technology actually functions.
- maratd 9y ago
- datamingle 9y ago> On average, Teslas travel three more miles per day than other large luxury cars, HLDI found Would like to know what is 3 miles in percentage terms. Could account for higher collision claim frequencies.
- marcell 9y ago3 x 365 = 1095 extra miles a year. A typical person drives 10,000-15,000 miles per year (USA).
- yeukhon 9y agoI prefer battery-tested tech than something so shiny with such high risks. I hypothesize riding a horse is safer than driving a Telsa.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- tpae 9y ago> The higher claim severity for the Tesla Model S may possibly be attributed to the battery replacement cost of approximately $16,000. This seems pretty important metric to me. > Injury related coverages were also not included due to the small numbers of claims associated with the electric vehicles. I would like to see more of this with the comparison.
- hpen 9y ago"...and it accumulates more miles on average per day than other battery-powered vehicles, a new HLDI report shows." Oh, no shit. A really fun to drive car, that can do ~300 miles per charge, is driven more than the Nissan Leaf @ ~150 MPC
- MentallyRetired 9y agoWhat's up with the hatchet job? Is that normal for IIHS?
- tmuir 9y agoThis is similar to the question "When did you stop beating your wife?" You baselessly claim the action is true, and frame the question as if any answer must first acknowledge your baseless claim as true. I see this as more of a contextual rebuttal to Tesla's ubiquitous PR campaigns that follow every prominent accident. Tesla loves to trot out all of the reasons we should blame the driver in nearly every case. That isn't problematic in isolation. But the fact that it is interspersed with a marketing pitch taints it as an infomercial. Right after we learn that the driver wasn't paying attention, and that all of the warning systems were ignored, we're reminded that Teslas are safer in the aggregate, and that N Teslas have driven this stretch of road M times, without any other accidents. There is also zero accountability for these PR statements. There are no methodologies explained to any degree that can be verified by an outside party. The data is private. The IIHS has given their data, the source of that data, and the methodology that was applied. What was it that you expected from the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety?
- omarforgotpwd 9y agoAll the comments in this thread seem to be implying that AutoPilot causes crashes, thus leading to higher insurance claims. I don't know if that's true, but that's not what this post says. Correlation does not imply causation. It can be true that Teslas cost more to insure without Tesla being "at fault" for the discrepancy. When they compared electric vehicles with their ICE counterparts, they found that "the seven electric vehicles with exact conventional counterparts had lower claim frequencies and higher claim severities than their comparison vehicles". Electric vehicles had less claims, but when there was a claim they tended to be more severe. I assume this is because if there is damage to the battery pack replacing that part is extremely expensive. So it's not surprising that when Teslas crash they can be expensive to fix given that "crash severity" tends to be higher with electric cars, and that Tesla is a small luxury car maker. The other thing you have to think about is selection bias. All the groups you're sampling are not equal. Because Tesla's are known for being extremely fast, they might tend to attract people who want to... drive their car fast. To make a scientific comparison you'd want to randomly assign people to a Tesla or Non-Tesla to get a comparable sample population. The other thing they mention is that "Teslas also are on the road more than comparable large luxury cars. On average, Teslas travel three more miles per day than other large luxury cars, HLDI found." Obviously, if a car drives three times as much as another car it's going to be roughly three times as likely to crash given a consistent probability of collision per mile, right? Since Teslas don't need gas, the more miles you drive the more money you save -- and the more financial sense they make. Therefore it's not surprising that Tesla owners tend to drive their cars much more as the financial incentives would tend to favor people who drive more -- especially with free unlimited supercharging in early Model S and X. Even someone who might not have driven a lot before will be more likely to drive more if the price of doing so is reduced -- that's just the basic law of demand. Plus, if you had a Tesla wouldn't you want to drive it all the time? People are leaving their Bolt in the garage while they drive their Telas three times as much as comparable luxury cars, and yet what we take away from the data is "AutoPilot is causing crashes". I know this won't make a difference in how the media and public perceive this, and this line of thinking will just be seen as a defense of Tesla, but I don't think that higher claim frequencies for Model S means Tesla has necessarily done anything wrong, just on a purely statistical basis.
- 9y ago
- lafar6502 9y agoWhat has changed since Tesla claimed their cars are so much safer that the insurance costs can be lowered below standard rates?
- rconti 9y agoSo, I don't care about the claim severity, as a consumer (unless we're talking deaths versus scrapes). They're clearly talking about costs, which will drive premiums, but are certainly related to parts/labor costs and availability, which is solvable long-term. Apparently I also don't care about claim FREQUENCY because the article notes that the frequency difference goes down (but does NOT go away) when controlling for miles travelled. What? How on earth does 'frequency' not have miles as a denominator? Okay, fine, they must consider it on a per-day or per-year basis, but as a consumer, again, I don't care. As the consumer, I really care about whether passengers fare worse in the average collision, or are more likely to be in a collision. Again, parts costs will come into line over the long term. This is a game the established manufacturers are already good at, Tesla will have to step up to catch up.