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Any idea how life insurance companies are dealing with Tesla owners and their autopilot induced fatalities? The number of autopilot -related deaths and crashes

Any idea how life insurance companies are dealing with Tesla owners and their autopilot induced fatalities? The number of autopilot -related deaths and crashes seems high considering how few Teslas are on the road.

erikpukinskis 8y ago
> The number of autopilot -related deaths and crashes seems high considering how few Teslas are on the road. That’s just an artifact of increased media coverage.
- beenBoutIT 8y ago
  Tesla has only sold roughly 200k Teslas* as of July. *https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/07/tesla-sold-200000-cars-in-the-us-so-the-7500-tax-credit-is-going-away/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/07/tesla-sold-200000-cars-...
  - Diederich 8y ago
    200k US sales as of July, that's correct. They're current production rate is about 107k/year, slightly more than 1% of General Motors 10M/year.
beat 8y ago
You're committing a couple of different fallacies there, which let sensationalist media (itself full of fallacies) influence your thinking. First, Teslas aren't exactly rare. Upthread, someone said 200,000 have been sold (have not fact-checked, but it seems plausible). Second, autopilot related fatalities are covered breathlessly in the media, ignoring all of the other, far more common sources of fatalities, such as drunk driving. And finally, there is no media coverage of the number of accidents prevented by autopilot, which I suspect is pretty high.
- beenBoutIT 8y ago
  Tesla has maybe sold 200,000 cars world-wide over the course of 15 years, by its own estimate. GM sold close to 4 times that many vehicles in the US alone in Q2 of 2018. Teslas are rare. https://www.gm.com/investors/sales/us-sales-production.html https://www.gm.com/investors/sales/us-sales-production.html
  - Diederich 8y ago
    300,000 as of February: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc. Current production rate is 107,000/year, more than 1% of GMs 10million/year. However, your point stands: Teslas are, at this point, relatively rare.
  - beat 8y ago
    Tesla Model S outsells the BMWs, Mercedes, and Audis in its class. Those aren't considered rare and exotic.
Spooky23 8y ago
Life insurance doesn’t care, the car insurance companies care in situations where you need to figure out who is at fault. The answer probably depends on state law and other factors. With autopilot the driver is nominally in control — which is why Tesla aggressively does the PR dance to blame the driver. My guess is that due to the newness and arbritration clauses, they have gotten lucky. States can change that though — for awhile you couldn’t lease a car in New York because the law let someone injured in an accident due the leasing company!

erikpukinskis 8y ago

> The number of autopilot -related deaths and crashes seems high considering how few Teslas are on the road. That’s just an artifact of increased media coverage.

beenBoutIT 8y ago
Tesla has only sold roughly 200k Teslas* as of July. *https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/07/tesla-sold-200000-cars-in-the-us-so-the-7500-tax-credit-is-going-away/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/07/tesla-sold-200000-cars-...
- Diederich 8y ago
  200k US sales as of July, that's correct. They're current production rate is about 107k/year, slightly more than 1% of General Motors 10M/year.

beat 8y ago

You're committing a couple of different fallacies there, which let sensationalist media (itself full of fallacies) influence your thinking. First, Teslas aren't exactly rare. Upthread, someone said 200,000 have been sold (have not fact-checked, but it seems plausible). Second, autopilot related fatalities are covered breathlessly in the media, ignoring all of the other, far more common sources of fatalities, such as drunk driving. And finally, there is no media coverage of the number of accidents prevented by autopilot, which I suspect is pretty high.

beenBoutIT 8y ago
Tesla has maybe sold 200,000 cars world-wide over the course of 15 years, by its own estimate. GM sold close to 4 times that many vehicles in the US alone in Q2 of 2018. Teslas are rare. https://www.gm.com/investors/sales/us-sales-production.html https://www.gm.com/investors/sales/us-sales-production.html
- Diederich 8y ago
  300,000 as of February: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc. Current production rate is 107,000/year, more than 1% of GMs 10million/year. However, your point stands: Teslas are, at this point, relatively rare.
- beat 8y ago
  Tesla Model S outsells the BMWs, Mercedes, and Audis in its class. Those aren't considered rare and exotic.

Spooky23 8y ago

Life insurance doesn’t care, the car insurance companies care in situations where you need to figure out who is at fault. The answer probably depends on state law and other factors. With autopilot the driver is nominally in control — which is why Tesla aggressively does the PR dance to blame the driver. My guess is that due to the newness and arbritration clauses, they have gotten lucky. States can change that though — for awhile you couldn’t lease a car in New York because the law let someone injured in an accident due the leasing company!