Tesla has begun offering customers in Asia a package that includes in the purchase price the cost of insurance and maintenance, the company noted on its earnings call today. This is how they’d like to offer vehicles across their markets in the future, the carmaker says, and it’ll do so in partnership with external insurance providers — but it has also looked at handling insurance in-house as an option, too.
“We’re actually currently doing that,” Jeff Evanson, Tesla VP of Global Investor Relations explained on the call. “We’ve been doing it quietly, but in Asia in particular where we started this, now the majority of Tesla cars are sold with an insurance product that is customized to Tesla, that takes into account not only the Autopilot safety features but also the maintenance costs of the car. It’s our vision in the future that we’ll be able to offer a single price for the car, maintenance and insurance in a really compelling offering for the consumer. And we’re currently doing that today.”
“This is not to the exclusion of insurance providers if we find that insurance providers are not matching the insurance proportionate to the risk of the car,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk added. “If we need to we’ll insource it, but I think we’ll find that insurance partners do adjust rates proportionate to the risk of a Tesla.”
The company does this in part because they believe their vehicles offer strong advantages in terms of safety record and maintenance costs over the life of the vehicle. It would definitely offer more transparency at checkout versus other options, and it sounds like a laudable pursuit overall for car buyers.
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