Comment by Veserv
14 hours ago
It was not workable. They have a loss ratio of >100% [1], as in they paid out more in claims than received in premiums before even accounting for literally any other costs. Industry average is ~60-80% to stay profitable when including other costs.
They released the Tesla Insurance product because their cars were excessively expensive to insure, increasing ownership costs, which was impacting sales. By releasing the unprofitable Tesla Insurance product, they could subsidize ownership costs making the cars more attractive to buy right now which pumped revenues immediately in return for a "accidental" write-down in the future.
[1] https://peakd.com/tesla/@newageinv/teslas-push-into-insuranc...
Who was paying for this?
You as the consumer when you buy a tesla car that's twice the price of what you can get it for in Asia. Teslas are very cheap to produce.
Remember with their own insurance they also have access to the parts at cost.
That is not true. Since Tesla was losing money on their insurance to boost sales the customers were not paying for it since they were receiving a service for below cost.
The people paying were actually the retirement funds who fronted Tesla's cash reserves when they purchased Tesla stock and the US government paying for it in the form of more tax credits on sales that would not have otherwise materialized without this financial fraud. But do not worry, retirement funds and the US government may have lost, but it boosted Tesla sales and stock valuation so that Elon Musk could reach his KPIs to get his multiple tens of billions of dollars of payout.
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