[HN Gopher] Self Driving Car Insurance
___________________________________________________________________
Self Driving Car Insurance
Author : KellyCriterion
Score : 67 points
Date : 2026-01-30 15:50 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lemonade.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lemonade.com)
| FrankWilhoit wrote:
| One's first thought is that they ought to be running away from
| underwriting this as fast as they can go. But then one realizes
| that it is all profit -- they need never pay a claim, because in
| accidents involving autonomous vehicles, it will never be
| possible to establish fault; and then one sees that the primary
| purpose of most automations is to obscure responsibility.
| nradov wrote:
| You're not making any sense. In terms of civil liability, fault
| is attached to the vehicle regardless of what autonomous
| systems might have been in use at the time of a collision.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Or even who was driving it, in the case of ordinary cars.
| jgbuddy wrote:
| > and then one sees that the primary purpose of most
| automations is to obscure responsibility.
|
| Are you saying that the investments in FSD by tesla have been
| with the goal of letting drivers get a way with accidents? The
| law is black and white
| tehwebguy wrote:
| One might imagine that lower courts won't determine fault, one
| would be wrong.
| deelayman wrote:
| I think there's a narrow unregulated space where this could be
| true. I'm exercising my creativity trying to imagine it - where
| automations are built with the outcome of obscured
| responsibility in mind. And I could understand profit as a
| possible driving factor for that outcome.
|
| As an extreme end of a spectrum example, there's been worry and
| debate for decades over automating military capabilities to the
| point where it becomes "push button to win war". There used to
| be, and hopefully still is, lots of restraint towards heading
| in that direction - in recognition of the need for ethics
| validation in automated judgements. The topic comes up now and
| then around Tesla's, and impossible decisions that FSD will
| have to make.
|
| So at a certain point, and it may be right around the point of
| serious physical harm, the design decision to have or not have
| human-in-the-middle accountability seems to run into ethical
| constraints. In reality it's the ruthless bottom line focused
| corps - that don't seem to be the norm, but may have an
| outsized impact - that actually push up against ethical
| constraints. But even then, I would be wary as an executive
| documenting a decision to disregard potential harms at one of
| them shops. That line is being tested, but it's still there.
|
| In my actual experience with automations, they've always been
| derived from laziness / reducing effort for everyone, or
| "because we can", and sometimes a need to reduce human error.
| sabareesh wrote:
| Tesla have their own Insurance product which is already very
| competitive compared to other providers. Not sure if lemonade can
| beat them . Tesla's insurance product has similar objective in
| place already where it rewards self driving over manual driving.
| kjksf wrote:
| Tesla is cooperating with Lemonade on this by providing them
| necessary user driving data.
|
| If Tesla didn't want Lemonade to provide this, they could block
| them.
|
| Strategically, Tesla doesn't want to be an insurer. They
| started the insurance product years ago, before Lemonade also
| offered this, to make FSD more attractive to buyers.
|
| But the expansion stalled, maybe because the state bureaucracy
| or maybe because Tesla shifted priority to other things.
|
| In conclusion: Tesla is happy that Lemonade offers this. It
| makes Tesla cars more attractive to buyers without Tesla doing
| the work of starting an insurance company in every state.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > But the expansion stalled, maybe because the state
| bureaucracy or maybe because Tesla shifted priority to other
| things.
|
| If the math was mathing, it would be _malpractice_ not to
| expand it. I 'm betting that their scheme simply wasn't
| workable, given the extremely high costs of claims (Tesla
| repairs aren't cheap) relative to the low rates that they
| were collecting on premiums. The cheap premiums are probably
| a form of market dumping to get people to buy their FSD
| product, the sales of which boosts their share price.
| Veserv wrote:
| 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...
| redanddead wrote:
| Who was paying for this?
| Onavo wrote:
| 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.
| Veserv wrote:
| 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.
| redanddead wrote:
| Wow this went deep ahaha
| redanddead wrote:
| The math should've mathed. Better data === lower losses
| right? They probably weren't able to get it to work quite
| right on the tech side and were eating fat losses during an
| already bad time in the market.
|
| It'll come back.
|
| Lemonade or Tesla if you find this, let's pilot, i'm a
| founder in sunnyvale, insurtech vertical at pnp
| redanddead wrote:
| You'd be very surprised. Distribution works wonders. You could
| have a large carrier taking over Tesla's own vehicles in
| markets they care about. The difference then would be loss
| ratios on the data collection, like does LIDAR data really beat
| Progressive Snapshot?
|
| The two are measuring data for different sources of losses for
| carriers.
| jasoncartwright wrote:
| If it autonomous or self-driving then why is the person in the
| car paying for the insurance? Surely if it's Tesla making the
| decisions, they need the insurance?
| jgbuddy wrote:
| Because the operator is liable? Tesla as a company isn't
| driving the car, it's a ML model running on something like HW4
| on bare metal in the car itself. Would that make the silicon
| die legally liable?
| throw20251220 wrote:
| Who's the "operator" of an "autonomous" car? If I sit in it
| and it drives me around, how am I an "operator"?
| renewiltord wrote:
| If you get on a horse and let go of the reins you are also
| considered the operator of the horse. Such are the
| definitions in our society.
| kyleee wrote:
| Great analogy, lol
| jasoncartwright wrote:
| Sounds like it's neither self-driving, nor autonomous, if I'm
| on the hook if it goes wrong.
| scottbez1 wrote:
| Yeah, Tesla gets to blame the "driver", and has a history
| of releasing partial and carefully curated subsets of data
| from crashes to try to shift as much blame onto the driver
| as possible.
|
| And the system is designed to set up drivers for failure.
|
| An HCI challenge with mostly autonomous systems is that
| operators lose their awareness of the system, and when
| things go wrong you can easily get _worse_ outcomes than if
| the system was fully manual with an engaged operator.
|
| This is a well known challenge in the nuclear energy sector
| and airline industry (Air France 447) - how do you keep
| operators fully engaged even though they almost never need
| to intervene, because otherwise they're likely to be
| missing critical context and make wrong decisions. These
| days you could probably argue the same is true of software
| engineers reviewing LLM code that's often - but not always
| - correct.
| redanddead wrote:
| > has a history of releasing partial and carefully
| curated subsets of data from crashes to try to shift as
| much blame onto the driver as possible
|
| Really? Thats crazy.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| Its neither self-driving, nor autonomous, eventually not
| even a car! (as Tesla slowly exits the car business). It
| will be 'insurance' on Speculation as a service, as Tesla
| skyrockets to $20T market cap. Tesla will successfully
| transition from a small revenue to pre-revenue company:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYJdKW-UnFQ
|
| The last few years of Tesla 'growth' show how this
| transition is unfolding. S and X production is shutdown,
| just a few more models to shutdown.
| rubyfan wrote:
| I wonder if they will try to sell off the car business
| once they can hype up something else. It seems odd to
| just let the car business die.
| redanddead wrote:
| Wild prediction, would love to hear the rest of it
| close04 wrote:
| The point is if the liability is always exclusively with the
| human driver then any system in that car is at best a "driver
| assist". Claims that "it drives itself" or "it's autonomous"
| are just varying degrees of lying. I call it a partial lie
| rather than a partial truth because the result more often
| than not is that the customer is tricked into thinking the
| system is more capable than it is, and because that outcome
| is more dangerous than the opposite.
|
| Any car has varying degrees of autonomy, even the ones with
| no assists (it will safely self-drive you all the way to the
| accident site, as they say). But the car is either driven by
| the human with the system's help, or is driven by the system
| with or without the human's help.
|
| A car can't have 2 drivers. The only real one is the one the
| law holds responsible.
| throw20251220 wrote:
| It's because you bought it. Don't buy it if you don't want to
| insure.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yep, you bought it, you own it, you choose to operate it on
| the public roads. Therefore your liability.
| 9rx wrote:
| If you bought and owned it, you could sell it to another
| auto manufacturer for some pretty serious amounts of money.
|
| In reality, you acquired a license to use it. Your
| liability should only go as far as you have agreed to
| identify the licenser.
| recursive wrote:
| You can actually do that. Except that they could just buy
| one themselves.
|
| Companies exist that buy cars just to tear them down and
| publish reports on what they find.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| I don't think Tesla lets you buy FSD
| scottyah wrote:
| They do, until Feb 14th.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Even now I think it's a revocable license
| davidhunter wrote:
| Seems like the role of the human operator in the age of AI is
| to be the entity they can throw in jail if the machine fails
| (e.g. driver, pilot)
| taneq wrote:
| I've said for years that pragmatically, our definition of a
| "person" is an entity that can accept liability and take
| blame.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| Not an expert here, but I recall reading that certain European
| countries (Spain???) allow liability to be put on the
| autonomous driving system, not the person in the car. Does
| anyone know more about this?
| bluGill wrote:
| That is the case everywhere. It is common when buying a
| product for the contract to include who has liability for
| various things. The price often changes by a lot depending on
| who has liability.
|
| Cars are traditionally sold as the customer has liability.
| Nothing stops a car maker (or even an individual dealer) from
| selling cars today taking all the insurance liability in any
| country I know of - they don't for what I hope are obvious
| reasons (bad drivers will be sure to buy those cars since it
| is a better deal for them an in turn a worse deal for good
| drivers), but they could.
|
| Self driving is currently sold as customers has liability
| because that is how it has always been done. I doubt it will
| change, but it is only because I doubt there will ever be
| enough advantage as to be worth it for someone else to take
| on the liability - but I could be wrong.
| kjksf wrote:
| Because that's the law of the land currently.
|
| The product you buy is called "FSD Supervised". It clearly
| states you're liable and must supervise the system.
|
| I don't think there's law that would allow Tesla (or anyone
| else) to sell a passenger car with unsupervised system.
|
| If you take Waymo or Tesla Robotaxi in Austin, you are not
| liable for accidents, Google or Tesla is.
|
| That's because they operate on limited state laws that allow
| them to provide such service but the law doesn't allow selling
| such cars to people.
|
| That's changing. Quite likely this year we will have federal
| law that will allow selling cars with fully unsupervised self-
| driving, in which case the insurance/liability will obviously
| land on the maker of the system, not person present in the car.
| jasoncartwright wrote:
| I see. So not Tesla's product they are using to sell
| insurance around isn't "Full Self-Driving" or "Autonomous"
| like the page says.
| FeloniousHam wrote:
| My current FSD usage is 90% over ~2000 miles (since v14.x).
| Besides driving everywhere, everyday with FSD, I have
| driven 4 hours garage to hotel valet without intervention.
| It is absolutely "Full Self-Driving" and "Autonomous".
|
| FSD isn't perfect, but it is everyday amazing and useful.
| jasoncartwright wrote:
| Yet still on relying you to cover it with your insurance.
| Again, clearly not autonomous.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| > Don't be snarky
|
| > https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| You keep posting the same thing across the thread. Do
| better.
| zen928 wrote:
| Disagree. I appreciate their viewpoint tethering
| corporate claims to reality by illustrating Tesla is
| obfuscating the classification of their machines to be
| autonomous, when they actually aren't. Their comments in
| other thread chains proved to be fruitful when lacking
| agitators looking to dismiss critique by citing website
| rules, like the post adding additional detail to how
| Tesla muddles legal claims by cooking up cherry-picked
| evidence that work against the driver despite being the
| insurer.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Liability is a separate matter from autonomy. I assume
| you'd consider yourself autonomous, yet it's your
| employer's insurance that will be liable if you have an
| accident while driving a company vehicle.
|
| If the company required a representative to sit in the
| car with you and participate in the driving (e.g. by
| monitoring and taking over before an accident), then
| there's a case to be made that you're not fully
| autonomous.
| buran77 wrote:
| > it's your employer's insurance that will be liable if
| you have an accident while driving a company vehicle
|
| I think you're mixing some concepts.
|
| There's car insurance paid by the owner of the car, for
| the car. There's workplace accident insurance, paid by
| the employer for the employee. The liability isn't
| assigned by default, but by determining who's
| responsible.
|
| The driver is always legally responsible for accidents
| caused by their negligence. If you play with your phone
| behind the wheel and kill someone, even while working and
| driving a company car, the company's insurance might pay
| for the damage but you go to prison. The company will
| recover the money from you. Their work accident insurance
| will pay nothing.
|
| The test you can run in your head: will you get arrested
| if you fall asleep at the wheel and crash? If yes, then
| it's not autonomous or self driving. It just has driver
| assistance. It's not that the car can't drive itself at
| all, just that it doesn't meet the bar for the entire
| legal concept of "driver/driving".
|
| "Almost" self driving is like jumping over a canyon and
| almost making it to the other side. Good effort, bad
| outcome.
| wat10000 wrote:
| If it was full self driving, wouldn't your usage be 100%?
| rubyfan wrote:
| Waymo is also a livery service which you normally aren't
| liable for as a passenger of taxi or limousine unless you
| have deep pockets. /IANAL
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| You can sell autonomous vehicles to consumers all day long.
| There's no US federal law prohibiting that, as long as
| they're compliant with FMVSS as all consumer vehicles are
| required to be.
| 2III7 wrote:
| Without LIDAR and/or additional sensors, Tesla will never be
| able to provide "real" FSD, no matter how wonderful their
| software controlling the car is.
|
| Also, self driving is a feature of a vehicle someone owns, I
| don't understand how that should exempt anyone from insuring
| their property.
|
| Waymo and others are providing a taxi service where the
| driver is not a human. You don't pay insurance when you ride
| Uber or Bolt or any other regular taxi service.
| Marsymars wrote:
| > Also, self driving is a feature of a vehicle someone
| owns, I don't understand how that should exempt anyone from
| insuring their property.
|
| Well practically speaking, there's nothing stopping anyone
| from voluntarily assuming liability for arbitrary things.
| If Tesla assumes the liability for my car, then even if I
| still require my "own" insurance for legal purposes, the
| marginal cost of covering the remaining risk is going to be
| close to zero.
| arijun wrote:
| Never say never--it's not physically impossible. But yes,
| as it stands, it seems that Tesla will not be self driving
| any time soon (if ever).
| kjksf wrote:
| They literally just (in the last few days) started
| unsupervised robotaxis in Austin.
|
| They are as self-driving as a car can be.
|
| This is different than the one where they had a human
| supervisor in passenger seat (which they still do
| elsewhere).
|
| And different than the one where they didn't have human
| supervisor but did have a follow car.
|
| Now they have a few robotaxis that are self driving.
| kolbe wrote:
| > Quite likely this year we will have federal law that will
| allow selling cars with fully unsupervised self-driving, in
| which case the insurance/liability will obviously land on the
| maker of the system, not person present in the car.
|
| This is news to me. This context seems important to
| understanding Tesla's decision to stop selling FSD. If
| they're on the hook for insurance, then they will need to
| dynamically adjust what they charge to reflect insurance
| costs.
| arijun wrote:
| I imagine insurance would be split in two in that case.
| Carmakers would not want to be liable for e.g. someone
| striking you in a hit-and-run.
| smallnix wrote:
| If the car that did a hit-and-run was operated autonomously
| the insurance of the maker of that car should pay.
| Otherwise it's a human and the situation falls into the
| bucket of what we already have today.
|
| So yes, carmakers would pay in a hit-and-run.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Generally speaking, liability for a thing falls on the
| owner/operator. That person can sue the manufacturer to recover
| the damages if they want. At some point, I expect it to become
| somewhat routine for insurures to pay out, then sue the
| manufacturer to recover.
| amelius wrote:
| Or at some point subscribing to a service may be easier than
| owning the damn thing.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| All according to plan
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| It already doesn't make sense to own a car for me. It's
| cheaper to just call an Uber.
| loeg wrote:
| It isn't fully autonomous yet. For any future system sold as
| level 5 (or level 4?), I agree with your contention -- the
| manufacturer of the level 5 autonomous system is the one who
| bears primary liability and therefore should insure. "FSD"
| isn't even level 3.
|
| (Though, there is still an element of owner/operator
| maintenance for level 4/5 vehicles -- e.g., if the owner fails
| to replace tires below 4/32", continues to operate the vehicle,
| and it causes an injury, that is partially the owner/operator's
| fault.)
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Wouldn't that requirement completely kill any chance of a L5
| system being profitable? If company X is making tons of self-
| driving cars, and now has to pay insurance for _every single
| one_ , that's a mountain of cash. They'd go broke
| immediately.
|
| I realize it would suck to be blamed for something the car
| did when you _weren 't_ driving it, but I'm not sure how else
| it could be financially feasible.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The way it works in states like California currently is
| that the permit holder has to post an insurance bond that
| accidents and judgements are taken out against. It's a
| fixed overhead.
| loeg wrote:
| No? Insurance costs would be passed through to consumers in
| the form of up-front purchase price. And probably the cost
| to insure L5 systems for liability will be very low. If it
| isn't low, the autonomous system isn't very safe.
| abtinf wrote:
| You insure the property, not the person.
| redanddead wrote:
| well it's the risk, the combination ..
|
| it's why young drivers pay more for insurance
| ck2 wrote:
| The coder and sensor manufacturers need the insurance for
| wrongful death lawsuits
|
| and Musk for removing lidar so it keeps jumping across high
| speed traffic at shadows because the visual cameras can't see
| true depth
|
| 99% of the people on this website are coders and know how even
| one small typo can cause random fails, yet you trust them to
| make you an alpha/beta tester at high speed?
| djoldman wrote:
| That's probably the future; Mercedes currently does do this in
| limited form:
|
| https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a39481699/what-happens-if-...
| cebert wrote:
| I own a Model Y with hardware version 4. FSD prevented my from
| getting in an accident with a drunk driver. It reacted much
| faster to the situation than I could have. Ever since, I'm sold
| that in a lot of circumstances, machines can drive better than
| humans.
| throw20251220 wrote:
| So does AEB in any modern car.
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| Tesla fans have not realized that every car made since
| 2021ish can do this.
| throw20251220 wrote:
| Obviously.
| mullingitover wrote:
| My 2016 Honda Civic has automatic braking ( _and_ it has
| lanekeep assist, so it 's technologically superior to a
| 2026 Tesla).
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| It does more than AEB. It also knows to swerve out of the
| way during E: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1MWml-81e0
| throw20251220 wrote:
| Generally known as AES, for example from BMW available
| with Active Driving Assistant or Driving Assistant Plus
| packages.
| tevon wrote:
| I have a late model Audi, and a Tesla Model 3. Audi has
| all the bells and whistles.
|
| Doesn't come close to the safety I feel in the Tesla. Not
| even close. I know anecdotal
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| AEB has been around since ages. Even my 2010 Mazda had it.
| It's nowhere near Tesla's capabilities tho. Not sure what
| are you trying to achieve with such dunks?
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| A 50% discount is pretty damning empirical evidence for FSD being
| better at driving your Tesla than you are.
| jerlam wrote:
| We don't know if 50% makes it actually cheaper than other car
| insurance companies, or the coverage is comparable, or if they
| have comparable service. Or if they sell your location
| information to marketers.
| dangus wrote:
| Or a price hike if the fleet API tattles on you for negative
| driving behaviors.
|
| It may not be on the marketing copy but it's almost certainly
| present in the contract.
| _diyar wrote:
| Assuming this discount is offered broadly and indefinitely.
| Otherwise these might just be marketing dollars.
| Veserv wrote:
| No it does not. A 50% discount and the insurance still having
| industry average profit, or at least being profitable at all,
| would tell you that. Selling at a loss does not indicate your
| costs are actually lower. You need to wait until we learn if it
| is actually at a loss.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Sir, your bias is extreme.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Veserv
| Veserv wrote:
| Ah yes, posting well documented video evidence of reality
| is bias. How silly of me. The only unbiased take is to
| ignore my lying eyes and make logically unsound arguments
| in favor of endangering the public. That is what unbiased
| people do.
|
| I also like how you completely avoided addressing my
| argument in favor of a attempted ad hominem.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| > ignore my lying eyes and make logically unsound
| arguments
|
| Why haven't you acknowledged this video as fake?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu2N8f3nEYc
| Veserv wrote:
| I am utterly baffled by what you are trying to argue with
| this post except for distracting from the weakness of
| your original argument with more attempted(?) ad
| hominems. Must be my bias showing.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Uh huh
| recursive wrote:
| I will sell you a loaf of bread for $10 and a tortilla for
| $100.
|
| Analysts saying tortilla industry in shambles.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Yeah I'm actually very curious about this, it's the first I've
| heard.
|
| I'd like to know what data this is based on, and if Tesla is
| providing any kind of subsidy or guarantee.
|
| There's also a big difference between the value of car damages
| and, well, death. E.g. what if FSD is much less likely to get
| into otherwise common fender benders that don't harm you, but
| more likely to occasionally accidentally drive you straight
| into a divider, killing you?
| t1234s wrote:
| What happens if you have FSD turned off and like to drive fast on
| public roads. Will they see this telemetry and raise your rates?
| jerlam wrote:
| It seems the answer is yes. From their web site:
|
| > Fair prices, based on how you drive [...] Get a discount, and
| earn a lower premium as you drive better.
| t1234s wrote:
| Bummer.. its super fun to floor them off the line.
| giobox wrote:
| This (instant torque) is exciting for about the first week
| of electric car ownership, it gets old very fast. I have
| far more fun driving my much slower gas-engined cars.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| It doesn't get old. What a ludicrous statement.
|
| I did get lots of traction issues with FWD EV, any sort
| of wet - you need to baby it.
| giobox wrote:
| There's much more to enjoying cars than speed in a
| straight line, which I do not disagree at all most EVs
| are exceptional at.
|
| Booting the go pedal at every stop sign or light just
| feels like being a bit of a childish jerk after a short
| while on public roads once the novelty wears off.
| darkwater wrote:
| Speak for yourself. Over 3 years and 100k km and still
| enjoying it.
| t1234s wrote:
| MT gas cars are very fun to drive!
| t1234s wrote:
| Someone with a Plaid will need to test this out to see how
| high they can make their Lemonade premium.
| xnx wrote:
| Marketing stunt
| rebelde wrote:
| 99/month is more than I have been willing to pay for FSD, but if
| it lowers my insurance by 200/month, I could be convinced.
| vel0city wrote:
| Lowering by $200? Full coverage on two recent model cars here
| and that's nearly three quarters of my monthly insurance bill.
| Insane what people are paying for insurance these days.
| drnick1 wrote:
| > automatically tracking FSD miles versus manual miles through
| direct Tesla integration.
|
| No thanks. I unplugged the cellular modem in my car precisely
| because I can't stand the idea that the
| manufacturer/dealer/insurance company or other unauthorized third
| parties could have access to my location and driving habits.
|
| I also generally avoid dealers like the plague and only trust the
| kind of shops where the guy who answers the phone is the guy
| doing the work.
| hamdingers wrote:
| The whole point of self-driving cars (to me) is I don't have to
| own or insure it, someone else deals with that and I just make it
| show up with my phone when I need it.
| BarryMilo wrote:
| Imagine this for a whole neighborhood! Maybe it'd be more
| efficient for the transport to come at regular intervals
| though. And while we're at it, let's pick up other people along
| the way, you'll need a bigger vehicle though, perhaps bus-
| sized...
|
| Half-jokes aside, if you don't own it, you'll end up paying
| more to the robotaxi company than you would have paid to own
| the car. This is all but guaranteed based on all SaaS services
| so far.
| Sayrus wrote:
| Focusing only on price, renting a beafy shared "cloud"
| computer is cheaper than buying one and changing every 5
| years. It's not always an issue for idle hardware.
|
| Cars are mostly idle and _could_ be cheaper if shared. But
| why make them significantly cheaper when you can match the
| price and extract more profits?
| theLiminator wrote:
| > Cars are mostly idle and could be cheaper if shared. But
| why make them significantly cheaper when you can match the
| price and extract more profits?
|
| Yeah, this would rely on robust competition.
| bluGill wrote:
| Cars and personal computers have advantages over shared
| resources that often make them worth the cost. If you want
| your transport/compute in busy times you may find
| limitations. (ever got on the train and had to stand
| because there are no seats? Every had to wait for your
| compute job to start because they are all busy? Both of
| these have happened to me).
| cyberax wrote:
| I ran the numbers, and for most non-braindead cities
| something like a fleet of 6-seater minivans will easily
| replace all of local transit.
|
| And with just 6 people the overhead if an imperfect route
| and additional stops will be measured in minutes.
|
| And of course, it's pretty easy to imagine an option to
| pay a bit more for a fully personal route.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| This exists in a way -- I'd wager every city has a
| commercial service that will shuttle you to, say, the
| airport. They're not cheap, however.
| bluGill wrote:
| you made too many false assumptions if you came up with
| those routes. Experts have run real numbers including
| looking at what happens in the real world.
| https://humantransit.org/category/microtransit - (as I
| write this you need to scroll to the second article to
| find the useful rebuttal of your idea)
| cyberax wrote:
| Yeah, yeah: "Major US Public Transit Union Questions
| "Microtransit"" Read it. Go on. It's pure bullshit.
|
| The _only_ issue with the old "microtransit" is the
| _driver_. Each van ends up needing on average MORE
| drivers than it moves passengers. It does solve the
| problem of throughput, though.
|
| But once the driver is removed, this problem flips on its
| head. Each regular bus needs around 4 drivers for decent
| coverage. It's OK-ish only when the average bus load is
| at least 15-20 people. It's still much more expensive and
| polluting than cars, but not crazily so.
| bluGill wrote:
| Scroll down to the other articles as I said in the first
| place.
|
| self driving changes some things, but there are a lot of
| other points in the many article linked from there that
| don't change.
| brookst wrote:
| > But why make them significantly cheaper when you can
| match the price and extract more profits?
|
| Even better -- charge 10% less and corner the market! As
| long as nobody charges 10% less than you...
| nradov wrote:
| Nah, I don't want to share my car with anyone. It's my own
| personal space where I can keep some of my stuff and set it
| up exactly the way I want.
| recursive wrote:
| That's how some people feel about airplanes. Presumably
| you're not one of them. For some people, the
| inconvenience of being responsible for a car would
| outweigh the benefit of setting up their stuff inside of
| one.
| dfabulich wrote:
| Self-driving municipal busses would be fantastic.
| nine_k wrote:
| Also, a real nightmare for the municipal trade unions. (Do
| you know why every NYC subway train needs to have not one
| but two operators, even though it could run automatically
| just fine?)
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| Why?
| cyberax wrote:
| Why would you need buses?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Believe it or not, in some cities that have near grid-
| lock rush-hour traffic - there's between 50-100%+ as many
| people traveling by bus as by car.
|
| If all of those people switch to cars, you end up with it
| taking an hour to travel 1 mile by car.
|
| It's almost as if they have busses for a reason.
| cyberax wrote:
| First, these cities should be fixed by removing the
| traffic magnets. It's far past the point where we used
| the old obsolete ideology of trying to supply as much
| traffic capacity as possible.
|
| But anyway, your statement is actually not true anywhere
| in the US except NYC. Even in Chicago, removing ALL the
| local transit and switching to 6-seater minivans will
| eliminate all the traffic issues.
| nine_k wrote:
| This only works in neighborhoods that are veritable city
| blocks, with buildings several stories tall standing close
| by. Not something like northern Houston, TX; it barely works
| for places like Palo Alto, CA. You cannot run buses on every
| lane, at a reasonable distance from every house.
|
| The point of a car is takes you _door to door_. There 's no
| expectation to walk three blocks from a stop; many US places
| are not intended for waking anyway. Consider heavy bags from
| grocery shopping, or similar.
|
| Public transit works in proper cities, those that became
| cities before the advent of the car, and were not kept in the
| shape of large suburban sprawls by zoning. Most US cities
| only qualify in their downtowns.
|
| Elsewhere, rented / hailed self-driving cars would be best.
| First of all, fewer of them would be needed.
| boredatoms wrote:
| > Maybe it'd be more efficient for the transport to come at
| regular intervals though
|
| Efficient for who, is the problem
| hamdingers wrote:
| > if you don't own it, you'll end up paying more to the
| robotaxi company than you would have paid to own the car
|
| Maybe for you, I already don't own it and have not found that
| to be true. I pretty much order an uber whenever I don't feel
| like riding my bike or the bus, and that costs <$300 most
| months. Less than the average used car payment in the US
| before you even consider insurance, fuel, storage,
| maintenance, etc.
|
| I also rent a car now and then for weekend trips, that also
| is a few hundred bucks at most.
|
| I would be surprised if robotaxis were more expensive long
| term.
| Larrikin wrote:
| This is the nightmare scenario for me. A forever subscription
| for the usage of a car.
|
| Subscription for self driving will almost be a given with so
| many bad actors in tech nowadays, but never even being allowed
| to own the car is even worse.
| bluGill wrote:
| Subscription for changes to maps and the law makes sense. I'd
| also pay for the latest safety improvements (but they better
| be real improvements). However they are likely to add a
| number of unrelated things and I object to those.
| jtbayly wrote:
| How do maps changes make sense to subscribe to when they
| are on OSM?
|
| And what do you even mean by subscription to changes to the
| law?
| bluGill wrote:
| If OSM is up to date - many places it is very outdated.
| (others it is very good).
|
| Law - when a government changes the driving laws.
| Government can be federal (I have driven to both Canada
| and Mexico. Getting to Argentina is possible though I
| don't think it has ever been safe. Likewise it is
| possible to drive over the North Pole to Europe), state
| (or whatever the country calls their equivalent). When a
| city changes the law they put up signs, but if a state
| passes a law I'm expected to know even if I have never
| driven in that state before. Right turn on red laws are
| the only ones I can think of where states are different -
| but they are likely others.
|
| Laws also cover new traffic control systems that may not
| have been in the original program. If the self driving
| system can't figure out the next one (think roundabout)
| then it needs to be updated.
| dddgghhbbfblk wrote:
| I think this is purely psychological. The notion of paying
| for usage of some resource that you don't own is really
| rather mundane when you get down to it.
| Larrikin wrote:
| One mean tweet and your self driving subscription is taken
| away is way better than one mean tweet and your car is
| taken away.
| bluGill wrote:
| For the vast majority of people who own a car, continuing to
| own the car will remain the better deal. Most people need their
| car during "rush hour", so there isn't any savings from
| sharing, and worse some people have "high standards" and so
| will demand the rental be a clean car nicer than you would
| accept - thus raising the costs (particularly if you drive used
| cars) Any remaining argument for a shared car dies when you
| realize that you can leave your things in the car, and you
| never have to wait.
|
| For the rest - many of them live in a place where not enough
| others will follow the same system and so they will be forced
| to own a car just like today. If you live in a not dense area
| but still manage to walk/bike almost everywhere (as I do),
| renting a car is on paper cheaper the few times when you need a
| car - but in practice you don't know about that need several
| weeks in advance and so they don't have one they can rent to
| you. Even if you know you will need the car weeks in advance,
| sometimes they don't have one when you arrive.
|
| If you live in a very dense area such that you almost regularly
| use transit (but sometimes walk, bike), but need a car for
| something a few times per year, then not owning a car makes
| sense. In this case the density means shared cars can be a
| viable business model despite not being used very much.
|
| In short what you say sound insightful, but reality of how cars
| are used means it won't happen for most car owners.
| jtbayly wrote:
| > sometimes they don't have one when you arrive.
|
| Or, if they are Hertz, they might have one but refuse to give
| it to you. This happened to my wife. In spite of payment
| already being made to Hertz corporate online, the local agent
| wouldn't give up a car for a one-way rental. Hertz corporate
| was less than useless, telling us their system said was a car
| available, and suggesting we pay them hundreds of dollars
| _again_ and go pick it up. When I asked the woman from
| corporate whether she could actually guarantee we would be
| given a car, she said she couldn 't. When I suggested she
| call the local agent, she said she had no way to call the
| local office. Unbelievable.
|
| Since it was last minute, there were... as you said, no cars
| available at any of the other rental companies. So we had to
| drive 8 hours to pick her up. Then 8 hours back, which was
| the drive she was going to make in the rental car in the
| first place.
|
| Hertz will hurts you.
| bluGill wrote:
| Hertz this time, but things like that have happened with
| every rental company I know of.
| Matheus28 wrote:
| I personally would have changed it to a round-trip then
| just returned the car to the other Hertz location and let
| them figure it out.
| starik36 wrote:
| I think part of the issue in California at least is that you
| must have insurance. You gonna get a giant fine if you don't.
| crazygringo wrote:
| That's the point of self-driving _fleets_. Or maybe a special
| category of leased vehicles.
|
| This is about a self-driving car _you own_.
| FlyingBears wrote:
| Lemonade purchased Metromile and significantly increased prices.
| 2.5x if I recall correctly. This has forced me to move to Geico.
| Now, since prices have increased and new self driving car
| insurance is giving a discount, are you effectively paying same
| old rate?
| redanddead wrote:
| Just curious about this, this was Lemonade's integrated
| insurance to the Tesla right? How's Geico like for you?
| Probably just fine right? Any differences?
| aanet wrote:
| It would be interesting to see if Lemonade requires a Driver
| Monitoring System (DMS) to see if the driver/operator is actually
| paying attention (or, like sleeping / watching Netflix /
| whatever) while at the driver's seat.
|
| Anybody know??
|
| Tesla FSD is still a _supervised_ system (= ADAS), afaik.
| sktb wrote:
| Hmmm. The source for the "FSD is safer" claim might not be wholly
| independent: "Tesla's data shows that Full Self-Driving miles are
| twice as safe as manual driving"
| gizmo686 wrote:
| I would be surprised if that was what they were actually
| looking at. They are an established insurance company with
| their own data and the actuaries to analyze it. I can't imagine
| them doing this without at least validating a substantial drop
| in claims relating to FSD capable cars.
|
| Now that they are offering this program, they should start
| getting much better data by being able to correlate claims with
| actual FSD usage. They might be viewing this program partially
| as a data acquisition project to help them insure autonomous
| vehicles more broadly in the future.
| Veserv wrote:
| They are a grossly unprofitable insurance company. Your
| actuaries can undervalue risk to the point you are losing
| money on every claim and still achieve that.
|
| In fact, Tesla Insurance, the people who already have direct
| access to the data already loses money on every claim [1].
|
| [1] https://peakd.com/tesla/@newageinv/teslas-push-into-
| insuranc...
| redanddead wrote:
| > They might be viewing this program partially as a data
| acquisition project to help them insure autonomous vehicles
| more broadly in the future
|
| What do you mean?
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| > "Tesla's data shows that Full Self-Driving miles are twice as
| safe as manual driving"
|
| Teslas only do FSD on motorways where you tend to have far
| fewer accidents per mile.
|
| Also, they switch to manual driving if they can't cope, and
| because the driver isn't paying attention this usually results
| in a crash. But hey, it's in manual driving, not FSD, so they
| get to claim FSD is safer.
|
| FSD is not and never will be safer than a human driver.
| Onavo wrote:
| > _Teslas only do FSD on motorways where you tend to have far
| fewer accidents per mile._
|
| They have been end to end street level for the past two
| years.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| Not successfully.
| qwerpy wrote:
| Successful enough for me and many other people I know.
| End to end from my house to grocery store, kids schools,
| friends houses, etc. Multiple times per day for the past
| year.
|
| It's not perfect but I'd consider it a smashing success
| for something I rely on for safely transporting my family
| every day.
| cs702 wrote:
| TL;DR: 50% insurance discount for Tesla vehicles driven by Tesla
| FSD.
|
| On the surface, this looks like an endorsement of Tesla's claims
| about FSD safety.
| recursive wrote:
| Assuming the non-discounted rates are market-competitive.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Fleet API gives location data, no? I bet this discount will be
| paid for by this location data
| kittikitti wrote:
| I have Lemonade for my home insurance. It's been reliable for
| several years and the customer service is great. I don't have a
| self-driving car but I wouldn't hesitate to sign up. Their rates
| are very affordable.
| ajcp wrote:
| I've had their Home Insurance since they started up and grabbed
| their car insurance a couple years ago. Competitive price,
| excellent customer service, no notes.
| thewillowcat wrote:
| You're telling me this car insurance drives itself?
| andy99 wrote:
| With your permission, we track your driving automatically through
| Tesla's Fleet API.
|
| So it's a ruse to harvest personal information.
| philip1209 wrote:
| I was curious what the break-even is where the insurance discount
| covers the $99/mo FSD subscription. I got a Lemonade quote around
| $240/mo (12k mi/yr lease on a Model 3), so 50% off would save
| ~$120/mo - i.e. it would cover FSD and still leave ~$21/mo net.
| Or, "free FSD is you use it".
|
| I believe, at the end of the day, insurance companies will be the
| ones driving FSD adoption. The media will sensationalize the
| outlier issues of FSD software, but insurance companies will set
| the incentives for humans to stop driving.
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