Tesla is slowly starting to expand its insurance business outside of California – starting with a new business unit in China.
Last year, Tesla launched its own insurance program, starting with availability in California, where the automaker claimed up to 30% cheaper premiums than the competition.
It is Tesla’s second entry into the insurance industry following its InsureMyTesla program in partnership with third-party insurers.
The new program is immediately broken down by Tesla through State National Insurance, and the automaker is much more involved in the whole process – in principle, becoming an insurer himself.
Last month, Tesla Chief Financial Officer Zachary Kirkhorn spoke about improving the insurance product:
“We are currently working on what we call Version 2, or we could call it the first version of our telematics product. And so, ultimately where we want to go with Tesla Insurance is the data captured in the car, in the driving profile of the person in the car can be used to assess correlations and chance of crash and be able to be then to assess a premium on a monthly basis for that customer. And what makes this very exciting for us is the amount of data that is available with the permission of customers to use it, it is not available in any other product or in any other vehicle in the world. This gives us a unique advantage in terms of information. ”
Kirkhorn said they could just launch their current product outside of California, but decided instead to wait until they complete their new product with more telematics before expanding.
The CFO said it would have to expand by the end of the year:
“Where we are now is almost complete with the risk and cost analysis associated with the first version of the telematics product. We hope to fill that in soon in a handful of states with regulators. And if we assume that regulatory approvals go smoothly, we hope to have this in a handful of states by the end of the year. “
Now we’ve learned that Tesla is also bringing its insurance product outside the US – starting with China.
Tesla has set up a new insurance brokerage firm in China (via Gasgoo):
“US EV manufacturer Tesla has set up an insurance brokerage in China covering a registered capital of 50 million yuan ($ 7,207,935), according to the National System of Enterprise Information for Publicity for Credit Information.”
The company was established in the Pilot Free Trade Zone of Shanghai just like Tesla Gigafactory Shanghai.
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