Is State Farm Insurance punishing Tesla Owners?

[TeslaKen]

I have a question for anyone using the State Farm Drive Safe and Safe pucks in their Tesla. I have these pucks in my Model 3, my Cybertruck, both of my kids cars and my weekend fun toy car (those last 3 all being gas vehicles). As I understand it the program is supposed to give you a discount based on your driving, how much driving you do, how you drive, etc. and provided that you drive well, you get a discount off your premium.

For my kids cars and for my weekend fun toy gas car, the discounts are all significant, maybe as much as 20% off the premium. However, for both of my Teslas the discount is peanuts, maybe $5 or $10.

I let my daughter borrow the Model 3, yet the discount didn't change even though she was the driver vs. her normal car which is a Mazda CX5 (gas).
I drive my weekend fun toy (gas) car and the discount is still much higher, even though I'm the driver driving in the same way as I would drive my Teslas, probably driving faster given it is a sports car that makes loud noises.

So the discount doesn't seem to be based on who the driver is or their driving style since my daughter has no impact to the Tesla's score and I seem to have radically different results between driving a gas car and driving a Tesla.

Is there something in State Farm's formula that penalizes Tesla owners with respect to the discount they receive in the program? For example, I noticed my braking scores in the app are often a "C" grade on my Teslas but yet I never hardly ever use the brakes, I either let FSD do it, or I let the regen do it, so there are no sudden slam on the brakes stops. Whereas my weekend fun toy, I hammer on those brakes all day long when I drive it, yet it gets a better braking score. What gives?

I am curious if other owners out there using this State Farm Drive Safe and Save have ever been able to achieve any significant discount with a Tesla in the program. If not, then I should probably be raising this issue with State Farm.

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[L3it3R]

I was actually about to get one of those in my daughter's car... I would be pissed if it gets dinged simply because the sensors are tuned for ICE and no regen braking

 

[TeslaKen]

I was actually about to get one of those in my daughter's car... I would be pissed if it gets dinged simply because the sensors are tuned for ICE and no regen braking

Well if your daughter is driving a Tesla I'd like to know what results you get as more data points could help paint a trend as opposed to what I've witnessed for the last 8 years of driving Teslas.

 

[hemiarch]

Also interesting to know what kind of scoring those give fsd. It would suck to have your rates raised because of Optimus. ?

 

[smcnaughton829]

I have this for my daughter. She’s driving a M3 the biggest hit she gets is hard breaking. The problem is she doesn’t break, it’s all regen breaking.
She had it for more then 6 months now and so far the discount is about $15, nothing what they said it could be based on her safe driving record.
I have all parental controls turned in as well as chill mode, but she’s not getting anything like the 20-50% discounts for it.
They offered more for the rest of the cars and I have declined. Until I see real saving from the M3 I’m not going to put them in any other car I own.

 

[pricedm]

For example, I noticed my braking scores in the app are often a "C" grade on my Teslas but yet I never hardly ever use the brakes...

My experience with Progress was really bad. Dinged for "hard acceleration" and "hard braking." I switched to their plug-in device, which connected to my ICEmobile's OBD port. That ended up draining the battery. Fortunately I was able to have Progress cover the cost of a new OEM battery ($200 for blue Volvo sticker lol). Soon after receiving the new battery, I was able to move all my vehicles to Tesla insurance, as it became available in Colorado.

Regen can decelerate very quickly and is likely the cause of less-than ideal driving metrics from your insurance provider. SF will have all parameters listed.

 

[Trips]

State Farm was really expensive for my Cybertruck so I had to find a different company.

I had their drive safe until I got a ticket for not slowing down fast enough in a speed trap. Cop gave me a ticket feet into a temporary 25 for doing 36. The normal speed limit was 45 and I was worried about hard braking.

Cybertruck AWD - State Farm Quote $329/month
Cybertruck AWD - Different Company Actual $175/month

2018 Model 3 AWD - State Farm $110/month Actual (Increased from $90/month)

 

[FlyShacker]

What a coincidence! This is exactly the topic I was going to post about today. We have State Farm Safe and Save in our AWD Cybertruck, which we had previously in our Toyota Prius Prime before we traded it in for the Cybertruck. With the Toyota, the Safe and Save program worked great. All we had to do was drive like old ladies - brake gradually, start gradually, not corner hard, and stay within the speed limit (or 10% over). Also we could not touch our phone screens or we got dinged. But the discount was worth it.

Fast forward to the Cybertruck, which we got last November. I drive almost entirely on FSD. My wife prefers to drive herself most of the time. Our State Farm driving score is perfect in phone distraction, cornering, and speed. Braking is a bit lower, like 90 (still qualifying for the discount), but ACCELERATION is like 60!!! That's a big hit! Looking at the detail drives, I can see that the violations happen almost entirely on my trips (under FSD). We have a string of stop signs on the straightaway from our house to town. Our Cybertruck stops smoothly at a stop, but tends to accelerate HARD up to the 25 mph speed limit after a stop. This is repeated for each stop sign on my drive to town. That acceleration after a stop sign accounts for the vast majority of the acceleration events showing up in our State Farm driving profile. After a traffic light there is usually traffic ahead of me that accelerates slowly and keeps my Cybertruck from zooming too quickly. But these stops on our little road have no traffic. Stop.... and then POW we are moving!!

I am driving in Standard or Chill mode -- makes no difference in the acceleration.

After reading that a Tesla under FSD is roughly 10 times safer (even in supervised mode) than the average driver, I would expect some way to detect that a computer is driving, and that finding should give me a discount! But the insurance companies are not in sync with Tesla at least.

I would like to write to the Tesla FSD development team and explain this problem. I would also like to reach out to State Farm and let them know about this issue. The two sides need to come together so that us innocent self-driving car owners don't get hit with high insurance bills for driving under computer control -- which should be safer than a human driver!

I called my State Farm agent today to explain all this. She looked at my driving records and, despite the high number of acceleration events, she says we will be getting a "good discount" again next time. But I will find out in early June when I get their invoice. If it's high (if the good driver discount is low), then I am going to raise hell with Tesla and State Farm!!

Anybody with me???

 

[devdrone6]

I have progressive and their snapshot dings FSD for hard braking. My rates went up last renewal. And I drive 95% on fsd, and when I asked progressive to take off snapshot - well your rates will go up. Go figure. I am paying about 200 per month. Used to be around $115 just 3 months ago.

 

[FlyShacker]

My issue, as I said, is hard acceleration. But the hard braking? I don’t experience hard braking under FSD, enough to trigger the State Farm motion sensor. But I can imagine a problem with hard braking without FSD for drivers who snap their foot off the accelerator pedal instead of lifting their foot off gently.

 

[dalton108]

I’ll never join any of these programs because “hard acceleration” and “hard braking” are exactly why I own the cars that I own. I didn’t buy a Cyberbeast, a Model S plaid and a Corvette to drive ANY of them slowly.

 

[L3it3R]

Well if your daughter is driving a Tesla I'd like to know what results you get as more data points could help paint a trend as opposed to what I've witnessed for the last 8 years of driving Teslas.

Yeah, all Tesla home

 

[TeslaKen]

I’ll never join any of these programs because “hard acceleration” and “hard acceleration” are exactly why I own the cars that I own. I didn’t buy a Cyberbeast, a Model S plaid and a Corvette to drive ANY of them slowly.

Normally I would agree, but my sports car that goes through the hardest acceleration on average and some hand of God stops gets a much higher discount than any Tesla I drive. I know my daughter is a speed demon in her gas car as well, and again she gets a much much higher % discount than I do with either Tesla. I figure getting any discount is better than getting none.

 

[firstblackman]

I have a question for anyone using the State Farm Drive Safe and Safe pucks in their Tesla. I have these pucks in my Model 3, my Cybertruck, both of my kids cars and my weekend fun toy car (those last 3 all being gas vehicles). As I understand it the program is supposed to give you a discount based on your driving, how much driving you do, how you drive, etc. and provided that you drive well, you get a discount off your premium.

For my kids cars and for my weekend fun toy gas car, the discounts are all significant, maybe as much as 20% off the premium. However, for both of my Teslas the discount is peanuts, maybe $5 or $10.

I let my daughter borrow the Model 3, yet the discount didn't change even though she was the driver vs. her normal car which is a Mazda CX5 (gas).
I drive my weekend fun toy (gas) car and the discount is still much higher, even though I'm the driver driving in the same way as I would drive my Teslas, probably driving faster given it is a sports car that makes loud noises.

So the discount doesn't seem to be based on who the driver is or their driving style since my daughter has no impact to the Tesla's score and I seem to have radically different results between driving a gas car and driving a Tesla.

Is there something in State Farm's formula that penalizes Tesla owners with respect to the discount they receive in the program? For example, I noticed my braking scores in the app are often a "C" grade on my Teslas but yet I never hardly ever use the brakes, I either let FSD do it, or I let the regen do it, so there are no sudden slam on the brakes stops. Whereas my weekend fun toy, I hammer on those brakes all day long when I drive it, yet it gets a better braking score. What gives?

I am curious if other owners out there using this State Farm Drive Safe and Save have ever been able to achieve any significant discount with a Tesla in the program. If not, then I should probably be raising this issue with State Farm.

Yes, that's why we dropped State Farm. They use the regen as hard braking.
You typically pay more due to independent agents fees...

 

[Bobo_LaDouche]

My issue, as I said, is hard acceleration. But the hard braking? I don’t experience hard braking under FSD, enough to trigger the State Farm motion sensor. But I can imagine a problem with hard braking without FSD for drivers who snap their foot off the accelerator pedal instead of lifting their foot off gently.

My S3 goes 155 mph, my AMG does 220. Not sure how much I want to advertise this to my insurance company. The real solution here is for insurance companies to train us how to drive, according to their parameters - a proper carrot-and-stick approach. I suspect they want these monitoring devices to become mandatory.

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