Knightshade
Well-Known Member
Why?
They ended both programs for a reason after all.
(for that matter they ended FUSC being transferable years before they ended FUSC in general)
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Problem: My P3D is getting more valuable as time goes on!
- Thread starter Garlan Garner
- Start date
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- Tags
- free features. insurance
Why?
They ended both programs for a reason after all.
(for that matter they ended FUSC being transferable years before they ended FUSC in general)
I didn't claim it was a problem they absolutely needed to solve. I simply claimed that Tesla is the only one that can solve it, and there is a fairly easy solution if they choose to do so.
Or they could tie it in with Tesla insurance so by going with Tesla insurance you could get things like that transferable to the replacement vehicle.
It does bring up a question on how Tesla Insurance handles SW related things on a crashed vehicle replacement. Do they lower insurance premiums by transferring FSD from the wrecked vehicle to the replacement vehicle? (or doing a discount on the new vehicle). Such a large amount of the vehicle cost these days is the FSD cost which is pure SW (at least it is for HW3 vehicles).
No, the insurance company has to “make you whole.” Which typically means finding a fair market value for the property damaged or destroyed. Many items cannot be replaced with the exact same item, hence appraisers for both the damaged party and the insurance company submit their expert opinions on value. Sometimes a resolution requires going to court to have a judge or jury establish the fair market value of the property damaged or destroyed. This is to make the owner “whole.”
Garlan, as almost all of us do/would, values his FUSC more than $0. The insurance company is NOT allowed to argue that because his FUSC would not transfer if he agreed to sell it, then it has no value. In case of a total loss, Garlan is not voluntarily selling his car to a third party; the insurance company is being forced to pay him the fair market value at the time of the loss.
Similarly, the insurance company is NOT allowed to argue that because FUSC is no longer sold that it has no value. Imagine that you have a Ferrari GTO 250 that hasn’t been made in 55 years: I’ll give you zero dollars for it — any takers??
But that would not include the same features, specifically the FUSC and free connectivity since they don't typically transfer with the car on model 3s.
What can be done is to calculate the expected life of the car in miles and months. Use the miles to calculate the cost of charging you would not have been paying for and use the months to calculate the cost of the connectivity you would not be paying for if you had the car you bought. That's the value of features that can't be replaced.
It is disingenuous for an insurance company to say they can't calculate this. It is very analogous to calculating the lost earnings of someone who can't work any more, which is a very common calculation in the insurance world.
The value of the car isn't about what you would get if you sold it. Value is an intrinsic property. It has to do with the utility to you as the owner.
If your roof is damaged, does the insurance company tell you your roof was worthless because no one would buy it? No, they either pay for a new one as good as the one destroyed or they prorate it for the length of time it was on your house.
But, can these be realistically calculated?
First off no one knows how long they're going to keep their car for. So many things can potentially happen. The OP might keep the car for 2 years or might keep it for 20. Both of those things are gone as soon as he sells it.
FUSC is a hard one to calculate because quite a few individuals won't be using it as their energy source every single time they charge their car. Ideally the OP would be honest with the insurance company on how often he used it. Part of why I chose to go with the $5K in exchange for giving up FUSC is because I simply couldn't calculate an amount that would be anywhere close to $5K with my expected usage. Now I still had a hard time deciding because it has an intrinsic value to it. I enjoyed the idea of it more than the math of it. In the end I decided to go with logic over emotion.
FUSC is also hard because we don't know what's going to happen with energy cost. It could go up or it could go down.
Any $ figure assigned to these would high speculative.
When it's all said and done I think the battle with the insurance company would be harder than just suffering the loss of them.
It’s called actual cash value, and I know well how it works having previously totaled out a Model S with free transferable lifetime supercharging, something I could not replace. That is why I recommended to Garlan that he purchase a different type of coverage if he wants full value for his features. Those policies do exist. That is how those Ferrari’s are insured. Do you think those owners use State Farm policies for those? No, they buy the agreed value policies from the specialty companies.
The reality in an insurance total is you have to make the argument based on how much other cars with the same features are selling for. Even if you hire a 3rd party appraiser, that is still what they base the value off of. If P3D+ of the same model year, condition and miles as the totaled car are worth $45k on average than you are going to get in the neighborhood of $45k. You will not get $50k because Tesla valued FUSC at $5000 and you can prove you didn’t take the refund. You might get a little more for it, but insurance companies depreciate ALL options on the car including software options. So it will be $5000 minus some factor for the mileage and age, etc. Going to court with a judge and jury against your insurance over a $5000 option seems like a penny wise and pound foolish move since that would likely cost multiple thousands based on my limited experience with the civil court system. Not withstanding the fact that your insurance policy most likely has a binding arbitration clause, so court might not even be an option unless someone else is at fault. And since I have yet to be hit by someone else with adequate insurance to cover a Tesla, so even then you might be working within their policy limits and limited resources. Lawyers don’t take property damage auto claims on contingency, only the injury claims.
I had my last vehicle for 20 years. That's my track record. I plan to keep my model X that long if it doesn't eat me alive in repair costs. Why would I accept compensation for any less?
Again, I've been driving the same pattern for a year of doing a round trip of about 350 miles which because of the Supercharger locations required two stops to charge regardless of whether I charged at home or not. So I don't charge at home at all. With 18,200 miles a year (not counting longer trips) at 3 mi/kWh and $0.28 per kWh that comes to $1,698.67 per year... minimum.
Not at all likely to go down. Electric rates simply don't go down in any significant way. Tesla is being very generous with charging the customers a minimal rate, so it is much more likely to go up... as happens with many Tesla features like "connectivity".
Your "speculative" is my "calculated".
I don't think there is a battle with the insurance company... but I haven't read my policy. But if someone else is responsible for totaling my car, gloves off! I'm not in any way bound by their insurance. That's an issue between them and their insurance.
As someone else said, you are to be compensated for your losses. I'm not so worried about the insurance company. My concern is with someone else totaling my car in an accident. I don't care about their insurance since the person is ultimately responsible.
The problem is there aren't cars selling with this feature. However, this feature has a specific benefit which can be assigned a dollar value very easily. So they will need to cough up the dollar value independent of what the insurance company says.
I'm pretty sure insurance companies will go to battle over an extra $36K in speculative value. That's after they picked themselves up off the floor after laughing about a Model X lasting 20 years at 18.2K miles year.
Now don't get me wrong. I hope that it does last 20 years because you'll have one hell of a story to tell. Especially if you add in savings from oil changes, and gas.
But, my point was that FUSC is such a case by case thing. I average around 3-4 years for car ownership, and I mostly charge at home. So at most it would be around $1500 for both. Hence why I gave up FUSC for the $5K.
It'a also why neither of them will truly go away.
Tesla has been telling people for years that FUSC is going away, but they always seem to come back with it in one form or another. Like it's available right now on the X. The free connectivity will also likely be used a sales lever.
Both of them are things where the customer puts much more valuation on than what they end up being worth long term. They're great psychological things that very few owners really benefit from with exception to yourself, and maybe a handful of others.
Apparently not.
"Free Unlimited Supercharging
Now included with all Model X orders."
Design Your Model X | Tesla
Look - premium connectivity is $120/yr. So if we depreciate the car over 8 years - longest warranty period - that’s $960.
Charging - I charge at home; average bill for a little over 1000 miles/mo is about $30. $360/yr or $2880.
So, all in, across the entire vehicle’s life, that’s $3,840 worth of freebies.
You’re already 2 years in - so make that $2880 of remaining “worth” (not value).
Sure, i wouldn’t leave that on a street corner, but that’s not an amount I’d lose sleep over either. In the worst case, your car gets totaled, and you can negotiate the ACV for close to that anyway.
Certainly not enough worth taking a policy out over.
Charging - I charge at home; average bill for a little over 1000 miles/mo is about $30. $360/yr or $2880.
So, all in, across the entire vehicle’s life, that’s $3,840 worth of freebies.
You’re already 2 years in - so make that $2880 of remaining “worth” (not value).
Sure, i wouldn’t leave that on a street corner, but that’s not an amount I’d lose sleep over either. In the worst case, your car gets totaled, and you can negotiate the ACV for close to that anyway.
Certainly not enough worth taking a policy out over.
I've had my car a little over a year.
About 40K miles of supercharging every 12 months.
How much is that worth? A lot to me.
Wow! That’s a ton of mileage per year.
That said, at that rate you’ll be through the battery warranty in 3 years. I’m sure that’ll factor into any valuation in the worst case scenario.
I like to think of “worth” and “value” as different things. Even if the insurance company doesn’t ‘value’ something in a payout, it could still be “worth” a ton to you.
As in this case. I am sure that internally, Tesla has a value assigned for FUSC they are amortizing against monthly ... we likely will never know what that is. Which is a shame in this case.
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
*sigh*
for the 3.
Which is the car under discussion.
But even then the S/X are offering the "new" FUSC where it doesn't transfer to new owners, so it's again just a free service being offered as a sales incentive- not a paid goes-with-the-car option-and-has-value-to-new-owners thing like FSD is.
You mean they pay you market value? I would hope any insurance company does that, mine paid me retail KBB and I have no special coverage.
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The costs for supercharging and connectivity are low enough, that it could easily be offset by some new functionality or features or body style that happens to be more desirable in the future. Technology is still increasing and not yet set in stone.
Also, how many cars have you had to have totalled? It seems like a rare occurrence to be concerned about (couldn't find exact statistics from a quick search tho).
Also, how many cars have you had to have totalled? It seems like a rare occurrence to be concerned about (couldn't find exact statistics from a quick search tho).
Electricity in PGE area can be more than $.45 a kWh so that's a huge chunk of change over the life of the car depending on milage. More then $10K
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