Insurtech Lemonade Starts Autonomous Car Product With Tesla’s Data

Insurtech Lemonade said it has launched Lemonade Autonomous Car insurance, and will begin with a technical collaboration with Tesla that gives the insurer access to vehicle data.

For starters, Lemonade said the new offering cuts per-mile rates for Tesla’s full self-driving (FSD) vehicles by about 50% to reflect what the data has shown to be significant reduction in risk during autonomous driving. Over time, the insurtech anticipates more rate reductions as Tesla releases software updates.

The data from Tesla is fed into Lemonade’s usage-based prediction models to distinguish between human driving and autonomous driving, Lemonade said.

“Traditional insurers treat a Tesla like any other car, and AI like any other driver,” said Shai Wininger, co-founder and president at Lemonade. “But a car that sees 360 degrees, never gets drowsy, and reacts in milliseconds can’t be compared to a human.”

“Teslas driven with FSD are involved in far fewer accidents,” Wininger added. “By connecting to the Tesla onboard computer, our models are able to ingest incredibly nuanced sensor data that lets us price our insurance with higher precision than ever before.”

Lemonade said it can cover intermittent use of FSD, as well as households with a mix of Teslas and standard vehicles, all under one policy.

The New York-based insurer of car, home, renters and pet insurance said the autonomous car product will first be rolled out in Arizona on January 26. Oregon will follow a month later, said Lemonade.

Topics InsurTech Data Driven Auto Tech Tesla

Was this article valuable?