jray3 said:
Yo Joe- can you shed some light on the relative costs of i-MiEV vs TESLA insurance?
I have Allstate, and have a bunch of properties and other coverages as well as the cars insured. It's a convoluted mess, but enough to have my local agent want to keep me as a customer.
jray3, I'm afraid it's apples and oranges, as my i-MiEVs I now have insured for liability only and the Tesla has collision and comprehensive. I do recall being pleasantly surprised that the Tesla premium was not exorbitant. Sorry, don't remember the numbers exactly, but considering the used Tesla's value is ten times higher than the used i-MiEV's, IIRC, the premium was only around twice that of a fully-covered i-MiEV.
With my miserable experience a couple of years ago whereby the drunk driver ran into and totaled my fully-insured Honda Insight for which the insurance company did not pay me what I felt was fair, I reassessed my insurance needs, especially considering how many vehicles I actually had insured. Now I have liability-only on everything but the Tesla, but each i-MiEV premium has ended up costing a different amount. Working with the agent, there are so many different discounts that can be taken into account: safe driver, multiple-policy, who the primary driver is, which car is the primary one, annual mileage, 'work' mileage, etc.
I remember challenging them because my wife's old Toyota qualified for an 'Economy Car' discount and the i-MiEVs didn't - last I talked with them, my agent was still trying to get a response back from Allstate as to what was the definition of an 'Economy Car'.
Looking back at a lifetime of driving it's quite obvious that I squandered many thousands of dollars on unnecessary automobile insurance coverage. Knock on wood (hard!), neither my wife nor I have ever thumped into anyone, although I have a Saab-cow—on-the-roof-cowboy-in-a-bar story from 45 years ago that keeps getting better every time I tell it. The only claims I've had in 25+ years with Allstate (other than the Honda Insight whapped by the uninsured unlicensed driver) are two cracked windshield replacements at $100 deductible - one of which was my original i-MiEV.
Sorry, too much philosophising and not enough specificity.
Sheesh - we drifted off-topic - double sorry, but you asked… don't we have an insurance thread here somewhere?