Featured Teslas crash more than gas-powered cars—Here’s why

Perhaps the cited source should be heard directly:

Stephen Scherr, Hertz CEO, never says, ". . . Hertz selling its Teslas because they have been getting into too many crashes." That is a fabrication by "By Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNN" for those who want to be fooled.

It turns out Peter's true source is "insurance analysts at LexisNexis." The LexisNexis web site is trying to get paid for their law services. But they claim to have a community forum:
LexisNexis® Communities

I joined it but it appears they just want to scrape biographical data. I failed to find the 'report' cited by the reporter. I searched for "EV accidents" and "Tesla" with nothing later than 2015.

Quoting more from the article:

Crashes are even more frequent in households with both a gas and an electric model, indicating that regularly switching from one to another exacerbates the issues. And the fact that crash frequency lessens with time also suggests that unfamiliarity has something to do with it, said Xiaohui Lu, head of EV research at LexisNexis Risk Solutions,

The Highway Loss Data Institute, a US-based organization funded by the insurance industry, has not found higher crash rates for Tesla vehicles or other EVs more broadly based on overall insurance claims. Teslas do tend to have higher claim costs, though, according to the HLDI.​

At one time, my late wife had a Toyota Echo and I drove a Toyota Prius. One day, I had to take her car to work and almost tipped over taking a corner at Prius speed. The top heavy Echo needed a slower speed. It would have been a gas car rollover.

D*mn shame the Highway Loss Data Institute "has not found higher crash rates for Tesla Vehicles." Kinda negates the lying title of the original article.

Next week, we'll enjoy:

What: Date of Tesla Q4 2023 Financial Results and Q&A Webcast
When: Wednesday, January 24, 2024
Time: 4:30 p.m. Central Time / 5:30 p.m. Eastern Time
Q4 & FY 2023 Update: https://ir.tesla.com
Webcast: https://ir.tesla.com (live and replay)​

Bob Wilson

 

My wife did some body work on the Chevette following a pickup with an I-beam rear bumper through a 'yellow light' at 'cop corner.' He stopped, she didn't. The I-beam cut the top of the radiator, headlights, and accordioned the hood.

When I got there, she was so happy because she so hated that Chevette singing "Ding Dong the car is gone."

So I walked around the wreck and said, "Oh I don't know. Fifty dollars in parts from a junk yard and we can get it running again." It was closest I came to spouse-a-cide.

As for the I-beam bumper of the truck, you could barely find any Chevette paint between the existing scratches and existing, multicolored paint marks.

Bob Wilson

 

In 3 months of ev driving, I haven’t noticed any proclivity of the car to be more accident prone than my three Priuses

 

When I saw that CNN item yesterday morning, it appeared to have material to feed selective-reading cherry pickers from all directions.

 

"The Highway Loss Data Institute, a US-based organization funded by the insurance industry, has not found higher crash rates for Tesla vehicles or other EVs more broadly based on overall insurance claims. Teslas do tend to have higher claim costs, though, according to the HLDI"

Right in their article, and yet, the title of the article is

Teslas crash more than gas-powered cars. Here’s why

I guess they must make their money off Tesla somehow since Tesla don't advertise on conventional media.

 

Reading comprehension means all parts of the article ... not just the lying title. But there is a curious cited source ... a source looking for in the open literature:

And the fact that crash frequency lessens with time also suggests that unfamiliarity has something to do with it, said Xiaohui Lu, head of EV research at LexisNexis Risk Solutions,​

So I am reaching out to "Xiaohu Lu" and found this blurb:

​

This may be the article Peter quoted from:
What lessons can U.S. insurers learn from China's experience with EVs? | PropertyCasualty360

. . . claims data in the Chinese market, claims frequency of EVs is on average 56% higher and claims severity on average 52% higher, than those of ICE vehicles across all vehicle price ranges.
. . .
we think that it likely takes people three years to learn to drive their first EVs as safely as they would drive ICE vehicles.
. . .
that the one-pedal driving mode offered on some EVs [in China rjw] is associated with higher risk than the traditional fuel and brake dual-pedal driving mode.
. . .​

Notice he references "counterparts in China" versus USA facts and data. Near as I can tell, USA drivers have distinct differences from China drivers. Those of us who have driving in overseas traffic often learn there are cultural differences that show up in driving practices.

For many Chinese, an EV is their first privately owned vehicle. Whereas in the USA, even our automatic transmission gas vehicles have a lighter, semi-pedal driving. Take your foot off the accelerator and the car will eventually reach its creep velocity. Furthermore, USA drivers often start driving in high school while living at home. That is something our Chinese friends often miss.

The Tesla has a 'valet mode' that limits what the parking attendant can do. There are other defaults that can be tuned to make Tesla handled more like a traditional ICE car. Perhaps Tesla might implement a 'sticky' "rental car mode". When set, the car will always behave like an ICE car unless overridden.

Bob Wilson

 

it's just made in china

 

The data referenced by the author, Peter, was from China although in his article it was only sightly identified as from China. He did make a reference, so meek and mild, it stuck in my mind but I was not willing to openly discuss it. I really needed the source document which I've referenced.

It is called 'reading comprehension', something I've been stuck with since learning to read. Reading tests in grade school through high school accused me of having higher than normal reading comprehension.

Bob Wilson

 

Yes, because it was a brand new car that you spent significant money on and that made you very cautious with it. But give someone a tesla with near unlimited insurance at $20 a day for a week and their interest in being super careful is replaced with: "Wow, this thing is really fast and I don't really know how it works, but no worries if I crash. I'm gonna have me lots of fun this week."

I suspect in future investments from car rental companies they're going to have better fleet management software to make the cars easier to figure out and way less fast to the point of boring. I bet Tesla denied that request already, so they're like, fine... we're done buying your cars.

 

This just in, tesla's crash less than similar cars. CNN decided to run a data free story proclaiming something that is statistically false.

 

Chevette was green and happily gone.

The Yaris was sold to a friendly fellow employee, Dave, when I went to his office to vent about a local Toyota dealer. They had offered too small of a trade-in value for it. Dave kept the Yaris for years and eventually gave it to his son.

Bob Wilson

 

Yes, Tesla are proven to be way safer than most cars. But crash statistics for Tesla in general are entirely different than crash statistics for a short term rental company. And I'm sure people who lease a Tesla probably have similar crash rates as people who own a Tesla... But people who rent a car for a few days to a few weeks are an entirely different animal when it comes to crash rates. And to be fair we aren't looking at the data, we're getting an explanation from Hertz CEO as to why they're moving away from Tesla.

As I mentioned before it could also be an issue with Tesla not giving Hertz enough software control for their fleet of rentals to make the car easy for first time Tesla drivers, as well as limiters so people aren't going 0-60 in 4seconds, which takes a bit of experience/advance level driving skill if you're going to do it safely.

 

I listened to all eight minutes because I was curious why they made this move, and I could not pick out one single coherent reason why they decided to dump all those Teslas. Either they are too ashamed to say, or my ability to translate Suitspeak -> English is slipping.

 

If they didn’t lock the cars into “chill” mode, someone ought to be fired.
That said, Tesla vehicles have a ton of power, and even on chill mode it can lead to trouble for people new to the car.

 

he says it's not demand, but then he says it is demand

 

I can clearly imagine the contract negotiations for the purchase:

"The chill mode isn't chill enough, can we slow this car a down a little more? Also we'd like to have access to the screen for our customers to manage their rental information, as well as allow them to view our ads, I mean instructional videos about how to use the car."

 

Suspect anyone who's considered buying an EV for the first time has looked into renting one first to try it out... So that's a new type of demand for EVs that's very large.

But their best, most regular customers who travel alot, just want their trip to go smoothly and not have anything complicated to deal with. So that's a type of EV demand that's very small.