Tesla is starting to expand its insurance business outside of California

Tesla is gradually starting to expand its insurance business outside of California — starting with a new business unit in China.

Last year, Tesla launched its own insurance program, starting with availability in California, where the automaker claims up to 30% cheaper premiums than the competition.

It’s Tesla’s second entry in the insurance industry after its InsureMyTesla program in partnership with third-party insurers.

The new program is directly brokered by Tesla through State National Insurance, and the automaker is much more involved in the entire process – basically becoming an insurer itself.

Last month, Tesla Chief Financial Officer Zachary Kirkhorn talked about improving the insurance product:

“We’re working now on what we call Version 2 or we can call it the first version of our telematics product. And so really ultimately where we want to get to with Tesla Insurance is to be able to use the data that’s captured in the car, in the driving profile of the person in the car to be able to assess correlations and probabilities of crash and be able then to assess a premium on a monthly basis for that customer. And what makes this very exciting for us is the amount of data that is available with the customers’ permission to use is, it’s not available in any other product or any other vehicle in the world. So this gives us a unique advantage in terms of information.”

Kirkhorn said that they could just launch their current product outside of California, but they instead decided to wait until they complete their new product using more telematics before expanding.

The CFO said that it should be ready to expand by the end of the year:

“Where we are now is nearly complete with the risk and cost analysis associated with the first version of the telematics product. We hope to be filing that in a handful of states with regulators very shortly. And assuming that regulatory approvals go smoothly, we hope to have this in a handful of states by the end of the year.”

Now we’ve learned that Tesla is also bringing its insurance product outside of the US — starting with China.

Tesla has founded a new insurance brokerage company in China (via Gasgoo):

“U.S. EV manufacturer Tesla has founded in China an insurance brokerage that involves a registered capital of 50 million yuan ($7,207,935), according to China’s National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System.”

The company was founded in Shanghai’s Pilot Free Trade Zone just like Tesla Gigafactory Shanghai.