HMM: Tesla’s ‘Affordable’ Model 3 Costs a Bundle to Insure, Study Claims.

The contributing factors to the brand’s above-average insurance rate are twofold. For whatever reason, Tesla models are subject to an abnormally high number of incidents that result in insurance claims, but they’re also more expensive to fix. “Teslas get into a lot of crashes and are costly to repair afterward,” explained Russ Rader, spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which operates as the HLDI’s parent organization. “Consumers will pay for that when they go to insure one.”

For the Model 3, the result is tragically high premiums. A recent study conducted by Gabi Personal Insurance Agency Inc. and posted by Automotive News shows the EV’s average insurance cost across 150 ZIP codes is $2,814 per year. That’s $35 less than the cost of insuring a Porsche 911, using the same metrics.

“In the last month we had more and more people coming in with Model 3, and they were all complaining about high insurance costs,” said Gabi CEO Hanno Fichtner. “We found cheaper deals for them, but not as cheap as we thought they would be. We even had customers tell us they are returning their Model 3 due to the high running costs.”

I wonder if this will change when Tesla starts producing lower-spec, less-expensive Model 3s in quantity.