Insurance companies may end up refusing to cover Tesla owners after recent car burnings and attacks targeting the car brand.
In both Denmark and the US, Tesla owners have felt anger directed directly at Elon Musk. Now insurance companies are warning of the consequences.
This is what Newsweek writes.
In the US, where the vandalism directed directly at both Tesla itself and its owners is the worst, several insurance companies are now saying that they will reject Tesla owners as a last resort.
"If the vandalism of Tesla cars continues to increase and does not decrease, we could see insurance prices increase," Matt Brannon, a data journalist at Insurify, told Newsweek.
And according to the media, it's just more bad news for Tesla owners, who, at least in the US, pay more to insure their cars than other electric car owners.
"As we saw with the 2023 TikTok theft trend targeting certain Kia and Hyundai models, if these types of losses continue, insurance companies may refuse to offer coverage to Tesla owners altogether," Bankrate's insurance expert, Shannon Martin, told the outlet.
The attacks targeting Tesla have also taken off. For example, a man in South Carolina set himself on fire when he tried to burn down one of Tesla's so-called 'supercharger' charging stations last week. Read more about it here .
The thefts that Shannon Martin refers to spread with viral speed on social media. However, they never reached Denmark.
To Boosted, Kia in Denmark has justified this by saying that the cars in the US are built differently than Kia's models in the US.
In an email to Boosted, the Danish Kia importer stated in 2022 that it was not aware that the thefts were also in Denmark.
This, the importer said, may have something to do with the fact that the cars on the European market do not share specifications with the models in the US. Nor are the cars produced in the same factories.
This is not the first time that insurance companies have issued warnings similar to the consequences that may now affect Tesla owners.
When Fisker Inc. approached bankruptcy in the Nordic countries, the Norwegian insurance companies were the first to withdraw. Then, the rejection of comprehensive insurance policies spread to both Denmark and Sweden.
