Tesla Aims to Make Car Insurance Cheaper

Tesla's By Miles app was designed to read a car's mileage automatically on a periodic basis to provide data to insurance companies.

Dec. 17, 2019

Dec. 19, 2019—Insurance runs on data, and electric cars have a lot of it, as noted in a recent report by Electrek. Many insurance companies give lower-mileage drivers better rates, though this is often done through self-reporting. The insurance company asks you every year to tell them your odometer reading and then gives a rate based on the mileage you’re expected to drive.

Pay-per-mile policies, of course, bypass that annual ritual and take the mileage directly from your vehicle. The By Miles setup does this by installing a separate device on the car and sending that data to the insurer via a smartphone app.

But the newest version of the app now offers a “trackerless” option specifically for Tesla drivers. A Tesla owner need only share their Tesla Account login credentials with the By Miles app, and the app will automatically read the car’s mileage periodically. This way, the Tesla driver doesn’t need to install any separate device.