Tesla is in hot water for mishandling insurance claims
California is taking significant enforcement action against Tesla Insurance, alleging the company has been systematically failing to handle claims properly and harming its customers in the state. The California Department of Insurance announced the action, threatening to revoke Tesla’s license to operate in the state and impose significant fines.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Tesla’s insurance arm in hot water, but this action from a major market like California represents a serious escalation.
According to the press release, the California Department of Insurance has issued “Accusations” and “Notices of Orders to Show Cause” against Tesla Insurance Services, Inc., Tesla Insurance Company, and their partner, State National Insurance Company. The Department alleges that these companies have repeatedly failed to comply with California’s claims handling laws, leading to significant harm for policyholders – most of whom are Tesla drivers.
The Department of Insurance laid out some of the core allegations:
- Egregious delays in responding to policyholder claims in all steps of the claims handling process, causing financial harm, out-of-pocket expenses, potential third-party liability exposure, and distress to policyholders.
- Unreasonable denials and delays in fully paying valid claims to consumers. Failure to conduct thorough, fair, and objective investigations of claims, thus denying consumers the insurance benefits they expect.
- Failure to advise policyholders of their rights to have their claims denials reviewed by the Department – a major consumer protection in California to make sure insurers are held accountable by their regulator.
The state claims that despite numerous warnings and meetings where Tesla and its partners promised to improve, “the number of justified consumer complaints and violations continued to mount.”
The companies now face potential penalties of up to $5,000 for each unlawful, unfair, or deceptive act, or up to $10,000 for each act determined to be willful. Given the Department alleges “hundreds” of mishandled claims, the fines could quickly add up into the millions.
The companies have 15 days to respond to the allegations. If the issues are not resolved, the case will go before an administrative law judge to determine if Tesla can continue to sell insurance in California.
Electrek’s Take
That does sound like Tesla, especially the part where they are ignoring the notices.
This might be more important than it sounds, as insurance is critical to Tesla’s future, particularly if it is to be an autonomous one.
Tesla first started its insurance arm to lower cost to customers and “better account for how its autonomous driver assistance features improve safety.”
However, ultimately, Tesla drivers would find it hard to insure vehicles with level 3-5 autonomous driving technology, and Tesla planned to offer those services whenever it actually achieves these levels of autonomy.
Based on these statements by the California Department of Insurance, it doesn’t sound like Tesla is ready to take on that responsibility.
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Rather than straining the grid, the batteries in EVs can actually help to stabilize the energy grid under heavy loads. PG&E gets that, and to encourage participation in its growing V2G programs, the utility is offering GM Energy customers in its territory up to $4,500 toward qualifying home battery systems.
Billed as a glimpse into the future of energy resilience, efficiency, and sustainability, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) launched a pilot program with GM Energy in March, and the pilot’s success has led to more serious conversations around the topics of home batteries, EVs, and other distributed energy resources (DERs) on the national level.
Now that it’s had time to digest the results of the initial pilot, it seems like the Oakland-based utility is doubling down, the utility is expanding the program, encouraging participation with up to $4,500 in incentives for GM Energy customers willing to plug in.
While giving customers the ability to use their GM EV as a back-up home generator is an incredible, practical benefit to customers, it is just the beginning of what we can do to help encourage mass EV adoption with this technology … with the right incentives and policies in place, programs like this one could accelerate the shift toward a more distributed energy model.
As more states explore ways to meet renewable and distributed energy targets as they build up grid resilience – witness Illinois’ recent passing of SB25, which is slated to add 3 GW of battery storage by 2030 – incentives that encourage new participation in V2H, V2G, and VPP tech can help utilities meet those goals.
While you gear up to write your state legislators about what a great/terrible job they’re doing to encourage more EVs in your neck of the woods, you can check out this episode of EV Reality Check where my good friend (and frequent Quick Charge guest) Matt Teske interviews Harris Schaer, Senior Program Manager, Utilities & Aggregators at GM Energy, as they look at similar programs already live across the country, talk up some real-world performance data, and explore the ways utility partnerships are shaping the future of distributed energy.
GM Energy v. Matt Teske
SOURCE: GM.
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A new video surfacing from a Tesla demonstration in Miami this weekend shows the Optimus humanoid robot taking a nasty fall. But it’s not the fall itself that is raising eyebrows, it’s the specific hand movements the robot made on its way down, which strongly suggest it was mimicking a remote operator frantically removing a VR headset.
Humanoid robots are all the hype right now. Billions in investments are pouring in, and Elon Musk claims it will be a trillion-dollar product for Tesla, justifying its insane valuation.
The idea has been that with the advent of AI, robots in human form could use the new generalized artificial intelligence to replace humans in an increasingly larger number of tasks.
However, there are still many serious concerns about the effort, both at the ethical and technological levels.
Technologically, most humanoid robot demonstrations have relied on remote control by human operators – pointing to a remaining gap between the software and hardware.
We discussed how the robots at the “We, Robot” event were heavily teleoperated, despite Tesla not explicitly disclosing that fact to the public.
That was more than a year ago, and despite claims that Tesla has made “AI demos” of Optimus since, it appears the company still relies on teleoperation to control them during demonstrations.
The Tesla Optimus Miami Incident
This weekend, Tesla held an event called ‘Autonomy Visualized’ at its store in Miami. The goal was to showcase Tesla’s “Autopilot technology and Optimus.”
However, there was nothing “autonomous” at Tesla’s “autonomy” event.
Many Tesla fans were seen posting videos of a Tesla Optimus robot handing out bottles of water at the event. It was also seen posing for pictures and dancing.
On Reddit, someone posted a different video of the demonstration:
As you can see, Tesla Optimus moved its hands too quickly, causing some water bottles to drop to the ground. It then loses its balance and begins to fall backward.
But the most interesting part is that just before falling backward, both of its hands immediately shoot up to its “face” in a distinct grasping motion, as if pulling an object off its head.
The robot, of course, is not wearing anything on its head.
The motion is instantly recognizable to anyone who has used VR or watched teleoperation setups. It appears the human operator, likely located backstage or in a remote facility, removed their headset in the middle of operating the robot for unknown reasons.
Optimus faithfully replicated the motion of removing a non-existent headset as it crashed to the floor.
Here’s a look at how Tesla trained Pptimus with VR headsets in its lab:
Electrek’s Take
This is embarrassing, but not just because the robot fell. Robots fall; that’s part of the R&D process. Boston Dynamics blooper reels are legendary, and they never really eroded the company’s credibility.
The problem here is the “Wizard of Oz” moment.
The specific motion of removing the “phantom headset” destroys the illusion of autonomy Tesla tries so hard to curate.
Even recently, Musk fought back against the notion that Tesla relies on teleoperation for its Optimus demonstration. He specified that a new demo of Optimus doing kung-fu was “AI, not tele-operated”:
Musk said again during Tesla’s last earnings call in October:
“Optimus was at the Tron premiere doing kung fu, just up in the open, with Jared Leto. Nobody was controlling it. It was just doing kung fu with Jared Leto at the Tron Premier. You can see the videos online. The funny thing is, a lot of people walked past it thinking it was just a person.”
Musk keeps telling shareholders that Optimus will be the biggest product in history and that millions of units will be working in factories soon. But if they are still relying on 1:1 teleoperation to hand out water bottles right now, it feels like we are still far away from a useful generalized Optimus robot.
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After images of an the new mid-sized electric crossover were leaked by the Chinese MIIT, Nissan pulled the wraps off its all-new NX8 – and it looks so good, I’m wondering if it couldn’t spearhead the brand’s American turnaround.
Nissan has had a rough go of it in the US, if not, well – everywhere of late. And while we may all have our own ideas about what Nissan needs to do to turn its ship around and get back to its winning ways, one thing just about every auto industry analyst seems to understand is that, at its core, Nissan’s problem is a product problem.
It doesn’t have to be this way, though. Despite what the optics of cynically slapping a Nissan badge on a decade-old Mitsubishi platform and calling it a new Rogue might have you believe, Nissan happens to have fantastic, modern new products in its production pipeline – including the all-new NX8 BEV and EREV crossover shown here. There’s just one problem: Nissan’s comeback cars are all in China.
The “N” stands for Nice
Dongfeng Nissan, a Chinese-market automotive joint venture between Dongfeng Motor Group and Nissan, has been rolling out hit after hit in recent months, like the N6 (above), which sits between the Altima and Maxima, size-wise, and offers 112 miles on a full charge of its 21.1 kWh LFP battery before its 1.5L gas engine kicks on to keep the odometer rolling.
The N6’s stablemate, the all-electric Dongfeng Nissan N7 sedan, debuted a few months earlier to rave reviews and hot sales, too – moving more than 10,000 units in the model’s first three weeks on the market.
Like its sedan siblings, the all-electric version of Nissan NX8 crossover rolls on an 800V system architecture and features a CATL-sourced LFP battery pack with 5C ultra-fast charging technology (xC is how many you can charge in an hour, effectively, so 60 minutes divided by 5 = it can charge in as little as 12 minutes). That battery reportedly sends power to a single electric motor putting out either 215 kW (~290 hp) or 250 kW (~335 hp), depending on model.
EREV version of the NX8, meanwhile, features a similar setup to the N6, pairing a 1.5L ICE producing 109 kW (~145 hp) with a 195 kW (~260 hp) electric motor. Expect the NX8 EREV to get slightly less than the N6’s claimed 112 miles of electric-only range (Chinese cycle).
The NX8 is expected to reach its first customers in April 2026. Take a look at some of the firs official photos of the new Nissan crossover, below, then let us know how you think this would do in the US in the comments section at the bottom of the page.
Dongfeng Nissan NX8
SOURCE: Dongfeng Nissan, via CNEVPost.
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