Tesla strengthens China business by setting up insurance brokerage

Shanghai (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 the China's National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System.

(Photo source: Tesla's WeChat account)

The company was registered in Lin-gang Special Area of China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone, where the Gigafactory 3 is located, and is wholly held by Tesla Motors Hong Kong Limited, according to the public registration records. Zhu Xiaotong, Tesla's global vice president and China chief, serve as its legal representative.

In August 2019, Tesla announced it was offering “Tesla Insurance” service to customers in California. The company said then the Tesla Insurance is a competitively priced insurance offering designed to provide Tesla owners with up to 20% lower rates, and in some cases as much as 30%.

Zachary Kirkhorn, Tesla Chief Financial Officer, revealed at Tesla's Q2 2020 earnings conference call that the company wants to harness that data from its telematics on its cars and drivers to build the new insurance operation beyond California.

“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,” he said, “we hope to be filing that in a handful of states with regulators very shortly. Assuming that regulatory approvals go smoothly, we hope to have this in a handful of states by the end of the year.”

“We are building a great—like a major insurance company,” said Tesla's CEO Elon Musk, “if you want to change things and you're annoyed by how slow the industry is, this is the place to be. We want revolutionary actuaries.