Sounds Like Insurance on Teslas Is Going to Skyrocket Because of All the Vandalism

It was already expensive to insure a Tesla — and now, it looks like it's going to get even more costly.

In interviews with Newsweek, insurance experts are sounding alarm bells about a potential rate hike due to the spate of anti-Elon Musk vandalism targeting Teslas around the United States.

"If vandalism involving Tesla vehicles continues to rise and doesn't go back down, we could see rates rise for comprehensive coverage in the future," explained Matt Brannon, a data journalist with the comparison shopping site Insurify.

With car insurance on the rise nationally, rate hikes across the board are unfortunately par for the course. But as Brannon noted, Teslas are already one of the most expensive makes to insure, with Model 3s weighing in at an eye-watering $4,362 per year. That's substantially more expensive than a Mercedes Benz A-Class, which according to the insurance site CarEdge costs just under $2,600 per year to insure.

Beyond Tesla already punching above other cars in insurance cost — due, most likely, to their propensity for getting in wrecks — there's plenty of precedent to suggest that vandalism may cause rates to spike even higher.

Take the "Kia Boys" TikTok trend from a few years back. Thanks to easily-exploitable key insecurities in Kias and Hyundais from the mid-aughts, teens began teaching each other online how to take those cars for joyrides with little difficulty — and ultimately, those specific makes and models became uninsurable.

Shannon Martin, an insurance analyst with Bankrate, echoed those warnings.

"As we have learned from the 2023 TikTok theft trend targeting certain model Kias and Hyundais, if these types of losses continue, carriers could refuse to offer coverage for Tesla vehicles altogether," Martin told Newsweek.

Paired with car insurers' likely racist propensity for hiking rates in response to crime statistics, there's no reason to think that insurers won't raise rates on Teslas even higher.

Things may get even more complicated now that Musk, president Donald Trump, and attorney general Pam Bondi have declared that Tesla vandalism is "domestic terrorism" — which may, as some armchair analysts muse, make the cars all the more uninsurable.

Just a few years ago, buying a Tesla was a pragmatic financial choice due to all the money you'd save on gas. In Trump and Musk's America, however, owning a Tesla not only brings you shame and ridicule, but it could cause your insurance to spike — or your coverage to be dropped entirely.

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