Tesla launched its own car insurance. These drivers say it's a lemon.

Bova isn’t the only customer Tesla Insurance has angered, according to scores of complaints in social media and online posts, including on a Better Business Bureau website, and Reuters interviews with half a dozen policyholders. While some customers in online posts have praised the insurer’s low premiums, others, like Bova, complain of waiting weeks or months for payouts and repairs, and an inability to reach claims adjusters.

Tesla officials have said they started the insurer to solve a problem: Prospective customers walking away from car sales after getting sky-high insurance quotes, based on the electric vehicles’ high collision-repair costs. Despite promising to revolutionize automobile insurance, Tesla has at times run the business on a shoestring budget, at one point with only about a dozen adjusters who were quickly overwhelmed by hundreds of claims, according to several sources familiar with the insurer’s operations.

The insurer’s problems fit into a pattern of rushed and sloppy management leading to consumer and worker harms across Musk’s empire of technology and manufacturing firms. The billionaire’s decisions have come under fire in the year since he bought Twitter, now renamed X. Advertising revenue and company value plummeted after Musk slashed the firm’s staff by more than half and introduced a series of unpopular platform changes. After Musk endorsed an antisemitic post on X last week, several major companies halted their advertising on the platform. Musk denied being antisemitic.

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