Tesla Introduces The Safety Score

Innovation is an invention, that has or is going to be adopted.

Tesla has been consistently updating the completely rewritten Full-Self-Driving software in private beta based on the feedback of the 2000 beta testers. There are tons of videos on the internet, and it is impressive to see the progress Tesla made within a few months and this limited amount of feedback.

The FSD-Beta-Button opened the gates for other customers to join the beta program. With the opening of the beta, Tesla introduced the Safety Score.

The Safety Score is a way of telling customers how good they are at driving. Many people will be disappointed to learn that they suck at driving. It will reveal irresponsible driving behaviour, which is a form of feedback that many drivers never had in their life. The introduction of the Safety Score has some massive implications for Tesla's further mission.

Implication #1 - Free Advertisement

Tesla provides an incentive to safe drivers by giving them early access to the latest version of their FSD-Software. This is a great way to strengthen the relationship with customers, and you can be sure that those people will show tell their friends, family and colleagues about the latest and greatest gadget in their garage. Have a look at Twitter and see how many people are posting their Safety Score - it's insane.

Implication #2 - Adoption of Tesla Insurance

Introducing the Safety Score for early access is a clever way to introduce this functionality with positive momentum. Many insurance companies try to get customers data to improve their risk models. Tesla already has the data. However, that is not the point. By having a transparent way of communicating the "risk" of an individual customer, Tesla found a way to bring transparency in the pricing of their insurance products. This transparency allows their customers to work on their driving skills to lower insurance costs or switch to Full-Self-Driving to minimise cost. FSD will be the safest form of operating a vehicle anyway. It will be impossible for regular insurance companies to be as precise at modelling the risk of a Tesla vehicle simply because of the data advantage that Tesla already has. The Safety Score is just an elegant demonstration of that fact. Tesla is slowly rolling out its insurance product, and the safety score will play a significant role in the adoption of Tesla insurance and Full-Self-Driving.

Implication #3 - Regulatory Approval

It's worth having a look at the Safety Score Website because it's a beautiful demonstration of what might help in convincing regulatory globally to approve the Full-Self-Driving technology. However, because most of you won't click, here is a Screenshot to give you a glimpse.

Tesla not only provides detailed instructions on how to improve your Safety Score, but it also discloses the calculation of the Safety Score. The metric and the way it's modelled is simple enough to understand for most people on this planet. However, even regulators that lack basic math skills will probably understand the Scoring between 0 and 100, where 0 means that you are an irresponsible and bad driver and 100 means you probably use Full-Self-Driving all the time. Yes, the latter is not possible right now, but think ahead a few months into the future. What pattern do you think is going to emerge? The FSD software users will be the ones to Score 100, while human drivers probably will have a tough time replicating this result. Letting human drivers and the FSD Software compete is a brilliant way to demonstrate the obvious.