For a few days now the “Tesla App” has been telling me my delivery window was the 15th to the 30th of September, but I still didn’t have a VIN so I couldn’t do things like shop insurance for it.
Tonight while I was doing my evening refresh of the app it popped up and said I had the chance to take a different car with “earlier” delivery – and the offered car was exactly the same as the one I ordered back on the 12th, but in arrest-me-red instead of black.
I’d chosen the black paint and black interior as an homage to the Hellcat, but in the interest of expediting this whole ordeal I accepted the swap to the red car.
So now I have a VIN, which I’m told means things will move much faster now.
Having a VIN means I can also check on how much this insanity will cost for insurance…
The Hellcat is a limited edition 800HP rear wheel drive guided missile built for drag-strip use with a habit of being stollen inside of the first 90 days of ownership – so I knew it was going to be expensive. And the Hellcat through Geico runs me about $1700 every six months – or $283.33 a month.
Geico wanted about $2300 every 6 months for the Tesla, or $383.33 a month.
Oof…
So I checked Tesla’s own insurance, and they quoted me $250 and change per month – which is slightly less than my Mad Max-esque “last of the V8 interceptors”.
Yay!
The down-side to Tesla’s insurance is that price is based on the car tattling on you. If you accelerate too fast or go around a corner too quickly too often, your rates go up.
Boo!
I’ll have to see how expensive it gets if I drive the “performance” car like a “performance” car… If I can have fun and still keep it under $300 a month, that’s probably what I’ll do.
Though it looks like you have to be driving like a total asshat to really impact the Safety Score as it bases a lot of it on the cars around you – like how close you are following or how fast you pass someone – and I only get sporty when the road is clear of traffic, the visibility and weather are good, and I have plenty of runway to come back down to mundane speeds without worrying about brake fade.
Anyway, that’s the update. I’m not sure what the actual value of “earlier” is for picking the red car over the black one – but I at least made the attempt. 🙂
Leave a Reply