
Cuvva – Car Insurance by the Hour - wrboyce
https://cuvva.co/
======
BillinghamJ
Hey. I built Cuvva. Exciting to see it posted on HN, causing a lot of traffic
to our site!

Cuvva is currently UK-only. Here if you drive a friend's car, you're normally
only covered for damage to third parties. With Cuvva, it's a full
comprehensive policy.

This is not typically relevant for the US. However we are interested in the
potential for other products which might work in the US.

~~~
scott00
I think coverage by the mile or the hour for primary drivers would be of
interest to a lot of car owners in US urban areas. An existing player, Metro
Mile, markets their product as pay-per-mile, but the majority of the cost
actually comes from a fixed per-month fee. Of course that might be because
what I want makes no actuarial sense...

~~~
bri3d
Most US states require that a car be continuously insured as a condition of
its registration, so I think a fixed per-month fee is inevitable.

Each US state also regulates insurance completely differently, so trying to
break into "the US market" with an insurance company is really trying to break
into 50 different legal areas. Very similar to the other article on the HN
frontpage today about US "FinTech" / money transmittal companies.

~~~
richmarr
> ...require that a car be continuously insured...

This doesn't seem like an issue, maybe I'm missing something. You just model
it as continuous insurance based off mileage rather than insurance that's only
active when driving. Metromile et al are conventional insurers except that
they use actual rather than estimated mileage in their pricing.

I think the real reason that there's a monthly fee is that actuarial risk
isn't linear with mileage.

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Retric
This is only really useful in the UK not the US.

 _In most states, comprehensive and collision coverage protects your vehicle
regardless of who 's driving it._

[https://www.esurance.com/info/car/myth-car-insurance-
follows...](https://www.esurance.com/info/car/myth-car-insurance-follows-the-
driver)

Note: There are several edge cases, but it's generally not an issue especially
if the person borrowing the car has their own insurance for their own car.

~~~
chrisseaton
What stops someone who is cheap to insure (like a retired person) taking out
the insurance policy, then someone who is very expensive to insure (like
someone with drink driving convictions) actually using the car all the time?

~~~
cmdrfred
Car insurance in the US is quite odd when you think about it. It's mandatory
and if you don't live in a city so is a car so defacto you need to buy it. On
top of that that doesn't actually cover your car! At the minimum level only
cars you damage are covered so if you get hit by someone without insurance
they are covered, you are not. Huge amounts of regulatory capture are involved
and in my state (PA) it's almost impossible for someone to start their own car
insurance company. I see plenty of room for disruption there.

"In America you can buy a car for hundred dollars, but it costs a thousand to
insure it" \-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMHdGBz2AqI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMHdGBz2AqI)

~~~
mikeash
What's odd about that? It would be weird if driving were a solitary activity,
but when you drive you place significant risk on other people. You can easily
use a car to cause damage that greatly exceeds what an average person can pay,
so to ensure that you don't leave others in the lurch, they require you to
carry liability insurance. They don't care one bit if you damage your _own_
car beyond your ability to cover it, because that's your own problem.

There's nothing weird about a $100 car costing $1000 to insure, because the
insurance isn't about the $100 car, it's about the $20,000 (or $100,000) car
you might crash into.

~~~
cmdrfred
I just always felt a more equitable distribution of funds (as PA is a no fault
state) is to have the people who have $100,000 cars to buy the insurance as
they are the ones with the disposable income to afford it. The guy making 8
dollars an hour at Walmart with his 900 dollar beater isn't getting much value
from that set up.

~~~
mikeash
What exactly would you propose should be done to place the burden on the guy
with the $100,000 car? If you don't require that the guy with the beater buy
insurance, all you're doing is setting him up to be bankrupted of whatever
little he does have if he's at fault in an accident. And what if he crashes
into another poor slob making $8 an hour at the Wal-Mart who managed to take
out a loan to buy a slightly nicer car? Or what if he cripples that person for
life, and they require constant medical care for decades? You're setting
people up to be screwed a lot more than they need to be.

(Note that the no-fault status of PA doesn't really matter here, because it
just means that if both drivers have no-fault insurance, they can't sue the
other driver for minor injuries. Property damage and serious injuries are
still fair game.)

If you _do_ require insurance, but have the cost of the insurance scale neatly
with the cost of the car it covers, then you'll either have a really low limit
on liability which brings back all the problems above, or you'll need to
subsidize the insurance somehow.

Overall, it seems unfair to say that a person is allowed to put other people
at significant risk for property damage and injury without paying for what
that risk actually costs. If you don't like that this is more burdensome to
the poor than to the rich, I think that more general schemes to alleviate
poverty, like government assistance, are the way to go, because car insurance
is only one of many, many ways that life is disproportionately expensive when
you're poor.

~~~
cmdrfred
four issues:

1:the guy making 8 bucks an hour can only afford minimum coverage, the
insurance provides no coverage his car.

2:if we require people get insurance anytime they may potentially put others
at risk then why isn't it required when you purchase a firearm? or alcohol? or
rat poison? or a pet dog? or a baseball bat? The list goes on forever.

3: The cost of providing the car insurance is far below the cost of providing
it when you exclude a few bad actors. (to date for me I've paid in over 20
grand, 0 return) Why is the rest of society providing a subsidy to people who
can't drive? it isn't an accident when you change lanes every 30 seconds,
tailgate, and drive aggressively. Why is society providing a subsidy for
people with expensive cars as well? I've never had a 'accident' and yet I'm
expected to pay a company for a product that gives me little value until I
die, and while someone who has a 'accident' pays slightly more monthly than me
I feel I cover far to much of the burden for them.

4:I drive a datsun in vintage racing events, my skill is far above the average
driver. I can tailgate at 90 miles an hour with drum breaks. Why aren't my
rates lower? beacuse the free market isn't allowed to do it's work on
insurance companies due to a regulatory structure that was put in by insurance
companies. Why does my credit score count by my skill does not? regulatory
capture.

~~~
mikeash
Mandatory liability insurance has actually been proposed for firearms. I
imagine the reason it's not actually law is because rabid NRA types see any
such requirement as an unconstitutional infringement of their 2nd Amendment
rights.

As for the rest, the risk is far lower. How many people are injured in
baseball bat accidents each year? How much property damage is caused by dogs?
How often does alcohol result in damage to a third party beyond the culprit's
ability to pay, outside of alcohol-related car accidents?

Insurance costs vary enormously with your demonstrated risk, which includes
your driving record. If you're a safe driver, and demonstrate it with a low
accident and traffic citation rate, you pay _much_ less than somebody who
crashes and gets pulled over a lot.

Your statement that you can safely tailgate at 90MPH with drum brakes makes me
think that you're actually one of those unsafe drivers who merely thinks he's
safe because he's gotten lucky so far. No amount of skill is going to save you
from human reaction times, or the guy in front of you having superior brakes.
If you are in fact skilled, then your skill _does_ count, to the extent that
you can demonstrate it in a concrete manner.

~~~
cmdrfred
Not a single accident or moving violation ever, I pay 120 a month for minimum
coverage because I have shitty credit. What I do on a racetrack under
controlled conditions is entirely different than what I do on the road. I keep
my stopping distance between me and the car in front of me.

~~~
mikeash
Your credit score counts because credit score is a good predictor of accident
risk. Apparently nobody really understands why, but that's how it is.

Insurance is all about trying to predict the future, which is tough. The tools
are imperfect. But they're decent, and the data supports using credit score as
a factor.

------
krzrak
:D [https://support.cuvva.co/hc/en-gb/articles/201826632-Do-I-
ne...](https://support.cuvva.co/hc/en-gb/articles/201826632-Do-I-need-the-
owner-s-permission-to-get-cover-)

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run4yourlives2
Huh?

Most car insurance policies already cover lending a car to a friend. Am I
missing something here?

~~~
zschallz
Not always in the UK, and if they do it's only liability and not
comprehensive/collision.

~~~
run4yourlives2
Seems pretty unique to the UK (maybe Europe?). In North America it is standard
to pretty much every insurance policy.

~~~
TylerE
The difference, in essence, is that in the US, car insurance covers the
_vehicle_ , in the UK insurance covers the _driver_.

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amelius
Could be useful.

But... I'm wondering why this is tech news. Is now every service, but done on
a computer, suddenly tech news?

(If so, then I predict this will become a boring place, because there are a
gazillion services out there that can be computerized.)

~~~
notahacker
It's a startup, they built the stack from scratch which is probably a fair bit
more complicated under the hood than it looks, it's a niche which is
(probably) currently unserved and it's in a decidedly unglamorous industry.

Not to mention also a service which London-based developers are actually
pretty likely to consider using on occasion.

It has a _lot_ more reason to be on here than many other popular links.

------
fiatmoney
UK only. This would never fly in the US, where insurance is fairly heavily
regulated and on a state-by-state basis.

Europe in general has far more flexibility around insurance products and
pricing.

------
barryhappy
Does anyone know a good alternative for rental cars? I figure Cuvva isn't
ideal in those situations b/c you need something that lasts multiple days, not
just hours.

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switch007
Can I view the terms of the policy before purchasing?

~~~
BillinghamJ
Yes - they're available in the app before you pay.

------
pfisch
This is amazing. Bring it to the US.

------
macsp
Great product can't wait to use it

------
snowmaker
Wow, this is a great idea. The fact that you can't drive a friend's car is a
crazy aspect of US auto insurance.

Is this a new company? Would it apply to Zipcar / car rentals as well as owned
cars? Does anyone know of a US equivalent?

~~~
toomuchtodo
> The fact that you can't drive a friend's car is a crazy aspect of US auto
> insurance.

That's not true at all. I have State Farm (IL and FL), and as long as my
family member, friend, whatever has my permission to drive the vehicle,
they're covered under my policy.

~~~
lutorm
Indeed. It's apparently a little-known fact that this even applies to rental
cars, even though the rental car companies do their best to not tell you this.

The wikipedia page even mentions this: "Although frequently not explicitly
stated, US car rental companies are required by respective state law to
provide minimal liability coverage, except in California, where the driver is
solely responsible."

Of course, _minimal_ liability is only good if you have no assets
whatsoever...

~~~
mikeash
In addition to that, most personal car insurance policies cover rentals, _and_
every credit card I've ever seen provides insurance for cars rented with that
credit card. The average renter is covered by three different policies (the
rental company's policy, their personal auto policy, and their credit card,
although they don't perfectly overlap and may not cover everything you'd want)
before the rental company tries to get them to buy a fourth.

Please do your own research before relying on any of this, of course!
Especially since individual insurance and credit cards may vary. But
personally I've not seen any reason to purchase the insurance they offer.

~~~
lutorm
Credit cards generally only cover the cost of the rental car, I've not seen
one that provides liability coverage. So if you don't have a vehicle of your
own, which would provide such coverage, the little-known rental car policy is
what saves you from having to fork over extra cash for liability coverage.

