The news: Lemonade has expanded its Autonomous Car insurance to Colorado after previously launching it in Indiana, Oregon, and Arizona, per Forbes. The policy gives eligible Tesla drivers a 50% discount on the per-mile rate for miles driven using Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology. 

Zoom in: EV owners pay an average of $3,159 annually for insurance in 2026—about 42% more than the $2,218 average for gas-powered vehicles, largely due to higher repair and battery replacement costs, per Insurify.

Lemonade is attempting to address that pain point with a telematics-based discount, effectively betting that miles driven under FSD result in fewer or less severe claims than those driven manually. 

The move is a broader customer acquisition play aimed at attracting a fast-growing, affluent EV base and establishing Lemonade as a go-to insurer for autonomous and software-defined vehicles.

Why it matters: The constraint is the data, and automakers control it. Lemonade can price FSD miles only because Tesla makes per-mile driving data available through an open API. 

Automakers have reason to open that data up: cheaper insurance lowers the cost of owning their cars, which bites hardest on EVs and their high premiums. That access can take different forms, from an open API to a direct insurer arrangement. Whichever form it takes, insurers have to go after it and build the pricing models to use it.

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