Reinsurance giant Swiss Re and automotive tech firm Luminar have partnered to advance assisted driving and improve safety while reducing the costs of consumer adoption.
Luminar notes that the first step of the joint initiative is to analyse the on-road performance and safety improvements of consumer and commercial vehicles equipped with its lidar and proactive safety technologies, for both the industry and Luminar’s new insurance program that it plans to offer.
The objective of this testing is to validate accident prevention capabilities that Luminar expects will substantially reduce insurance claims, which has the opportunity to lead to a reduction in the cost of insurance for consumers that drive Luminar-equipped vehicles.
Swiss Re will collaborate exclusively with Luminar as part of this initiative, collecting and analysing the data and distributing it to Luminar.
The data will also be made available to Swiss Re’s clients, which include major insurance providers across the globe.
Russell Higginbotham, CEO of Swiss Re Solutions, commented, “Swiss Re’s mission is to make the world more resilient, so we’re delighted to partner with Luminar on a project that can make our roads safer.
“By capturing tech advancements and their impacts on road safety we can deliver more accurate risk models, pricing competitiveness and risk knowledge for Luminar-equipped vehicles to our clients – insurance providers.”
Austin Russell, Founder and CEO of Luminar, added, “Reduction in accidents and lives saved with Luminar-equipped vehicles will naturally drive lower cost of car insurance and savings to consumers.
“Just as the introduction of electric vehicles has reduced the cost of energy to the consumer, Luminar-equipped cars can reduce the cost of insurance. We’re collaborating with Swiss Re in order to accelerate this process and give consumers the economic credit they deserve.”
Luminar states that saving lives is its primary goal, adding that it can democratise its technology to help more people by establishing a lower total cost of ownership of their vehicles.
The automotive tech firm’s aforementioned plan of launching its own insurance initiative will be headed by Alex Tsetsenekos, whose team successfully led the creation and deployment of Tesla’s insurance program.
Luminar Insurance is expected to be available to consumers of production vehicle models equipped with Luminar beginning in the US next year.
