DutchNews, October 11,
2017
 |
| Artist’s impression: Amber One |
Centraal Beheer, the car insurance unit of financial services group Achmea, has
become the first company in the Netherlands to cover shared self-driving cars,
the company said on Wednesday.
Achmea’s subsidiaries Centraal Beheer and
Interpolis insure 2.3 million vehicles between them, making the group the
country’s largest car insurer.
The arrival of self-driving cars has
turned the car insurance market around, management board member Robert Otto
said in a statement. What is clear is that the days of setting insurance
premiums by accident history are over, he said.
Achmea reached agreement on
Tuesday afternoon to insure the Amber One, a completely electric self-driving
vehicle which is to come into production in 2021. Amber is a start-up company
based at Eindhoven university’s High Tech Campus.
The Amber One is seen as an
ideal shared car because it will be equipped with software which determines
where and when demand for the car is highest. But this bring problems in
particular with determining whether the driver, the developer of the software
or the manufacturer are liable.
Under terms of Achmea’s agreement with Amber,
self-driving car insurance will be developed alongside the car itself.
Damages
are certain to be higher due to electronics and software used in the car, Otto
said. A simple collision with a lamp post will far more expensive with a
self-driving car than with a traditional car, he said. ‘We already have that
experience with electric cars.’ The Amber One will be fully electric but the
parts will be readily interchangeable.
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