[Misdicorl]

The story I've heard is that general motors down fall began when they stopped writing loans for other car manufacturers. They used to under write basically every car loan in the US.

I've never looked into how truthful it is, but it smacks of idiotic/arrogant executive tropes so well I almost don't want to discover it's false

[throwanem]

Oh, I see, I wasn't clear. I meant specifically a policy underwriter, as opposed to something like GMAC of old. I've updated my original comment with the necessary adjective.

Looking over GMAC's history via Wikipedia, I find they did underwrite insurance for a time and that no other US insurance company originated within an automaker. That suggests to me Tesla's operating model here is indeed about as unusual in context as I originally - well, intuited, I suppose. I think that's interesting.

[mschuster91]

Tesla's entire way of conducting business is new.

No other auto maker before them (to my knowledge) has built their own grid of gas stations, no auto maker went to the efforts that Tesla did to vertically integrate, no auto maker completely ignored the "classic" model of independent dealerships to sell and service their cars... it makes sense that they're about the first ones (at least in America) to change how the financial side works as well.