I've given the "vehicle subscription model" discussed a couple pages back some more thought, and then it hit me who are the ideal companies to deliver such a service: the car companies themselves.
Car ownership is likely to drop when SDVs become the norm, because why pay for parking and maintenance when you can have a vehicle available to you on-demand? I was working on the assumption that it would be an Uber type of service that would fill this gap, but the more I think of it the more it makes sense for car companies to do this.
Their 'sales pitch' will switch from selling you a car to selling you a service package. The "Economy" package would include a base model car (Corolla, Focus, Civic, etc) available to you within 10 minutes of the request. The "Luxury" package would include their top of the line car (Town Car, Lexus, etc) available within 5 minutes of the request. They could also have a family option which includes a larger vehicle.
The idea is that people would pick a service package that is most appropriate for their needs and wants, for a fixed price every month (a subscription). With this model, car manufacturers would be able to tailor their production lines to how popular each package is in a given year, and the types of vehicles to be included in it. Given the intense competition this is likely to create, it would be interesting to see what kinds of 'bonus features' companies throw into their packages to incentivize you to choose them. We already see this to a limited extent with cell phone contracts, where companies like Rogers include GameCentre Live and Texture as throw-ins to their plans.
It's definitely a shift in business model for these companies, but I think it could be just as profitable for them, if not more-so, because they would have an on-going revenue stream from customers, and not just a single point-of-sale purchase.
Car ownership is likely to drop when SDVs become the norm, because why pay for parking and maintenance when you can have a vehicle available to you on-demand? I was working on the assumption that it would be an Uber type of service that would fill this gap, but the more I think of it the more it makes sense for car companies to do this.
Their 'sales pitch' will switch from selling you a car to selling you a service package. The "Economy" package would include a base model car (Corolla, Focus, Civic, etc) available to you within 10 minutes of the request. The "Luxury" package would include their top of the line car (Town Car, Lexus, etc) available within 5 minutes of the request. They could also have a family option which includes a larger vehicle.
The idea is that people would pick a service package that is most appropriate for their needs and wants, for a fixed price every month (a subscription). With this model, car manufacturers would be able to tailor their production lines to how popular each package is in a given year, and the types of vehicles to be included in it. Given the intense competition this is likely to create, it would be interesting to see what kinds of 'bonus features' companies throw into their packages to incentivize you to choose them. We already see this to a limited extent with cell phone contracts, where companies like Rogers include GameCentre Live and Texture as throw-ins to their plans.
It's definitely a shift in business model for these companies, but I think it could be just as profitable for them, if not more-so, because they would have an on-going revenue stream from customers, and not just a single point-of-sale purchase.