You can seemingly get a subscription to anything these days; food, coffee, books, knives, movies and TV, personal hygiene items, and yes, cars. There was a lot of buzz around Porsche announcing the option to get a subscription to their cars at the cringe-worthy price of $2,000 per month. However, this would give you access to a large chunk of their cars (obviously not the super exclusives like the 918 or GT2 RS). Volvo also made headlines with the revealing of their Polestar 1, a beautifully-elegant and brutally-powerful hybrid sports cars from Volvo’s EV-focused sub-brand. Other companies also offer subscription services for their cars that offer some significant benefits, but also come with some caveats, so let’s break down car subscriptions and how it will affect the landscape of buying a car.

What is a Car Subscription?

It’s pretty much like any other subscription business model; you pay recurring fee (usually monthly) that gives you access to a certain product or service for the duration of our subscription. Subscription services usually attract customers by providing added convenience or access to a greater amount of the specific product or service than you normally would have access to. Take Netflix for example, arguably the pioneer for subscription services (hence every subscription service being called the “Netflix of something”). Their model allows you to pay a certain amount of money to access their database of millions of hours of movies and television. You get to consume without limit, but don’t get to keep anything.

Car subscriptions operate in a similar fashion. Take Porsche’s subscription service for example. For $2,000 a month, you can drive any model they offer with the subscription (called Porsche Passport) and allow you to switch between any model within the subscription at any time. They will even deliver it to you wherever you are in Atlanta (which is the only place its offered currently) and drive the old car back for you. There is a $500 activation fee and credit check but other than that you’re good to go. If you have a bit more cash lying around, you can opt for the $3,000 per month subscription that allows you to drive 22 different models, including some more exclusive models.

What are the Benefits?

• Ability to live with a number of different cars for a longer time: Buying a car is one of the biggest one-time expenditures people make, second to purchasing a house or paying back student loans. This means you are locked into the car you buy for a long time, generally about a decade if not more. This means you need to be absolutely sure of your decision. A subscription service is generally month-to-month, which allows you to drive cars for weeks or months at a time to truly know if it fits your needs or not. For example, if you were in the market for a Porsche, which is not a small purchase, you absolutely don’t want to end up with buyer’s remorse afterwards so you would spend the $2,500 (including activation) for one month and drive every model you can for 2-3 days each to get to truly know them and how they will fit in your life.
• Insurance and maintenance is covered: You don’t have to worry about any of the hassle of owning a car such as registration, emissions, oil changes, etc. From what I can tell, all of the currently available car subscriptions offer this. It’s entirely possible that future subscriptions will not offer insurance in exchange for lower prices or insurance companies might step in an offer subscription insurance, but for now this is a pretty great perk.
• Unlike a Lease, there is not mileage limit: Arguable the best feature of car subscriptions is that you don’t have any mileage limit (again, for currently available ones). This means you could feasibly pay $2,000 and drive any Porsche you want cross country for however many miles without a penalty. I’m sure there are other creative ways to take advantage on unlimited mileage, but you get my point.

What are the Downsides?

• Subscribing to cars will generally be a bit more expensive than buying it: Since things like insurance is are covered, you don’t have any mileage restrictions, maintenance is taken care of, and you can switch cars at any time, it’s understandable that you will be paying a premium for subscription services. However, the premium is pretty drastic, and many people won’t be able to afford it.
• It’s pretty costly if used for a long period of time: A huge problem with subscription services is that they’re easy to forget about. That’s why there are specific apps and programs that look at your credit card bill and tells you what you’re subscribed to that you may have forgotten. I don’t think that will be a huge problem if the monthly payment is $2,000, but subscriptions can often outlive their cost efficiency. What does that mean? If you subscribed to GM’s Cadillac subscription for a year, you would pay $18,000 to essentially rent a car for a year. While that may be cheaper than say renting a car at a daily rate from Enterprise for a year, it’s still a hefty sum for not much benefit.
• You most likely won’t get access to cars you REALLY want to drive: Because dealerships will have to maintain inventory for you to switch, it’s likely that subscription services will never exist for higher-end cars that you might be inclined to pay just to experience driving it for a month. Want to know what its like to drive the new 700 HP GT2 RS? Well, you can’t. Cars like that are too expensive and valuable for dealership to hold in their inventory, which means you will likely never be able to subscribe to one of them.

The Bottom Line:

While it may sound ludicrous for someone to subscribe to a car, there are some great benefits if you think about it. You will need to be careful with car subscriptions though and clearly evaluate your needs and financial situation before committing to something like this. I don’t think subscription services are going away, and it was probably a matter of time until some third-party company created a car subscription. Maybe its better that dealerships and manufacturers do it first so they can figure out the kinks.

What do you guys think? Do you think car subscriptions are a good idea? What car company do you wish offered a subscription?