The Subscription Car and the Death of Ownership
Art by Tanzanian Wojak
You’ll pay $18 a month for heated seats, and you'll be happy.
Something is deeply wrong with the modern car. You can’t quite put your finger on it, because it’s something sensory and intangible. Simply put, cars of today are becoming cold appliances. They are losing any and all mechanical soul they once had in favor of electrons running through semiconductors. One can attend any classic car show and witness the enthusiasm for more simple creations of past eras. The real spirit of the machine is analog. Even so, why should anybody care in 2023?
The automotive industry is pushing to charge monthly subscriptions for features that would have previously been included in new cars. Want to unlock your car remotely? That’ll be $5 a month. What about advanced cruise control? $15 a month. This trend is becoming obvious. It seems almost monthly, corporations are announcing their plans to make life fully subscription-based so they can match the hellish ambitions of their competitors.
As a consumer in 2023, one doesn't simply own things now; we must buy the thing, and then pay someone endlessly to use features of it. One such case is heated seats. Gifts from God Himself. Something so amazing, one might pay hundreds more for them when checking boxes at the dealership. However, in 2023, we don't just pay once for heated seats. Instead, people now pay monthly subscriptions to automakers like BMW to unlock heated seats or other luxury features. People hate on subscriptions clogging up their monthly budget, yet, the Netflix-ication of every aspect of the consumer experience spirals deeper every year.
With the recent announcement in late 2022 by Mercedes-Benz that there will be a $1200 annual paywall to unlock faster acceleration in new electric vehicles, many questions arise. When did it become normal to hold features of fully purchased hardware hostage in order to generate ongoing revenue? Does the fact that a consumer owns their car entitle them to the usage of features built onto the vehicle at the time of purchase?
The slow erosion of actually owning anything is casting a grim shadow over the consumer. It's no secret that the rental economy is set to grow larger as fewer people actually own products and instead take the route of paying companies monthly to use their products. Right now, the automotive industry is testing the waters of subscription models and fully embracing the "You will own nothing, and you will be happy" meme that arose from the WEF's Great Reset project. Soon, the ambitions of luxury automakers to move towards subscription models will be adopted by more affordable brands as well, plaguing the wallets of every economic bracket in an extremely car-dependent USA.
What is it about actually owning something that brings us an easier feeling than paying corporations to let us borrow it or use its features endlessly? The primary reason is security. We want to feel like once we pay for something, that product is ours. A 1970s Ford pickup truck will run forever if you have the time, patience, and parts. YouTube is a great resource for repairs if the owner is mechanically inclined and owns the right tools. Better yet, there are no monthly payments or electronic services tied to these older vehicles in order for them to function at peak performance.
Photos by the author
Older vehicles can provide reliable transportation for several generations without needing any extraordinary inputs. While there are environmental and safety considerations to driving classic automobiles, they serve as an example of how different the nature of consumption is today. Encaged in the current system, we are astounded by a time when items were purchased once and lasted for years on end.
However, things that work forever are just not that profitable in the current market. This is 2023, and the name of the game is recurring revenue. Why process one transaction from a customer every few years when you can ensure they will be paying you monthly for an indefinite period of time? If the subscriptions are low-cost enough, most people won’t even notice or care to speak up.
If this trend continues, people likely won’t own anything in the near future and will be making shocking levels of monthly payments. In some ways, we have already reached this point with auto loan debt at all-time highs. Just consider how problematic it is that very few consumers have the financial means to fully purchase any new car without getting a loan for extreme terms like 72 months, or even longer at high-interest rates. At least in this current debt servitude model, they will eventually own the entire capability of the vehicle when their monthly payments are finished.
What is the end goal for automotive companies today? These are businesses that want consistent, guaranteed cash flow. This allows them to focus on improving their services by reinvesting constantly. These corporations don't want to worry about the future of profits under the old cash flow model that was just too unpredictable. Delivering value through a one-time purchase is now an outdated way of viewing the ideal business transaction.
Auto manufacturers are currently in a transition period where they must quickly become more like tech companies to stay afloat and remain relevant in the coming era of fully electric vehicles. Tech companies like Apple potentially entering the space have created this new reality. Gone are the days of crazy new features on automobiles that will attract buyers to the showroom every few years to upgrade; think of the 1950s and giant fins dripping off the trunk of a Cadillac. Today, unless there is a recurring revenue model, no business executive in the automotive industry wants to discuss the value of adding new features.
Giant central screen panels with iPad-esque designs dominate the interior of every new car sold today. These screens will be the central point of revenue generation for automakers in this coming era. After starting your vehicle, notifications will instantly invade your screen asking if you'd like to pay X amount of dollars per month for upgrades to performance, efficiency, handling, or other luxury features. These false investments will never be passed along to later owners of the vehicle, and the car will always start again as a blank slate.
Furthermore, the amount of remote control over vehicles in the future raises major privacy and security concerns. Car manufacturers, law enforcement, and hackers now have the disturbing ability to remotely enable and disable car features. Ford recently patented an autonomous driving system that is able to repossess a vehicle when an owner is delinquent on loan or subscription service payments. The vehicle will drive itself back to a dealer or even to a scrap yard, depending on which is the better value proposition. The patent mentions no plans for safety systems to engage if there are children or animals trapped in the back seat when this occurs.
Corporations are not the only ones to blame if one is distressed by this model. Investors obsessed with returns want to see their portfolios go green every quarter. These investors, who are also members of the general public, want endless growth from companies with recurring profits that no longer depend on the traditional business cycle of auto manufacturing.
It is ultimately consumers who lose the most in this new paradigm. They will be shackled with higher monthly costs on top of their already outrageous car payments and rising costs of living, while wages stay mostly stagnant. The only benefits will be constant roll-outs of exhilarating new technologies as electric vehicles gain majority market share and reach their peak of innovation.
It is doubtful that legislation will stop subscription service models once they become the dominant form of revenue for the auto industry. Nobody raised any alarm when this happened to the media in the 2010s. People saw subscription services, such as Netflix, as a welcome savior from actually owning any physical media. For those wanting the more traditional route of fully owning a vehicle, the only hope is that the public sees the financial value of owning things rather than leasing them in perpetuity.
Spreading awareness in a conscious effort might be the only way to turn back to a time when consumers had more power over their own possessions. The ecstasy of new products, coupled with apathy and malaise, seems to be making consumers overlook these devious plans for now. While you still can, find an old car or bicycle and learn to repair it yourself. It will be something truly analog outside of the digital world that is slowly becoming a hellscape of dependency.
