My local dealer (pre-covid) had a deal where basically you paid $1000+ a month, and got your choice of which luxury vehicle you wanted. Swap em in and out like old school Netflix. No idea how successful it was, but I don't hear anything about it anymore.

Volvo is trying this! They call it a car subscription. Doesn't seem like it has had a huge impact, though: https://www.volvocars.com/us/care-by-volvo/

Looks exactly like a lease except they cover a few more things like tires? And even then, it says they cover cases of "excessive wear" which implies something wrong with the vehicle which the warranty should cover in either case.

Is there any real difference besides the fact that you can order it online and that it appears much more expensive?

To answer my own question, looks like they include the insurance and they do pay to replace the tires if needed and you can cancel after 5 months, I guess.

I thought it also includes insurance, and you could also swap cars at any point? So pretty similar but a little more than a lease.

That's what a lease is.

I'm thinking more along the lines of how car companies can recapture the money that the second owner is saving by buying a used vehicle.

For example instead of selling a car, selling a license to use the car to the first owner and then deactivating features or throttling performance if/when they resell the car.

GM currently tracks 100+ variables of your car over the life of usage (thanks on star!) and then calculates a resale price and offers to buy it back or gives you a certain deal when trading in.

Ford does something similar but is easily defeated by changing the stereo. The APIM tracks your driving habits locations and ecu vars which is captured and uploaded to Ford when you take the car in for service (don’t know how this works in their newer 2019+ cars since they are also connected 24/7 like GM)

If the car is known to have no resale value, it will command lower price when new, so car companies can hardly do much here.

"You'll own nothing, and you'll be happy"

"...and you'll ignore all the warnings (like ^ this comment) until it's too late."