it really sounds to me that car companies want a subscription model. Where I will never be able to own a car but I rent one for the rest of my life.

But surely that business model has already existed for decades. It's called leasing.

but i have a choice to not lease

“You will own nothing and you will be happy.”

That sounds great, and I can’t wait! Car ownership is a massive pain and time suck for me. Finding and paying for parking, insurance, and maintenance are huge costs in terms of both money and time. Not to mention the fact that my car spends 99% of its life doing absolutely nothing while also representing my single biggest depreciating asset, greatest risk to my health, and substantial cost to the environment. I would gladly offload as much of that as I can to the manufacturer in exchange for a monthly subscription that lets me use a car whenever I need (either rental car or ride-sharing model).

What you're describing sounds like using rental and taxis/"ride shares"/transit for everything which you can do today if your use case/location supports it. Involving a car manufacturer won't change anything fundamental.

What you're describing sounds an awful lot like public transit.

That’s true, and I do use public transit for about 80% of my travel, which I can only do since I live in a major city. Problem is that I also need to make 1–2 hr trips to the suburbs and out of state every week, and I can’t get away from car ownership for that. Rental cars could fill this gap if they were available more reliably and without having to spend 45 mins in line to get one.

Zipcar. Doesn't work well with a regular commute.

I tried it. Doesn’t work so well in practice since you have to book several days in advance to actually get a car sometimes.

This is painful to read; Alexa how do I get a thought out of my head?

Don't read this then: https://www.volvocars.com/uk/care-by-volvo/

Toyota's Kinto (mentioned in OP) is the name for car subscription service in Japan and it have now operated. It covers vehicle price, maintenance fee, inspection fee, insurance, tax, and etc.., as a monthly subscription

Yeah this is what the great reset is about. It has advantages and disadvantages. Advantage is less incentives to produce short lived products. Disadvantage is that individuals have way less control over things.

If we ever get to actual autonomous driving, that seems inevitable. A manufacturer can't be expected to own liability unless they also own maintenance and upgrades.

Don’t worry, they’ll find a way to make it subscription based. But also, making the mfg own liability for self-driving is a really interesting topic that will change automotive.

As an automotive EE, I’m much more skeptical about autonomous than almost every other person here, but I look forward to being driven to work just the same.

Oh, I'm as skeptical as anyone--at least outside of certain defined conditions like interstates in good weather. But I don't see how manufacturers can't own liability (or something like the vaccine pool). If you sell me a car that's billed/approved as fully autonomous (fully, not in the Tesla FSD sense), it sure as hell isn't on me if it kills someone.

> certain defined conditions like interstates in good weather.

That’s where it is for me. I’ve been around the world and driven in all conditions. I don’t buy blinding whiteout snow, other drivers (Michigan esp)… without vehicle to infrastructure and to vehicle, I don’t buy it.

I think the solution to both our topics is it’ll be “mostly self driving”, maybe that only helps a little for liability.

Goodbye bangernomics. Let's hope we do something about the dire public transport in the UK to fill the gap.

Better support for local ebike use would go a long way to filling the gap.

Things like good, secure parking and segregated paths.

It's getting better, slowly.

More like keeping cars which are intended to be leased/rented in service longer.

And make Toyota more money.

At least here, these leased vehicles are sold as second-hand, and often sold once or twice again after that. This works fairly well, and most vehicles live a fairly long life. However Toyota only really makes money on the first sale.

By taking the cars in and refurbishing them, Toyota can make money on the second and third sale.

Good thing is this might make cars be around for longer, which can have environmental benefits. However one potential downside is that older cars are usually fundamentally less safe than newer cars, so it might be detrimental to Vision Zero[1]. I doubt the refurb would drastically change safety features like crash structures, number of airbags and similar.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero

Toyota injects itself into second and third sales via helping their dealers do countrywide reselling and then offering finance products on it. I assume most manufacturers do similar. When you buy through this you get a Toyota warranty and guarantee, as well as a serviced vehicle and confidence around inspections/descriptions.

The remanufacture stuff sounds a lot more like they reckon there is an ability to increase the quality of these resales - which is highly likely. BEVs want battery replace/refurbs but most second hand vehicles have a snag list that is too much of a hassle for dealers to handle, but isn’t that expensive. They are also then given upselling opportunity (towbar / reversing cam / etc.) which would add new margin (and many buyers want).

Of course the main driver is that we are going to soon have large scale sticker shock - going from ICE to EV is £££, particularly for second/third owner. To lose market share and finance here in the next two decades is likely for any manufacturer, and market share is their main value prop for shareholders.