Imagine being the owner of a car that is a few years old and, with the cost-of-living crisis, you are trying to pare back the household budget. It wouldn’t affect the safety of your vehicle would it?
A few weeks ago, another story emerged about the evolving market for subscription services on cars. In recent years, we have all been getting used to new economic models where we can subscribe to software from Microsoft, entertainment from Netflix and coffee from Amazon, so what is different about subscriptions for your car?
Tesla offered an acceleration boost subscription a couple of years ago, and now Mercedes offering to get you off the mark quicker for just under £1000 a year, so what’s the problem.
Well, there’s nothing wrong per se with tweaking our economic models. Ultimately, it might lead to greater competition in the vehicle market with improved incentives to maintain fleet for longer by delivering additional functionality over the life of the vehicle and reducing overall waste.
But what if safety becomes an optional extra? Lifesaving systems that you can only turn on if you have kept up your monthly subscription? Surely, we would never let that happen?
BMW is offering Driving Assistant Plus for £350pa. This is a bundle of technologies that we might otherwise know as adaptive cruise control, intelligent speed assist and lane keep assist. These technologies are required as standard on new cars sold in Europe since 6th July, but to some they are an added cost despite the technology being readily available.
So whilst new car buyers in some markets will have these technologies by default, in the UK (where Government has failed to mandate their adoption in line with the general safety regulation) they might only be available on subscription. Or what if your subscription has elapsed, you could be getting into a car that is materially less safe than the day before.
I guess we need to ask ourselves whether this is how we want the market to operate? Where safety is a luxury that can be turned off, if we can’t afford to keep up our subscription.
Photo by Mike B: https://www.pexels.com/photo/white-mercedes-benz-interior-design-193999/