Is the Car Business Putting Itself Out of Business?
Here’s one way to get around the high cost (and hassle) of owning a car…
Don’t.
Bizarrely, GM – a company that makes cars – thinks it’s time to stop selling cars.
Rent them to people instead. By the hour.
It is investing in this idea, heavily.
The automaker reportedly spent $500 million to buy a controlling stake in Lyft, which is a ride-sharing company like Uber.
GM also just announced the ramping up of its own in-house ride-sharing service, an app called Maven.
It lets you call up a Chevy Spark, say, for as little as $6 per hour. A Cadillac might cost more. But it’s cheaper than buying – and much less hassle.
GM owns the car, so you don’t have to deal with property taxes or insurance or maintenance. Never have to wash it, or worry about losing your keys. They’re not your keys, after all.
GM even pays for the gas.
It’s all folded into the hourly cost of the rental.
This is the wave of the future, apparently.
It’s also the death-keen of the car business … which deserves it.
For decades, the car companies have not only not fought the government’s endless cost-adding mandates – which have made cars increasingly unaffordable and unappealing, especially to Millennials (something like a fourth of them doesn’t even have a driver’s license) they have embraced them and even anticipated them.
Rather than spend some money on advertising and PR to explain to people that the reason the average transaction price of a new car is now well over $30,000 (or about two-thirds the average family’s yearly income) and headed much higher is chiefly because of the costs of placating the federal government’s cost-no-object mandates, the car industry amens the mandates.
Not one negative word, for instance, about the 54.5 MPG fuel economy fatwa that goes into effect a mere nine years from now. Afatwa that not a single current-year car meets, not even hybrids. And which will probably up the cost of cars by another 20 percent. Either to pay for the necessary technology – or to pay the “gas guzzler” fines that will be appended to the price of any car that doesn’t average 54.5 MPG.
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