Canoo plans to offer electric vehicles by subscription(latimes.com)

1 pointsby prostoalex7 anni fa1 comments

Canoo plans to offer electric vehicles by subscription

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-09-26/california-startup-plans-to-offer-electric-vehicles-by-subscription

1 comments

a0st7 anni fa

I am not sure how consumers would react to a service like this. The real question to me is how much people value a brand. If Porsche and Cadillac weren't successful in this, why would Canoo be? Because they have an electric van? What if Tesla tried the same thing? I can't help but feel that without a major brand behind it any project like this is doomed to fail.

There is also something to be said with the fragmentation of costs with car ownership and the effect it has on the mind. It doesn't seem so bad when your insurance and gas are divided into 2 bills, but when you get the same cost in one bill it seems worse. Not sure if that's just me though.

If I had more time I would look into car ownership studies. It would not be good if human ego was opposed to your business model. A service as an inferior good (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferior_good) could mean that your company would be incentivised to lower economic prosperity.

tl;dr - Canoo has no big brand behind it. Is cost bundling or fragmentation better? Do people want to own cars? If people who can't afford cars are the only ones using Canoo are they incentivized to prevent them from affording cars in the future?