The Financial Crisis of the last decade has helped the rise of the “Subscription Economy” or “Usership Economy”. This means that people now prefer to pay for using a good or a service instead of buying it and immobilizing capital – like companies that prefer OPEX to CAPEX. This is even more so in the automotive industry, where the investment required to purchase a car is significant, especially for middle – and lower – income buyers.
The growth of fuel, taxes and insurance costs has further favored the spread of short-term rental services, i.e. pay-per-use cars, and long term rental services, mainly offered by car manufacturers.
Near future forecasts show that the number of car owners will decrease rapidly to a small percentage of all drivers in the next decade.
This trend has shifted responsibility and costs of maintenance to car rentals and insurance companies. These companies are thus accountable for the most expensive events in a car’s life, like road accidents, which imply repairment, insurance reimbursement and out of service costs.
Technology comes to support these players in the management and the maintenance of increasingly more sophisticated vehicles. In the last ten years, technology applied to automotive has radically changed the industry, transforming cars into connected systems, able to provide in real time position, speed, maintenance status, mechanical parameters, and to receive information and alerts while assisting drivers in risky situations.
