Porsche's New Monthly Subscription Service Is Like A Sports Car Spotify
These days, consumer spend seems to be all about monthly subscriptions. You don’t buy albums, you have a Spotify subscription. You could buy a movie on DVD or a Blu-Ray, or you could just sign up to Netflix. And who buys a phone outright any more, other than Jason Bourne types who want a burner?
The same thing is happening to cars - we’re not quite there yet, but car sharing schemes that do away with conventional ownership completely are slowly starting to emerge. They’re mostly based around dull city biffabouts and small EVs, but the latest one is a little different. Because it’s being launched by Porsche.
Dubbed Porsche Passport, it gives users on-demand access to a whole host of the company’s vehicles, allowing for “frequent changes” - all without a mileage cap. Following a one-off $500 activation fee, it’s $2000 a month for the ‘Launch’ tier, and $3000 for ‘Accelerate’. Select the Porsche you’re after on an app, and you can have it delivered to a location of your choosing.
Launch has eight vehicles to choose from including the 718 Boxster and Cayman S, the Macan S and Cayenne. Accelerate give users the choice of 22 vehicles, including all those in Launch plus cars like the 911 Carrera S, Panamera 4S and Macan GTS.
The catch? Currently it’s debuting only in Atlanta, Georgia. But with the concept of car ownership expected to fundamentally change in the coming years, it’ll almost certainly be rolled out elsewhere.
“Our Strategy 2025 vision is to be the most aspirational brand in a new era of mobility and consumer expectations,” said Klaus Zellmer, boss of Porsche North America, adding, “Catering to customers’ desire to experience our sports cars in new ways is a part of our core strategy.” In other words, watch this space…
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
If there’s no ‘crash cap’ as well, Richard Hammond is going to be really excited and moving to Atlanta soon.
There are so many toughts going thru my head I could write a 50 page essey, but all of it comes instantly and leaves me speachless. Not sure what to say about this idea.
Kinda redundant that, innit
Wow this is awesome and the prices are surprisingly cheap considering the cost of these cars!
And you can drive them all you want
2k a month for a car that wont be yours is cheap ? If you save that money in 5years you’d be able to buy a brand new 911
Idk but imo, this seems like a recipe for disaster and perfectly good cars to be ruined. There are so many people (noobs) who think a sports car will instantly turn them into Ken Block and will try stupid things. Ex: Mustangs, they crash as they define the term “affordable horsepower” hence morons go and try to do nonsensical things… My 2 cents…
$2000-$3000 a month should count out a lot of ‘noobs’ though, I should think. And as with conventional supercar hire agreements, there’ll surely be an insurance excess/other penalties that’ll put users off treating the cars like regular rentals…
Doesnt Cadillac already have something like this?
So GM can charge Uber drivers just over $1000 a month for a Bolt or I can get whatever Porsche for $2000. Sounds like a steal
I still buy albums, and I buy a phone, so what? It’s kind of a retro thing to do nowadays. With that logic, who would buy manual car if you can have almost every car in automatic form? I love things the old school way
Worth it
This doesn’t seem very new though. I swear Cadillac had something like this as well?
If you put away 2000-3000 a month for 2 years you could easily afford a Porsche lol