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Comment by ry4nolson | Hacker News Reader

If GP is like me, it's related to buying used higher end and/or "luxury" brand vehicles. In my experience, my previous 2 vehicles were 2 and 3 years old respectively and cost roughly ~60% of sticker price.

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Yep, this is what I've experienced last two times around looking at Acuras, Lexus, etc. Maybe it's different with trucks, SUVs, and non-luxury brands, but the new cost of a mid-tier Acura is at least 50% more than one with 20K miles off a 2-3 year lease. This was always the sweet spot for these cars as they were in perfect shape and still had pretty decent "certified warranties".

I'm due for an upgrade, but if my choice is between a full price $40K new sedan or a 3 year old one for $38K (instead of the $26K I'd expect to pay a few years ago), then I'm more than content to just keep my ten year old Acura, knowing I'll need to spend $500/yr on repairs as it starts showing its age.

I imagine this is a big motivator for car companies to start moving towards a CaaS model

Volvo is trying this! They call it a car subscription. Doesn't seem like it has had a huge impact, though: https://www.volvocars.com/us/care-by-volvo/

Looks exactly like a lease except they cover a few more things like tires? And even then, it says they cover cases of "excessive wear" which implies something wrong with the vehicle which the warranty should cover in either case.

Is there any real difference besides the fact that you can order it online and that it appears much more expensive?

To answer my own question, looks like they include the insurance and they do pay to replace the tires if needed and you can cancel after 5 months, I guess.

I thought it also includes insurance, and you could also swap cars at any point? So pretty similar but a little more than a lease.

That's what a lease is.

I'm thinking more along the lines of how car companies can recapture the money that the second owner is saving by buying a used vehicle.

For example instead of selling a car, selling a license to use the car to the first owner and then deactivating features or throttling performance if/when they resell the car.

"You'll own nothing, and you'll be happy"

"...and you'll ignore all the warnings (like ^ this comment) until it's too late."

If the car is known to have no resale value, it will command lower price when new, so car companies can hardly do much here.

GM currently tracks 100+ variables of your car over the life of usage (thanks on star!) and then calculates a resale price and offers to buy it back or gives you a certain deal when trading in.

Ford does something similar but is easily defeated by changing the stereo. The APIM tracks your driving habits locations and ecu vars which is captured and uploaded to Ford when you take the car in for service (don’t know how this works in their newer 2019+ cars since they are also connected 24/7 like GM)

My local dealer (pre-covid) had a deal where basically you paid $1000+ a month, and got your choice of which luxury vehicle you wanted. Swap em in and out like old school Netflix. No idea how successful it was, but I don't hear anything about it anymore.

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