CADILLAC SHOWS HOW CAR SHARING COULD MEET ITS INTENDED GOALS
Imagine having access to different models, all for the same rate, writes David Booth.
The future is about mobility. Pride in car ownership is dead, the young have no affinity for anything four-wheeled and lending our cars out to strangers nillywilly will soon be the automotive equivalent of Airbnb. So say the pundits.
But the numbers don’t bear out these cries of revolution. Despite more than a decade of growth, there are only (as of 2014) 5,048 shared cars in Canada and 19,115 in the United States. Even more importantly, these “shared” cars have been ineffective at their primary goal, namely getting consumers to eschew private ownership of automobiles so that we might reduce traffic and, more importantly, minimize emissions.
One study — called Impacts of car2go on Vehicle Ownership, Modal Shift, Vehicle Miles Travelled, and Greenhouse Gas Emissions — noted that only 6,449 cars were actually taken off Canadian roads as a result of car sharing. The rest of the cars — 21,707 — that the study claimed were removed were the estimates of new car purchases suppressed. In other words, more than 75 per cent of the cars supposedly taken off the road were of the “we’d like to think” variety that conflates wishful thinking with hard reality.
But what if there were a carsharing program with a real potential to reduce fuel consumption? To lessen the environmental impact of tailpipe emissions? And perhaps best of all, enhance the driving experience while achieving both laudable goals?
On the face of it, Cadillac’s new car-sharing program would do none of the above. Indeed, BOOK by Cadillac would initially seem like little more than a born-again luxury marque pandering to the whims of fickle one-percenters in a desperate attempt to regain the credibility it so assiduously wasted for decades.
Essentially, what General Motors is testing in New York City is a program that will let the rich and fickle drive any Cadillac they want, any time they want. In exchange for $1,500 a month. Users can swap among any of Cadillac’s 10 models. The boss is in town and wants to go to the theatre? Grab a CT6 and chauffeur him or her around in style. Want to haul your 26-foot Sundancer in the luxury you deserve? Pop down to the dealer and swap into an Escalade. And if humiliating BMW M5 owners at a track day is your thing, well then, Cadillac has a CTS-V with your name on it.
That $1,500 even includes all regular scheduled maintenance. Cadillac even pays for the insurance. The only limitation the “subscription” imposes is that you’re only allowed to swap cars 18 times in a year.
I know what you’re thinking: The “sharing economy” is supposed to be about helping a burdened middle class better weather a decade of stagnant wages, not pandering to Bay Street bandits looking for new ways to be spoiled. But before dismissing Cadillac’s experiment as yet another sop to the uber rich, think about this: What if the very same one-price-buys-all program were spread to more proletarian vehicles? What if, instead of Cadillac, Chevrolet became a proponent of car-by-subscription leases?
One of the truisms that environmentalists — especially electricvehicle activists — fail to acknowledge is that consumers don’t buy cars for what they do every day, but for what they may do but once a month or even once a year. Thus a Corvette owner may only get to one track event a year, but owns a 1LZ Z06 with super-sticky Michelin Pilot Super Sport Cup 2 gumballs anyway. If Ford had to rely solely on workaday commercial users for its truck sales, the F-150 would not be the most popular vehicle in North America. Contractors may use their pickup beds daily, but the average truck owner rarely needs its huge towing capacity.
Yet, as the soaring sales of trucks and SUVs indicate, wants are so much more powerful than needs, and precious few consumers are willing to amble down to their local Hertz Rent-A-Car on those occasions when specialized needs arise, as activists so often recommend when they’re pumping EV ownership.
A car-on-command program, however, just might solve the problem. Imagine a single lease — BOOK by Cadillac doesn’t even charge a fee for swapping — that allowed you to drive a Silverado when hauling your daughter off college but scoot around town in a traffic- and parking spotfriendly Cruze when not hauling a load or towing a trailer. Taking the hockey team to an away game? Well, an extendedwheelbase Express has seating for three complete lines. And I can have a Camaro Z/28 for track days? Sign me up!
Indeed, rethinking car sharing as envisaged by Cadillac might be the paradigm shift that the automotive world is searching for so desperately. No more buying more car than you need as contingency against “what if.” And Lord knows you’re not getting Bubba from Lubbock out of his F-150 if he thinks he has to drive an electric vehicle full time, but if he knows he can climb back into his shotgun-racked dually any time he wants, maybe, just maybe, he won’t need to drive that hulking gas guzzler all the time.
Decry Cadillac’s BOOK program as a desperate attempt at luxury segment credibility all you like, but from my point of view, car-swapping leases look like that century-old promise from General Motors’ then chief executive Alfred Sloan of a “A car for every purse and purpose” brought to life, thanks to the miracle of digital logistics.
And imagine this: If just 20 per cent of next year’s Silverado purchasers took occasional ownership of a Bolt EV, that would be more than 100,000 gas-guzzling pickups off our roads (at least for part of the time) and the electric car promise could be fulfilled. That makes Zipcar and car2go look pitiful indeed.