About the subscription service

You can, of course, buy or lease the XC40 the oldfashioned way; it starts at $34,195 and lease deals listed on Volvo’s website in mid-June began at $325 a month.

However, the subscription service is meant to wipe away the annoyances and responsibility of buying and maintaining a car (think: haggling over the price with a salesman and shopping for insurance).

Overall, the subscription process is straightforward: Prospective customers sign up online, select their vehicle and put down a refundable $500 deposit.

From there, Volvo and insurance partner Liberty Mutual review the customer’s application, and if it all pencils out, they reach out to make delivery plans at a dealership.

company. However, he said that 92 percent of US subscribers are new to the brand and business has been brisk.

“We have completed a year’s worth of projected subscriptions in three months,” he said.

But the competition is growing. Although subscription programs from Cadillac, Porsche, BMW, and others are not yet offered nationally, their luxury services allow customers to swap in and out of different vehicles. Those programs are more expensive, starting at $1,500 a month.

Volvo, instead, is charging you a fee for your car for two years.

Analysts are waiting to see how customers respond to the program, which will expand this fall to include the new S60 sedan, whose monthly subscription fee will start at $775.

Mike Ramsey, a transportation and mobility analyst at Gartner Inc., said that if Volvo’s service works well, it could entice many more consumers.

“I suspect it will do pretty well for them if they can make it work,” he said. “But can they make it work as advertised? They are basically doing a whole cadre of things they weren’t doing before.”

As someone who subscribes to several services, among them ones that deliver paper towels, music, movies, and coffee to my home, I could see doing the same for my car.

But only for the right one.