You think you own your electric car? Sorry, but we have some bad news for you.
The electric vehicle revolution is bringing numerous technological innovations that are fundamentally changing our relationship with automobiles. While autonomous driving gets most of the spotlight, it’s not the only game-changing development. Route planners, charging station apps, and remote vehicle control systems are all transforming how we interact with our cars.
But there’s a deeper shift happening quietly that’s completely reshuffling the deck – the gradual erosion of what it means to truly own your vehicle. This evolution is happening gradually, through small incremental changes that affect all aspects of car ownership.
These changes are made possible by technology, sometimes driven by financial considerations, but also influenced by politics, environmental concerns, safety standards, and even moral questions.
Software updates whether you want them or not
It’s now becoming standard practice to update your electric vehicle just like your smartphone. Tesla pioneered this trend years ago, regularly pushing updates that add new services, features, and sometimes even extra power to their vehicles (sorry, their customers’ vehicles – a telling slip).
Other manufacturers are following suit with varying degrees of success, as this operation can be complex for cars not designed from the ground up with this capability. But the trend is clear, and there’s no going back.
The problem is that with connected devices, companies can remove features just as easily as they add them. While updates typically bring additional functionality, they can also mean regression or degradation of existing features. Take Tesla’s decision to reduce the range of certain Model S versions to preserve battery longevity – without notifying customers. In 2021, Tesla disabled integrated radars in their vehicles, rendering them inoperative for the Autopilot autonomous driving function, claiming cameras alone could handle the job more effectively. This was later followed by what some considered a regression, leaving owners concerned enough to consider avoiding future updates.
Subscription-based features
Another trend accelerating our “dispossession” is the ability to install and activate additional options after purchase. It’s clever and perhaps suitable for certain uses (like renting a climate control option only during summer months). But it’s not cheap, and it reinforces the feeling that we’re driving a car that isn’t fully ours, making us dependent on the manufacturer’s willingness to provide services.
Take the Function on Demand (FoD) available on the Porsche Taycan, which allows you to add features like the Porsche Intelligent Range Manager or InnoDrive (a type of autopilot) for $10-20 per month. Stop paying, and the feature disappears. So far, this seems like a deliberate choice, but what happens in case of a dispute over a function or payment? Subscribers will likely realize they don’t own their entire car.
Currently, this option isn’t widespread, but we can imagine it gradually extending to more features, eventually allowing for a truly customizable car that evolves – or devolves – over time based on your needs, mood… and budget.
Mandatory repairs by approved service centers
If a Tesla owner is unfortunate enough to have a fender bender, troubles may just be beginning. Beyond potential parts shortages causing significant wait times, they must also deal with the constraint of having repairs done by a Tesla-certified body shop. This means not really being able to choose your repair shop and being blocked from getting repairs from non-approved providers.
How is this possible? Simply because modern cars are equipped with multiple sensors that only approved repair shops can access and deactivate when necessary. As a result, even a simple bumper repair might be extremely expensive and only feasible at a manufacturer-endorsed body shop, since they must pay for access to Tesla’s advanced diagnostic systems. Yet another sign giving that unpleasant impression that you don’t “own” your car – the manufacturer dictates the choices.
Self-driving or shared vehicles
Technological evolution, especially in autonomous driving, is already making it possible to do without a driver in certain situations, but also without an owner. Ridesharing services will multiply, and new consumers who couldn’t care less about owning a car will travel in vehicles with or without drivers, rented occasionally according to their needs.
For driverless cars, Tesla was supposed to lead the way by allowing Model 3 owners with the most advanced version of Autopilot to make their vehicles available for autonomous rental. According to Elon Musk, this incredible possibility was supposed to arrive by the end of 2020. We’re still waiting, and only the naive and those unfamiliar with “Elon time” believed it, obviously.
But if this ever happens, it will be another cut into the concept of car ownership. And let’s not forget that this is made possible by electric propulsion.
Battery leasing
While Renault‘s experience with the Zoe didn’t last, some manufacturers still offer – or impose – battery leasing along with the sale of their models. This is the case with Vietnamese manufacturer VinFast, which relies on this pricing structure to display lower purchase prices, with the trade-off of leasing the battery, which they claim provides peace of mind and longevity, for a monthly fee between $130-165. It’s another way of not being the complete owner of your car.
Long-term leasing
Finally, more traditionally in the financial chapter, you may have noticed that manufacturers are increasingly trying to “hide” the selling price of their vehicles in favor of increasingly attractive – and tempting – long-term leasing offers. A way to sweeten the pill by displaying appealing monthly payments, as the structure of long-term lease pricing can indeed seem attractive at first glance and provide access to models that would be difficult to finance through other means.
That said, there is one small constraint forcing manufacturers to display prices with their electric ranges: the eco-bonus, since to know if a model is eligible, you need to know its sale price. In this context, it’s difficult to dispense with this display in a marketing campaign, as it constitutes a key element of the negotiation. That being said, long-term leasing is gaining momentum, which unequivocally guarantees that you will never be the owner of your car.
Are manufacturers becoming the sole masters? As we can see, the car – especially electric – is less and less a finished product, and having one in your garage no longer means we are totally and fully its owner. A new paradigm that doesn’t just concern automobiles, by the way.
(Better not show this article to your representative – it might give them ideas. If not today, perhaps in fifteen years.)
