Leasing a car was around long before SAAS was a 'thing'.
so.. not leasing.
Remember, this is the industry which inspired the term "built-in obsolescence". It is also the industry which found it profitable to buy regional transit companies, and run them to the ground to encourage people to buy new cars instead. There is a certain level of distrust backed by history here.
i believe it is a matter of restructuring both risks and incentives to make the downstream match the upstream, as you say.. for example, with the saas approach, for say 5k a year, your 5k profit over 5 years per user (add 5k for R&D and 5k for a facelift) turns into 20k profit over 10 years.. and the user gets a guaranteed service - the user and manuf. interests align..
The bigger issue I think, in terms of turning around the current approach, is actually a cultural one in which a car is a personal 'fetish' object rather than the cumulative efforts of a supply chain bundled into a personal transport service.
What you're suggesting here is a mandatory car disposal/recycling fee that must be paid for by the car manufacturer along with an additional parts tax/fee to incentivize improving longevity of the original parts.
1.major cost of delivering a big product with little or no involvement / feedback from customer. 2.customer gets to pay for only the useful life of the service
That is.. saas is a method for sharing risk and aligning usage goals. i am quite definitely not talking about any mandatory structure.
Any incentives due to this 'new' pricing model are incidental.
> I was trying to suggest if the car manufacturing business had a vested (client based) interest in the full lifetime of the car they may design for longevity and upgradeability rather than simply sales and parts.
Structure it how you will, manufacturer's need a financial incentive before optimizing for longer rather than shorter lifetimes. They sell more if cars have shorter lifetimes - 'planned obsolescence' as noted by btilly.
Charging companies directly and creating the financial incentives is one way of causing businesses to have a vested interest in the long-term viability of a product. It may not be what you intended when you wrote it, but a mandatory fee structure is absolutely one way to aligning usage goals.
If there's a pragmatic way to incentivize increasing car and parts duration that doesn't involve some mandatory fee structure and somehow mimics SAAS, for cars, I haven't come up with it.
Culturally, the fetishization of cars is simply a larger symptom of excessive consumerism which isn't something likely to change any time soon (nor will it be easy to change).
Thanks for the response - it's clear we have a difference of opinion on the implications of SAAS, among other things, though I think we can both agree that Tesla shaking up the industry is a good thing. :)
i just happen to think this is the reason for its success
also for a while i used, and loved, zipcar in london and i guess i saw the possibilities..