to buy or not to buy...

We have zipcar now... for those who came in late:

zipcar is a company that rents car, A la Hertz; however the difference is that one subscribes to it like a monthly rental or similar & can ask for any car in their stable. Obviously all cars have different rents, but the convinience is amazing!

To put an analogy, you can go to downtown office in public transport & then order a BMW to reach client lunch meeting, which you can drop anywhere. You can order a family wagon on a weekend for your trip, or a 4wd for off-roading.. The idea is you buy the timeshare of the car, not the car itself. It is cheaper in the long run as you pay only rent (like EMI), and you dont have to maintain it or look for replacements when your car malfunctions!

I don't know if I would like to use this, but if I were to apply this analogy to automobile manufacturers, maybe they could come out with a system where you buy timeshare of their particular model or segment & they provide you latest upgrades for free. For this, you dont pay them the whole amount, but a continued EMI. This concept has partly taken off with second hand car market, where you can drive in your old car & drive out in a brand new one!

However, the issue is that in the current economy, we are paying out loans to banks for all our capital investments. If we pay the auto company a fixed (or variable, depending on scheme) amount every month, & get a fully functional automobile in return (the amount including services, repairs & replacement car during service), why would we ever want to BUY a car?

The whole idea of ownership is changing, we need to change too...