According to Electrek, Sony and Honda plan to lease or provide subscriptions to the upcoming Afeela EV. That said, they don’t plan to offer the usual two- or three-year leases people are used to.
Source: Sony And Honda To Lease The Afeela EV Over 5 to 10-Year Terms
In the future, ownership will be discouraged or perhaps not possible. Everything you have – car, home, furniture, cable modem – will be rented.
Perhaps this is how businesses address the demographics problem of declining numbers of people. Lacking a constantly enlarging group of new buyers, they no longer sell – but rent everything to create ongoing revenue streams.
This could factor into product reliability – once upon a time, cars were a reliability mess. My first car had to have the valves adjusted every 12,000 miles, which meant taking apart part of the engine annually. This is no longer required on the cars I “own”. In fact, I’ve read that I should expect one of my cars, a Honda Fit, to probably last 150,000 to 200,000 miles. Now at 60,000, the only maintenance required has been new tires, oil changes and new wiper blades.
Lacking service revenue, car sellers may indeed prefer to go to the subscription/rental model. BMW has done that for various features that are already built into the car but to use them you have to pay a monthly fee to BMW.
