on the fence about an EV? Subscribe to one
Episode 01
On today’s episode, you’ll hear from John Possumato, live at Used Car Week in beautiful San Diego, California where we talked about all things EV subscriptions.
John is the CEO of DriveItAway, a vehicle subscription platform that’s revolutionizing the way you drive. Whether you’re looking to rent, buy, or simply test out a an EV, DriveItAway puts you in the driver’s seat.
In this episode, we discuss John’s approach to car ownership, subscription-based models, obstacles to wider EV adoption and much more!
Episode Highlights
(0:00) – Introduction
(0:37) – Beginning of the interview with guest John Possumato
(1:59) – EV subscriptions for consumers, why are they so good?
(3:01) – Subscriptions as an “extended test drive”
(4:41) – The consumer POV, obstacles to adoption
(5:41) – What is the big difference between subscriptions and renting?
(6:41) – Episode wrap-up
Transcript
Elena: I’m here with John Possumato, Founder and CEO of DriveItAway and we are at Used Car Week in San Diego, Used Car Week 2022. John, how you feeling today?
John: Fantastic. How can you not feel fantastic in San Diego? Temperatures at 70 degrees and sunny, way different than where I came from.
Elena: Yes, agreed. Much nicer, I like the SoCal feel here. So today I’m with John and we’re gonna be talking about his company DriveItAway, but more specifically, EV subscriptions. And this concept is really intriguing to me and John, you are the guru on on subscription based models. And we’re going to talk about why this is such a win for consumers who are maybe a little bit on the fence with electrification or a little bit on the fence with electric vehicles. So we’re going to talk about how that’s a win for consumers. But then also…spoiler alert. We’re going to talk about why it’s a win for OEMs but then also win for dealerships. So triple win across the board, but we’re not going to have it all in one episode. It’s going to be split up into three different episodes because we care about you.
John: All right, and we know you can’t take me in one fell swoop, you gotta split it up.
Elena: You gotta take little John Possumato breaks. You can’t do it all in one sitting. All right. We’re gonna get into the first topic is EV subscriptions for consumers. Why is this such a good thing? John, why is this like just an amazing idea for someone like I said, who was on the fence with electric vehicles?
John: Well, let’s broaden the scope a little bit, right. We’re talking subscriptions and subscriptions here as maybe the stepping stone to ownership. Everybody knows subscriptions, your phone is a subscription, entertainment is on a subscription, meals are on a subscription. Almost everything’s on a subscription now. Why? Because it’s easy. It protects against obsolescence, and it gives you the choice without a long term financial commitment. Now the fit with EVs right, is very dramatic there, because most people have never driven an EV before, right? In fact, 98% of the people that own EVs today, are Luxury and Premium Luxury vehicles, and they own two other vehicles, so that isn’t much of a risk, but that also doesn’t hit that mainstream population, right? You know, if anyone’s going to get back the trillions of dollars in investment in EVs, it’s got to reach below just like you know, luxury affluent folks, and get down to you and me.
Elena: Yeah, and I also really love the phrase that you’ve coined here. If you are wanting “an extended test drive,” a subscription is probably something you should be considering.
John: Well, exactly. The two biggest impediments to mainstream adoption of EVs is price. They’re 20%, higher, right? And it’s suitability or range anxiety or whatever you want to call it. You never had this propulsion before. People are saying can you plug in, you can plug in at home and at work and never skip a beat, but can you really, right? I’m afraid a rental of an EV just doesn’t cut it, it’s not in real world conditions. But with a subscription, you can take a month, two months, three months, and the beauty of it is if you choose to buy it, the money that you pay in, can go towards ownership. Very, very different than making an upfront long term financial commitment day one.
Elena: And also too, I’m thinking of myself as the consumer, just selfishly here. And I just recently started driving an EV, and going to be driving this EV for a while. I’m also thinking about all of of the immediate problems that it’s it’s solving for me, I mean, number one I’m not having to go to get gas but then it’s also too a little bit more than that. It’s like if I am charging overnight, I always feel like then I have what I need to get to where I need to go. I’m not I’m not driving really far distances. I’m going basically like 20 mile radius around where we live, to go do what I need to do.
John: Well, absolutely it’s perception versus reality, right? The reality is you spend most of your time at home or at work if either one of those places has a charging system. Now everyone, everyone has electricity in their house right even the slow right out of the wall socket, over an eight hour period usually gives you about a third of a charge on most EVs today but you put a level two charger in right now you’ve got plenty of charge for the day. That’s the reality, but the perception is especially if you’ve never driven an EV before, you don’t know. Is this really going to work? Am I really gonna be able to charge at home? Is this going to be more of an inconvenience, right? Most people don’t drive more than 25 miles round trip a day. Right? But it’s a big difference between saying it will work and actually driving it. And with an EV subscription to ownership, you don’t give up anything by a pay as you go model. But you do get the real world experience to see if this works. If it doesn’t, you take it back. If it does, now you may consider a purchase.
Elena: And just to tack on to what you just said about considering a purchase. Talk to me about why this is so different than just renting an EV from Hertz, say for example? So what are the advantages of doing a subscription with an EV with an option to purchase?
John: Well, a few things here. Usually most subscriptions are turnkey, so you’ve got service and maintenance and insurance all included. And it really is a rental per se but it’s meant to be long term – most of the of the rental companies that are offering EVs it really will get prohibitively expensive if you do it by the month right by the day by the week maybe and in this sense, you really want to try it before you buy it right? I mean, this is real world you’re not losing anything by it. You can keep it for months and never have to turn it in. And of course, it’s in your environment it’s an infinite test drive right now.
Elena: Absolutely. We could keep talking about this, but the old clock on the wall says about 40 minutes left, now. Just kidding. We’ll be back really quickly with….
John: She’s shutting me up folks is what she’s really doing in a polite way : )