EV Subscription Firm Autonomy Debuts in California, Plans for 15 Markets

NextCar Holding Company, the FinTech and InsurTech vehicle subscription platform, is now called Autonomy, and will be an electric vehicle and zero emissions vehicle subscription program.

The service will offer the Tesla Model 3 in California. It plans to expand to other U.S. markets “shortly.”

It has three channels where a customer can reserve their vehicle within 10 minutes and manage their subscriptions.

The company also has vehicle delivery and dealership pickup features.

The subscription program will come with a month-to-month contract after the minimum three-month term.

For new EV manufacturers along with legacy ones, this will be a “new distribution channel” and offer a flexible way to drive and test out an EV.

CEO Scott Painter says electric vehicles have “reached a tipping point.”

“Financial responsibility and the avoidance of debt is also at an inflection point and subscriptions have become a pervasive, sustainable business model and a cornerstone of modern digital life,” he adds, per the report.

PYMNTS wrote that managing electric vehicles will come with new needs, with businesses learning of the challenges of things like range anxiety, reimbursing employees who charge company vehicles at home, measuring sustainability and reporting on key performance indicators, which differ from fuel-powered vehicles.

Read more: Managing Electric Vehicles in Commercial Fleets Requires New Payments, Reimbursements and Insights

Keagan Russo, president of Fuelman and North America Local Fleet at FLEETCOR, said the company was “uncovering a lot of this complexity as we go along, and it just gets deeper and deeper.” Fuelman has given fuel cards to businesses since 1985 and has rolled out a new EV solution this month.

The EV solution can be a physical or virtual card, and can be added to a customer’s fleet card that they already have.

In Russo’s estimation, range anxiety, meaning that fleet managers can make sure that drivers can get where they need to go without being stranded and can pay for charging, is important.

And reimbursing challenges could be solved by a partnership with connected-car data and analytics company Motorq, the report says.