The subscription model keeps getting rediscovered by the industry every few years and it keeps running into the same structural problem. The economics only work if the operator can keep the vehicle utilized at a high enough rate to justify the all-in cost of insurance, maintenance, and depreciation inside the subscription price. At meaningful scale that requires fleet management infrastructure most dealers do not have and most OEMs do not want to fund. BMW, Volvo, and Cadillac all launched and quietly unwound subscription programs within a few years of each other for exactly this reason. The customer appetite the OP describes is real, particularly among younger urban buyers. The business model that serves that appetite profitably at volume has not been figured out yet. The market research reports project the market growing because demand exists. They do not address whether anyone can deliver it and make money.

The subscription framing sounds cleaner than the reality. Every OEM that has tried to build a real subscription program at scale has eventually run into two walls. The first is residual value risk. You are essentially writing a lease without the actuarial discipline that captive finance arms have spent decades developing, and the vehicle return volatility is brutal. The second wall is the dealer network, which rightfully asks what role it plays in a model where the consumer relationship migrates entirely to a factory-controlled app. The market research consistently shows people say they want subscriptions and then choose traditional ownership when the actual numbers are in front of them. The total monthly cost of a true all-in subscription is almost always higher than a lease. That gap is hard to close without someone taking a loss somewhere.