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Drive to subscribe: Irish firm hopes to get motorists to rent EVs by the month

Claiming to be an Irish first, DCEV’s subscription service lets you swap your EV car after 30 days

A Volkswagen ID.3. Once selected online, the DCEV customer’s EV of choice will be delivered to their door

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Neil Briscoe
Thu Mar 14 2024 - 05:45

DCEV, the Dublin-based electric car and solar energy provider, has launched what it describes as the first subscription-based electric vehicle (EV) offer in Ireland, but will Irish buyers be moved by such an offer?

The company, founded in 2019 by Paul Clifford and Adrian Slattery, has long been an EV pioneer in the Irish market. It was the first company to register cars such as the Tesla Model 3, Tesla Model Y, Polestar 2, Fiat 500e, Fiat 500e cabrio, Ford Mustang Mach E and Genesis GV60 on Irish plates over the past four years.

More recently it has expanded into providing charging and solar energy solutions too.

The subscription service offers Irish electric car buyers, in theory, the flexibility of a rolling 30-day contract, which allows customers to choose from a fleet of 10 all-electric cars.

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Subscription packages include such costs as insurance, breakdown cover, public charging, servicing and maintenance, and start from €395 per month for a tiny Citroen Ami, rising to €750 for a Fiat 500e, €975 per month for a Cupra Born or MG 4, €695 for a BMW i3, €795 for a Tesla Model S 85, €750 for a Mini Cooper SE, €895 for a GWM Ora 03 (neé Funky Cat), €975 for a VW ID.4 Business or Hyundai Ioniq 5, €1,095 per month for a Tesla Model 3, €1,285 for a Polestar 2, €1,475 for a Tesla Model X or Model 3 Performance, €1,495 for a Tesla Model Y, €1,775 for a Tesla Model S Long Range or €3,000 for a BMW iX.

Once selected online, the customer’s EV of choice will be delivered to their door. After 30 days they can swap it for a different car from the list or cancel the plan entirely.

Such subscription services have been launched before, by the likes of Volvo, Peugeot, Porsche and others, but take-up by the car-buying public has been sporadic at best.

So how will DCEV convince Irish motorists to go down the monthly subscription route?

“Subscription is becoming the big thing in America, in Europe, especially in Finland as it turns out,” says Adrian Slattery. “It’s basically Netflix – but the reason it’s falling into place now for electric cars is because the depreciation on electric cars is so steep. So up till now, PCP finance purchasing has been the best way to get an EV, because you know you have a bottom line. Hire purchase is much more risky, but with our subscription you could have a Kia EV6 one month and then you could have an MG 4 the next, depending on what suits you best.”

Paul Clifford chimes in to say: “With a PCP, you have to put down a big deposit. With us, you don’t and we also cover maintenance, tax and insurance.”

Ah yes, insurance. Traditionally in Ireland, insurance has been the big blocker to such subscription schemes succeeding, as Irish insurers tend to charge big prices, driving up a subscription fee to the point where it becomes uneconomic.

DCEV says it has cracked this conundrum, but Slattery admits it’s difficult ground to cover: “If we were to go to an insurer and say we were putting up a fleet of 200 or even 300 cars, all at once, then there would be no issue. But if you’re starting smaller than that, and saying you want to expand to 200 or 300 cars, then they just don’t want to buy into it. So yeah, insurance was an interesting part of it.”

Part of DCEV’s plan is to mostly used second-hand and nearly new cars for the moment, in order to protect itself, and its subscribers in the long run, against the sorts of disastrous depreciation that we’ve seen in the electric car world of late

Of course, the whole point of a subscription is that you – the customer – don’t have to think about the interesting stuff. You just want a car on your driveway.

“Buying an EV right now is very complicated,” Clifford says. “For instance, it’s not just battery size, it’s is the car two-wheel drive or four-wheel drive? What kind of technology does it have? Even smaller questions like does it have heated seats? We wanted to compress that complication and make it easier for people, and it’s almost a try-before-you-buy service in some ways.

“It’s also good for company operators, for instance if they have a new employee on a six-month probation, they can subscribe to a car for that employee for the six months, rather than buying something on a three-year finance package. So we do everything digitally, we keep the paperwork to a minimum, and it’s about putting people and companies in the position where they’re not afraid to make a mistake, they’re not worried that they’re getting into something for three years that might not be right for them.

“We’ve seen the subscription economy boom across various sectors, and there’s no reason why car usage should be any different. Our service embodies convenience and commitment – to our customers and to the planet,” he says.

DCEV will also issue each subscriber with a charging card that will work with almost all of the big public charging points, further streamlining the EV ownership experience. Just don’t go assuming that you’re going to get a brand-new car. Part of DCEV’s plan is to mostly used second-hand and nearly new cars for the moment, in order to protect itself, and its subscribers in the long run, against the sorts of disastrous depreciation that we’ve seen in the electric car world of late.

Both Slattery and Clifford have two decades’ worth of experience of working in the motor trade, so they hope that their expertise and contacts books will insulate them from any issues of moving older cars on once they’ve come to the end of their subscription life. Their targets are aggressive – they’re looking at putting 700 cars on the road within three to five years as well as expanding into Northern Ireland’s market, which they say has been effectively ignored by the bigger UK subscription services.

Slattery says they intend to be led, in the early days, by what the subscribers are asking for, and to look to expand the fleet based on what cars people want. Eventually, the subscriptions may become flexible enough that you could have a small, efficient EV for your weekly commute, but be able to temporarily upgrade to a bigger, comfier, roomier, longer-range model for weekend trips and holidays.

DCEV’s ambition is to secure 5 per cent of the EV market in Ireland in the short term, and 15 per cent in the next five years, targeting “tech-savvy professionals aged between 40 and 55″.

To put that in perspective, currently Volkswagen holds 18.5 per cent of the Irish market for new electric cars, while Tesla has 14.3 per cent and Hyundai has 10.2 per cent.

A recent study from McKinsey estimates that subscriptions will make up 20 per cent of the car financing market across Europe by 2025. Time will tell.

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