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On April 24 the Ford Motor Company (Stock Info:[stock_quote symbol = "F"]) announced that it will be ending production of all its existing cars (so not including its trucks, SUVs, or crossovers) in North America with the exception of the Mustang by 2020. Armchair strategists and analysts can talk all day about whether this is the right move for Ford and how other automakers will react (and many have), but we'll use this opportunity to focus on whether it makes sense to consider leasing a vehicle that won't have a new version for sale by the time your lease expires.
First Things First: Follow the Money
It's important to consider the most basic reason why Ford made this decision to do away with making and selling sedans in the North American market - they weren't generating sufficient profit on these vehicles. This...
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Thank you to all the readers that have used Lease Wizard as a resource in 2017, and especially to all that provided feedback through email and social media, or submitted questions - hopefully the answers were helpful.
Looking ahead to 2018 we have a few specific goals for expanding and enhancing Lease Wizard:
A state-by-state guide with information to consider specific to leasing (or buying, or even selling/trading-in) a vehicle in each state. Things like any special rules on sales tax, government fees you can expect to be charged, and anything important to know about customary dealer or lender/lessor fees that they can impose and any caps on them.
Creating a note-taking tool so you can bring Lease Wizard into the dealership with you on your phone - and more specifically have the key items that you want to ask about...
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Through this month we looked at how four areas of innovation are dramatically changing automobiles: how they move, how they’re accessed, and how our experience in them is changing. Specifically we looked at Vehicle Connectivity, Mobility Solutions, Fleet Electrification, and Autonomous vehicles. All of these innovations are at least partially rolled out, but at the same time it is clear that there is an expectation of dramatic change in the next 5-10 years, where many of the items that are a novelty today will become at least a substantial minority, and in some cases potentially the dominant technology in place.
I had the opportunity earlier this week to attend an excellent conference called AutoMobility LA – it occurs during the 4 days preceding the annual Los Angeles Auto Show. The conference organizers did a great job of assembling excellent speakers and...
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Today we look at the last of the four major automotive innovations reviewed in this series: autonomous vehicles, also known as self-driving cars. This was placed at the end of the series because it is also the innovation that will be the latest in coming, and especially in becoming dominant, if it does. As a reminder, the other three innovations we have covered are Vehicle Connectivity, Mobility Solutions, and Fleet Electrification.
Autonomous Vehicles Overview
Almost every vehicle on the road today has some autonomous features - the first one available was cruise control - but with features like parking assistance, lane departure warnings, more advanced cruise control, and collision avoidance features new vehicles are more autonomous than ever. Beyond that there are several companies, including Waymo, part of Alphabet (nee Google), that are developing and testing self-driving vehicles. As we get closer...
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In the earlier parts of this series we covered innovations in automotive that don't impact vehicle manufacturing directly, but now we switch gears to one of the largest changes to automotive design in one hundred years: phasing out the internal combustion engine in favor of electric power, and not just doing it in one model or for one make; but electrification of the entire fleet.
What is Fleet Electrification?
Fleet electrification refers to the move industry-wide (manufacturer by manufacturer) away from using internal combustion engines that require gasoline or diesel fuel towards designing and building vehicles that use only batteries or fuel cells, potentially with an interim step where the vehicle lineup consists of all hybrids and electric-only vehicles. Obviously, a single model having an electric propulsion system (either all electric or hybrid) isn't new: the first Toyota Prius was introduced 20...
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We started this series on automotive innovation with “The More Things Change…” and provided an overview on four major innovations coming in automotive – both in how they work and how they are used. In the last article we discussed vehicle connectivity, and later we'll discuss fleet electrification and autonomous vehicles, but today the focus is on mobility solutions, also sometimes referred to as car sharing.
What Are Mobility Solutions?
There are a number of start-ups (or new organizations/divisions within very large existing companies) that are focused on the providing "mobility" - meaning solving the specific need of getting people around instead of the existing solution of selling someone a car (and then having them pay for it through a loan, lease, or cash they saved up). Soon we'll have a feature article on some of the new mobility solutions, since many...
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In the initial article of this series "The More Things Change..." we set the stage for discussing the four major innovations in automotive - either manufacturing, usage, or both - that are in development now and have been rolled out only in the early stages or to a small amount of the overall market. While each of the four innovations: Connected Cars, All-Electric Cars, Car Sharing, and Self-Driving Cars, are generally independent of each other, vehicle connectivity is most important to achieving the other three innovations sooner, and is also the further along now, but there's still much more to come.
First and foremost, the "Internet of Things" (IoT) is the idea that every thing would be connected to the internet, and the common, and mundane, example then provided is that even your toaster will be connected to the internet (even...
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The "Internet Revolution" is now about 20 years in the making, dating back to the 1990's and overcoming a major hiccup in the dot-com crash in 2000. However, it picked up again as people recognized that the answer to everything humankind had accomplished until then wasn't equally suited to a stand-alone digital process. Similarly, while more and more businesses are striking a better balance of how connected tools can facilitate, not replace, an existing process, it's important to recognize that the internet changes almost everything. Since the second largest line item in many family's budget (after housing) is the money spent on vehicles, it's important to keep in mind what is (and what isn't) changing, since any lease agreement includes some bit of future forecasting. While the lessor needs to do most of this forecasting in order to set the...
