Vehicle subscription services provider NextCar rebrands as Autonomy, launches with Tesla

For drivers who dream of cruising around in a Tesla but can't afford one — or just have commitment issues — there's a new option.

Entrepreneur Scott Painter, best known for founding auto pricing company TrueCar Inc., has launched a Tesla subscription service giving customers a Model 3 sedan for a flat monthly fee. The venture, called Autonomy, has acquired about 100 of the vehicles from Tesla so far.

"We own the car, you're driving it. It's a simple contract, and you can do all of this with a credit card," Painter said Thursday in an interview. "It's not a traditional lease or car loan."

The new company, based in Santa Monica, Calif., aims to capitalize on rising consumer demand for electric vehicles, particularly among those who want to experience them before committing to a purchase. Autonomy is starting in its home state, with plans to expand to other states and eventually other EV brands.

Autonomy's launch is a rebranding of a venture Painter started in 2020, called NextCar, which was originally intended as a software-as-a-service platform to help vehicle subscription providers achieve scale and operate profitably. At the time, Painter said NextCar was not a consumer-facing brand like Fair, the used-vehicle subscription service he started in 2016, but would help assemble services such as debt capital, insurance, access to inventory, fleet management and digital servicing.

"It is all of the component parts of a subscription business, but we are not focused on building our own brand and going direct to the consumer," Painter told Automotive News in October 2020.

The company remains incorporated under NextCar Holding Co., but the consumer-facing brand will be known as Autonomy, spokeswoman Shadee Malekafzali told Automotive News via email.

"NextCar was founded nearly two years ago with the intention of building the foundation to support subscriptions. Autonomy is the first subscription business operating on that platform," Malekafzali wrote.

"It was certainly built to serve anybody in the subscription space but today it's entirely focused on what we're doing with Autonomy," she wrote.

The startup promises that users can order a vehicle in 10 minutes after providing a driver's license and payment. The cost of a subscription, which has a three-month minimum and then goes month to month, can vary, with one option being an initial fee of $5,500 and a monthly rate of $550. By comparison, a 36-month lease of a blue Model 3 Long Range vehicle requires an estimated $4,500 down with payments of $561 a month, according to Tesla's website.

Vehicle subscriptions generally bundle such options as roadside assistance, limited warranties and routine maintenance into a monthly payment.

Autonomy has been able to buy cars from Tesla by being flexible on factors such as color, configuration and wheel choice — features that consumers who are buying cars often have strong feelings about. The company hopes to have 500 Tesla cars by the end of the first quarter and 10,000 by the end of the year. Customers will have access to Tesla's Supercharging network.

Malekafzali said Autonomy is "in active discussions" with automakers about access to EVs.

Autonomy also said Thursday it will work with dealership marketing company AutoWeb to allow consumers visiting AutoWeb's websites, such as car.com and usedcars.com, to obtain a Tesla Model 3 subscription through Autonomy.

The venture is the latest from Painter, who founded TrueCar in 2005 and took the company public. He stepped down in late 2015 after angry dealers nearly bankrupted the company by withdrawing from the site over concerns it was squeezing them on pricing.

Painter stepped down as CEO of Fair in 2019, citing a need for a management change to help the company become profitable.

The name Autonomy is meant to imply freedom — from fossil fuels and debt — and shouldn't be confused with autonomous driving, Painter said. Tesla cars come equipped with a driver-assistance feature known as Autopilot, and the company has rolled out a feature it calls FSD, for Full Self-Driving, to employees and early customers.

"We are not trying to imply that this is about autonomous driving in any way," Painter said.

Dana Hull of Bloomberg and Automotive News reporter Lindsay VanHulle contributed to this report.