Hard time finding an EV? It could be because this company is hoovering up tens of thousands of them.
KiaThere are a ton of cool EVs coming to market. But if you’re in the market for a new vehicle, you’ve probably noticed they may be hard to find. The chip shortage and slow ramp-ups have limited production, and many manufacturers are targeting allotments to states like California, where EVs need to be sold to meet compliance targets.
Another not insignificant reason may be a company called Autonomy, which is hoovering up a large number of available EVs.
Autonomy is an EV subscription app. The name suggests it has something to do with autonomous driving, but it’s actually about autonomy over your EV purchase decision. Autonomy will let you subscribe to one of their EVs with no long-term commitment rather than buy or lease one. Current offerings are limited to the Tesla Model 3 (from $490 per month) and Model Y (from $690 per month). But the company is preparing to expand those offerings dramatically.
According to Electrek, Autonomy placed an order for 22,790 units of 46 electric vehicles with 17 manufacturers to be delivered through the end of 2023 — a total order value of nearly $1.2 billion. That order is still Tesla-heavy, with 8,300 vehicles. However, there are also large orders from General Motors (3,400), Volkswagen (2,200), Ford (1,800), Hyundai (1,640), Kia (1,500) and Rivian (1,000). Autonomy even placed smaller orders with startups like VinFast (400), Canoo (100) and Fisker (100) that haven’t started producing cars yet.
It’s hard to pinpoint an exact percentage for 22,790 EVs. Americans bought more than 400,000 EVs last year, which was more than 80 percent growth over 2020. Fortunately, vehicles Autonomy purchases are not being taken out of the market entirely. You’ll just have to access them through their app. And, hey, it may be a better deal than paying an outrageous dealer markup or buying a used EV getting flipped at auction.
Keyword: The Autonomy App Is Buying Up All the Cool Electric Cars Before You Can