BMW’s new lease lets you drive for ridesharing services
It’s not always obvious, but many car leases don’t allow you to drive with ridesharing services or rent your car to others. And it’s no surprise as to why — the high mileage and varying driving habits aren’t going to help the car’s condition when the lease is over. BMW, however, is sticking its neck out. It’s trotting out a Car & Ride Sharing Lease for BMW- and Mini-branded cars that, as the name suggests, permits either driving for a service like Uber or renting your car to others. If the payments on your 3 Series are a little too difficult to bear, you can make some money on the side.
The service is available in California, Oregon and Washington state right now. The initial selection isn’t surprising. BMW is already familiar with car sharing in Oregon and Washington thanks to its ReachNow service, while California is a hotbed for new transportation services.
BMW pitches this both as an acknowledgment of changing times and a part of its ongoing push into mobility services — it took full ownership of DriveNow the same day as the lease announcement. It knows that leasing is likely to decline as ridesharing and self-driving cars take hold, and wants to make a lease more attractive to those people who do want their own car. And it’s reasonable to presume that this could help BMW in the near term by convincing some people to lease cars they otherwise couldn’t afford.
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