Don’t Want To Buy A Honda? Lease It Instead!

• Subscription plans start at Rs 44,438 per month for models like the City for a period of 3 to 5 years.
• Once the subscription period ends, customers can either buy the car at a predetermined price or swap it for a new one.
• Subscription charges include costs of routine maintenance and insurance.

For those who are looking to get a new Honda but are on the fence about buying one, here’s some great news. You can now simply lease a new Honda as the carmaker has joined the car-ownership-sans-commitment party with the introduction of its own car lease services. The new initiative has been launched in collaboration with ORIX, one of India’s largest car leasing and rental companies. 

If all these sound familiar, it’s because a similar collaboration was announced by Skoda with ORIX back in May this year.

With the Indian automotive industry suffering its worst slowdown in two decades, the situation has not been helped by the rise of ride share apps like Ola, Uber as well subscription apps like Revv and Zoomcar. These options are starting to buck the trend of owning a car as we know it. Such is the rise that homegrown carmaker Mahindra also introduced its own unique subscription-based ownership service for retail customers to adapt to the trend. 

Honda will provide leasing services for three models in its lineup, the Honda City, Honda Civic and Honda CR-V. Customers can avail subscription periods of 3, 4 and 5 years with rates starting from Rs 44,438 per month for the 3-year plan for models like the Honda City ZX CVT petrol. As with most leasing plans, there is a catch though. For all the subscription plans, there is an annual usage/travel limit of 15,000km. Benefits of the subscription include routine maintenance charges and insurance covered in the subscription plans. 

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And that’s not all, as once the minimum subscription period is over, the customer can choose to return the vehicle and select a new vehicle or buy the existing vehicle from the company at a predetermined price. In the end, this could very well be what carmakers need to reduce the hemmorage in sales due to the current automotive slowdown and rising costs. 

This could also be a feasible way for carmakers to clear their BS4 inventory before the new BS6 emission norms take effect in April 2020. It is only a matter of time before the majority of carmakers join the likes of Mahindra and Honda in the ever rising car-rental segment to sustain sales and give its customers a variety of options while deciding on a vehicle. This new trend could also be a sign of a future where there will be more rental-based cars running on public roads compared to owned cars in order to travel economically.