Porsche Ownership Just Got a Lot Cheaper in the Netherlands
New Porsche-approved app lets up to four people share one car.
Porsche is making it easier than ever to park a 911, Boxster, or Cayman in your driveway—if you live in the Netherlands, that is. The car maker is rolling out a new regional app called "Share a Porsche," and it does pretty much exactly what you'd think it does.
The basics of the "Share a Porsche" program, developed with the help of Vodaphone, are fairly simple: Two to four Dutch folks enter into a shared one- or two-year lease of one of Porsche's sports cars. The parties agrees in advance the number of miles they'll be driving each month, which in turn determines the amount they each pay. Maintenance, taxes, and insurance are all lumped into the lease, so the only outside cost is gas. (Which is no small fee, considering gasoline goes for around $6.50 a gallon in the Netherlands.)
There are a couple of caveats, though. Not only is the program restricted to the 911, Boxster, and Cayman, but it's restricted to lightly-used versions of those cars. Porsche of the Netherlands has set up a website where interested parties can peruse the available cars; as you'd expect, it's in Dutch, but thanks to the wonder of Google Translate, it's child's play to flip the text to another language and see the Porsches that are available.
Seeing as how we at The Drive spend a shocking amount of the day dreaming about driving and owning cars we can't afford, we'd love to see Porsche bring the program over to the United States. Considering how many of us pay to share tiny New York City apartments with strangers, spending a few hundred bucks to share a 911 with a few friends seems like the deal of the decade.