Subscription services are a fairly new trend in the automotive world. It started with luxury brands such as Cadillac’s Book service and it’s expanded to higher-volume brands like Ford. Ford’s subscriptionservice is called Canvas and it serves the San Francisco Bay Area and West Los Angeles. Launched less than a year ago, Canvas has already met some pretty impressive milestones proving this whole car subscription gimmick could be the real deal.
In a press release published Thursday, Ford boasts that the Canvas fleet has covered more than 3 million miles with 600 customers in its two California markets. Ford calls Canvas “a simple, flexible alternative to car ownership.” Here’s how it works. You choose a package that works for you ranging from 500 miles per month all the way up to unlimited miles. Pricing starts at $429 per month and may vary based on the vehicle (tax not included), and can actually go down over time. The longer you keep the same car, the further it drives down your rate. If you want to swap cars every month, your rate won’t go down.
In your Canvas subscription you get your choice of a Ford vehicle (sorry, no GTs), maintenance, warranty, insurance, registration, and roadside assistance. Not bad when you add up what you’d normally pay per month if you actually owned a new car.
We reached out to Ford asking which vehicles are popular in the Canvas subscription service. “We’ve seen significant demand closer to the hearts of city centers than we had originally anticipated. So, as you might as expect, we have seen high demand for compact and mid-sized vehicles,” said a Canvas representative in an email to The Drive. “Although, this recent snow season led to a larger demand in our SUVs, which is a perfect use case for Canvas – get an SUV for the winter, so you can spend the weekends in Tahoe or Big Bear.”
We also asked if there were any plans to expand Canvas to any new markets and were told Canvas “[does] not have any immediate expansion plans to share at this time.” Based on how well it’s going so far, we think there’s a pretty good chance more expansion is coming in the future.