If you lose a job and can't afford to pay for the car(but still might have some savings to pay for gas) it usually takes a few months between you missing a payment and you losing the car to the bank or a debt collector.
With this technology your car can be disabled as soon as a single payment is missed.
Credit card auto payments are great. That is, until you get a new card with a different number or expiry. No matter how careful I am, I miss updating details with one company. I get an account locked, and an overdue fine. Having my car locked down would make the 2 yearly process somewhat worse. Great stuff.
Could be the same, but people scrape together gas money with greater urgency than they mail checks to pay bills, which I believe drives the change. Now people will be equally motivated to make their monthly payment.
They would do that only if they have to fight a competitor, for sure. The whole idea of this rental is to follow the quite successful model one sees with ISP or mobile operators. Currently, they sell a car and that's it. They don't get more money if you use it for 20 years (my car, which is from another french brand, is that old).
With this technology your car can be disabled as soon as a single payment is missed.