Reporting on and being immersed in the auto industry every day often gives me a misguided gauge of the general public’s awareness of its interworking, trends and emerging technology.

When I am unsure when something in automotive has become a household name, so to speak, my test case is often my parents.

They’re news-savvy folks who enjoying digging into the local paper, the morning and nightly network news on TV, as well as the Sunday newsmagazine shows.

But they’re not “car people”, and don’t consume the massive amounts of automotive journalism that their eldest son does.

So, when they’re aware of what I perceive to be a niche automotive topic, I tend to view that trend as having hit critical mass.  

By my logic, the fact that my mom texted me about a Raleigh news channel broadcasting piece on vehicle subscriptions may be a good sign of consumer awareness for these emerging services. That said, there may be some room for growth here, which is understandable, given the “newness” of the subscription model.

According to an Autolist survey of 1,428 current car shoppers in April, 70 percent of consumers said they were not previously aware that subscriptions are now available on cars.

Taking the 30 percent who were aware, 16 percent could identify a provider of vehicle subscriptions and 14 percent could not, the survey found.

But, take heart: Though general awareness of subscriptions is somewhat low, willingness to consider this model is not.

“While the idea of a subscription plan isn’t something most consumers would consider for their next vehicle, there is an openness to the idea as a long-term option,” Autolist said, with nearly half of consumers saying they would consider it down the road.

Specifically, 33 percent said they would consider going the subscription route the next time they need a vehicle, with 23 percent saying no and 43 percent unsure.

Asked about a vehicle sometime in the future, 45 percent said they would consider a subscription, according to Autolist. Just 18 percent said they wouldn't, and 36 percent were not sure.  

“Today's consumers all consume their music, their media, their smartphone app minutes (this way); everything is based on these no-commitment relationships where you can do it month-to-month on an as-needed basis,” said Scott Painter, co-founder of Fair, a mobile-based platform that offers flexible used-car leasing to consumers through dealerships.

"That's exactly what we've done here, just made it simpler, all on your phone, less expensive,” Painter  said during the March interview, recorded as part of an Auto Remarketing Podcast (full episode below). “It's exactly the promise of technology.” 

And according to the Autolist study, consumers appear to dig the flexibility and convenience of subscriptions. Asked what the biggest plus of such a service would be for them, 37 percent pointed to the ability to swap in and out of cars based on needs. Another third (32 percent) were enticed by not having a long-term commitment.

“Taken together, that suggests 69 percent of consumers have less of a long-term emotional attachment to their vehicle and view it as more of a commodity,” Autolist analysts said in their report.

Furthermore, 22 percent were most enticed by “more straightforward pricing” that subscriptions can offer by bundling things like maintenance, insurance and roadside assistance, Autolist said. And 9 percent were impressed most by the quickness/ease of setting a subscription up through a smartphone. 

The report also said the data findings “suggest that perhaps owners’ emotional attachment to their vehicles isn’t as entrenched as is commonly assumed, opening the door for car-sharing and subscription-based ownership models.”

These services are being facilitated by automakers, dealers, third parties or some combination of those parties. In addition to the aforementioned Fair, automakers like BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Cadillac and Volvo (among others) as well as dealer groups like Park Place Dealerships, which launched a subscription service on Tuesday. 

But  it could take a major marketing effort to raise consumer awareness of subscriptions, said Gary Galloway, senior product marketing manager at Netsertive, a provider of digital marketing solutions, in a February interview. 

Likewise, asked how dealers could reach potential consumers interested in this model in a January interview, PureCars chief executive Sam Mylrea said: “Consumers, I think, have gotten a lot more specific about what they want.

“And how we’ve seen that adapt, whether it’s a monthly subscription or it’s a lease payment or they want to buy the vehicle outright, I think it puts more and more pressure on the dealer and vendors like PureCars to be able to target the right consumer that’s in market and really be able to use first-party, third-party data to really know what that consumer’s looking for, and serve them with a very, very relevant ad.”