Talk of Mobility as a Service (MaaS), car subscriptions plus a new era and approach to vehicle funding seems to have quietened down considerably of late.

The noise and headlines for subscriptions appears to have taken a back seat to a widely fluctuating used car market, new challenger brands looking for a slice of the pie and most recently concerns around historic discretionary commission paid to dealers and motor finance brokers voiced by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

As one insider tells AM: “Now is not the time to be getting into subscriptions and pushing new ways of doing things.

“It’s gone very quiet, which means it’s either not working or it’s working really well and car manufacturers don’t need to make any more noise about it.”

There’s no sign of subscriptions significantly eating away at the share of funding from more traditional methods like personal contract purchase (PCP), hire purchase (HP) or personal contract hire (PCH). There are still car manufacturers that are offering subscriptions with brands such as Volvo and Hyundai both folding in this new way of funding as part of the mix. There are also new brands like the Geely-owned Lynk & Co where subscription is at the core of how vehicles are offered to consumers.