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.

In a bind, you can get that $100-200/mo much lower.

Perhaps they can offer a system where partial battery payments will get you reduced usage.

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).