Can crowdfunding supercars actually work? (No.)

"area man" (hurrburgring) 07/23/2014 at 16:55 • Filed to: None

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As I was scanning the detritus of my Facebook news feed this morning I spotted a friend sharing a link to !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a company that purports to !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! - except instead of renting Civics and CR-Vs to millenials for Target runs, they'll be renting Ferraris and Bugattis to millenials for Target runs. What could go wrong?

In my estimation, plenty. Here's how it "works" - Blancfleet announces a time-limited campaign to raise funds from its members to purchase a supercar for their rental stable. The amount of money you pledge earns you a set number of driving (or fucking) hours with the car, with no worries about insurance, mile limits, or additional fees. Those hours can be redeemed at any time the car is available over the next two years. If the campaign ends without enough pledges lined up to cover the $200K+ purchase, no one is charged.

Sounds great, right? Yet somehow it doesn't pass the smell test, like those stupid diet pills that are really just weak meth. First of all, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! is a nightmare. It tries to ape that three-column minimalist motif that's all the rage with disruptive companies these days, but the end result is an unnavigable mess with important information scattered between an !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (which you see at top; legit, right?), a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and an !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! Spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors abound. Even after reading all three, you're still left with unanswered questions. How exactly will they maintain the cars? Will they be available to reserve 24/7? What happens if someone totals the car, which is definitely going to happen? What happens to the cars after the two years? Oh yes, and what the fuck are you going to do with my money exactly?

Therein lies the most problematic part of this whole enterprise. Since pledges are based on an hourly rental rate for each car, the campaigns are limited to a certain number of hours available - 8735, which roughly corresponds to two years of 12 hour days. They're trying to maximize the car's availability to potential pledges, I get that. But once you apply it to an actual crowdfunding campaign - like the one c !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! - the logic quickly unravels. The Ferrari's hourly rate is $68, and with 4,445 hours purchased so far, Blancfleet already has over $300,000 pledged - enough money to purchase the car, which starts around $230,000. But that still leaves 4,290 hours open, or a little more than $291,720 on the table.

Now, the campaign ends in a couple weeks, and I doubt they will raise much more. But let's say they sell out. That's $593,980 to cover a car that costs less than half that amount. I understand that there's a lot of overhead here - insurance, maintenance, storage, taxes - but would you just lean on good faith that your money was being put to good, sensible use? I would not. They don't tell you the exact price of the model they're buying, so how do you know when a campaign reaches the amount to purchase the car? What happens if the amount raised can cover the purchase price but not the insurance? The questions continue to build.

This doesn't even begin to touch the logistical nightmare of maintaining a Ferrari that's being shared among a hundred people for a few hours at a time. It'd be like driving around an auto show floor model. Also, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! lists that the driver is responsible for up to $700 in damages in the event of an accident. What will that do? Replace a fucking wing mirror? There is no way they have an insurance policy that covers the full replacement of a goddamn Ferrari with only a $700 deductible. There's just no way.

Which leads me to my final point - something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Blancfleet is the spawn of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , which seems to just be an umbrella name for Blancfleet and two other crowdfunding endeavors, one for real estate and one for farmland. It's been around all year, but only gotten a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! on nothingburger tech and auto sites. They claim to offer Bugattis, Range Rovers, and even Koenigseggs, but they're nowhere to be found outside of the high-res pictures plastering their website.

The sad part about all this is despite all the completely obvious red flags, Blancfleet still managed to convince 50+ fools to part with over $300,000. Who knows if they will ever know the joy of climbing behind the wheel of that 458 Italia - we find out on August 3rd.