“Customers can apply for leasing or retail finance if they want to purchase a car,” Stellman said, adding, “Our trends seem to mirror the market, in that we see more leasing than purchasing.”
The app, while aimed at anyone interested in a Mercedes-Benz vehicle, is particularly suited for millennials, Stellman said, because it’s a generation that has been raised on the internet and mobile phones.
“What we find is most Millennials leverage their smartphone to do research on their phones, and tend to do more research than Generation X or Baby Boomers,” he said. And it’s because of this shopping due diligence that makes AutoGravity’s multiple financing options suitable for the demographic. Traditional auto finance is an opaque process, wherein a person applies for financing and receives one offer and is left wondering whether they got a good deal, Stellman said. But AutoGravity and the FJ Drive app allow a person to digitally send a credit application and see multiple offers and compare rates.
And Millennials shopping for luxury vehicles is not as far-fetched as it seems, Stellman said, adding that luxury vehicles are becoming more affordable.
“Millennials are becoming more attracted to luxury vehicles, and car ownership. There was this misguided hypothesis that Millennials didn’t want to own vehicles,” he said.
