That is bullshit. If they want to lower the price by renting it out, they could perfectly well licencese local dealers to rent it out, who can go after the customer in the same way, like they could for people who rented vehicles and didnt pay/return them.

The subscription based model instead proves that the production costs cannot be that high, that in case of a run out subscription, they’d rather lose the product.

Also the development costs of the subscription and the technical equipment to validate subscriptions, including running the servers etc. are a significant cost factor, without which they could lower the price of the product.