If you drive executive or luxury work in London, sooner or later you will be offered two versions of the same car. One is a straight weekly rental. The other is rent-to-buy: pay a bit more each week, keep going for three or four years, and the car is supposed to end up yours.
The cars themselves are the easy part of that decision. The agreement is the part that decides whether you finish better off, and it is the part almost nobody reads properly.
We rent BMW i7s and Mercedes S580Les to drivers every week. We also see the contracts other people are signing. This is what we tell drivers who ask us which route to take.
The two cars, honestly
The BMW i7 and the Mercedes S580Le are the two obvious choices for a London chauffeur working at the top of the market. They are not interchangeable.
| BMW i7 | Mercedes S580Le | |
|---|---|---|
| Drivetrain | Fully electric | Plug-in hybrid |
| Specified for | Executive and chauffeur work | Executive and chauffeur work |
| Blackties weekly | £750 | £830 |
| Running cost | The most efficient car we run | Petrol on longer runs, electric around town |
| Range | Needs reliable charging you control | No range planning required |
| Our pick for | Everything else | Wheely First Class |
The i7 is the most efficient car in our fleet and the more impressive one to arrive in. It is also the one that punishes you if you cannot charge at home or near where you park. Public rapid charging in London will take a lot of time, but if you are an experienced driver, you know how to save money.
The S580Le is our pick for Wheely work, and it is the safer all-rounder generally. If a good part of your week is Heathrow, Gatwick or out-of-town corporate runs, the hybrid removes a whole category of problem.
Both are specified for chauffeur work, so the platform is not what decides between them. A car that only earns on one platform is a platform bet, and neither of these is. Both marques sit on Uber's five brand Exec and Lux list and both cars are four door saloons, so the new brand, colour and body style gates are not the problem; the age cap is, because Uber cut London Exec and Lux to five years or newer for vehicles added from 1 August 2026, and that is inside the life of a four year agreement. Your charging situation and your mix of work are what should decide it.
The warranty runs out before the agreement does
This is the point most rent-to-buy conversations skip, and it is the one drivers feel.
A new BMW or Mercedes comes with three years of manufacturer warranty. A five-year rent-to-buy hands you the keys in year five. So the car becomes yours at exactly the point it has no manufacturer cover left, on a vehicle where a single air suspension unit, a high voltage component or an infotainment module is a serious bill.
Work out who is paying for repairs in year four and beyond, and get the answer in writing before you sign. If the agreement is silent, assume it is you.
That is also worth holding in mind on any used luxury car. Manufacturer approved-used warranties commonly exclude private hire work. BMW's Approved Used warranty guidelines exclude a vehicle used for courier or private hire services in terms. Read the warranty document for the actual car and the actual brand, not the brochure.
What rent-to-buy actually is
Rent-to-buy is a weekly hire agreement with something bolted on the end: an option, or a promise, that ownership transfers to you after a set number of payments. The full sequence it runs through, from the reservation fee to the separate transfer event that actually moves the V5C, is set out in what rent-to-buy PCO car hire is and how it works, so what follows here is only what you need in order to judge these two cars.
The appeal is obvious. You are already paying weekly. If that money buys you an asset instead of disappearing, why wouldn't you?
The problem is that "the car becomes yours at the end" is doing a great deal of work in that sentence, and the strength of it depends entirely on the paperwork.
Before you can judge it, you need to know which of three documents you have been handed, because different rules apply to each.
A hire-purchase agreement is one where the car is bailed to you for periodical payments and title is contracted to pass to you at the end (RAO article 60L). Whatever the front page calls it, if ownership is contracted to transfer, this is probably what you are looking at. Hire purchase is credit, not hire.
A conditional sale is a sale paid in instalments where title stays with the seller until the last one. Also credit.
A consumer hire agreement is a bailment that is not hire purchase and is capable of running more than three months (RAO article 60N). Note "capable of". A rolling four-week agreement that can continue is caught.
That distinction matters because a firm authorised only for consumer hire is not authorised to write you a hire-purchase agreement. So the first question to put in writing is not "does the car become mine". It is: is this document a hire agreement, a hire-purchase agreement, or a conditional sale?
The bit almost nobody understands
You will hear people say rent-to-buy is unregulated. That is not quite right, and the real position matters more.
Hiring goods to a consumer for more than three months is a regulated activity in the UK. So is hire purchase. Firms doing either normally need FCA authorisation, and some providers genuinely hold it. Check the Financial Services Register for the company name on your agreement, and check what they are actually authorised to do.
The catch is the business use exemption, and it has two limbs. Both have to be met.
There is a carve-out for agreements entered into wholly or predominantly for the purposes of a business, but only where the money involved is big enough. For hire, article 60O requires that you are obliged to make payments exceeding £25,000. For credit, article 60C(3) requires credit exceeding £25,000.
Note which way that threshold runs, because it is widely repeated backwards. The business exemption is only available above £25,000. Below it, a business declaration does not take the agreement outside the rules at all.
On any executive car, on either measure, you are well past £25,000 long before the term is up. So the money limb is satisfied from the start, and for a TfL-licensed driver taking a car out to earn with, so is the business-purpose limb.
Which gives the accurate version: rent-to-buy is not lawless, but on the sums an executive car involves it will almost always fall outside the consumer protections drivers assume they have, and you are the person who signs the paragraph confirming it. Exactly which protections that removes, from the protected goods rule in section 90 to the voluntary termination right, and the two the trade wrongly says you lose, are listed in what the business exemption actually takes away.
The paragraph you are signing
It has a name, a prescribed form and a rule number. It is CONC App 1.4.8R, "Declaration for exemption relating to businesses", and the FCA prescribes the words. Search your PDF for them:
I am/We are entering this agreement wholly or predominantly for the purposes of a business carried on by me/us or intended to be carried on by me/us.
I/We understand that I/We will not have the benefit of the protection and remedies that would be available to me/us under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 or under the Consumer Credit Act 1974 if this agreement were a regulated agreement under those Acts.
I/We understand that this declaration does not affect the powers of the court to make an order under section 140B of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 in relation to a credit agreement where it determines that the relationship between the lender and the borrower is unfair to the borrower.
I am/We are aware that, if I am/we are in any doubts as to the consequences of the agreement not being regulated by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 or the Consumer Credit Act 1974, then I/we should seek independent legal advice.
You are a licensed private hire driver. The car is for work. The first sentence is true, so you sign. The second sentence is the one that costs money, and most drivers have never consciously read it.
Two things worth knowing.
The third paragraph, the one about section 140B, is omitted on a consumer hire agreement. So its presence or absence is itself a clue about which kind of document you have been given.
And it is the business purpose that removes your protection, not your signature. The declaration creates a presumption, nothing more. Refusing to sign does not hand your protections back, because a licensed driver taking a car out to earn is on the business side of that line anyway. What the declaration does is remove the argument. Your protection therefore has to come from the contract and from your own diligence, not from statute.
That paragraph is the most expensive thing you will ever scroll past.
The risks that actually bite
The car may not be theirs to give you. This is the big one. Most rental fleets are financed. The car sits on a finance company's books, and until that finance is settled the rental company cannot pass you clean title no matter what your agreement says. If they stop paying, the finance company can recover the car, including the one you have been buying for two years. Your agreement is with the rental company. The finance company never made you any promise at all.
Mid-contract cancellation. If the agreement lets them terminate on short notice, or on a vague breach, the weekly premium you have been paying towards ownership can simply stop being towards anything. Ask directly on what grounds they can end it early, and what happens to everything you have already paid.
The company not being there at the end. Three or four years is a long time in a low-margin business. If the company fails you are an unsecured creditor of a company with no money, standing behind the finance provider and behind HMRC. Being technically right is worth very little at that point. This is not hypothetical in vehicle rental: Onto, an EV subscription business with a fleet of thousands, went into administration in September 2023 owing more than £121 million to 144 creditors.
The transfer that never happens. The end of the agreement is where the stories cluster. Fees nobody mentioned, a final payment that appears from nowhere, a car that turns out to have outstanding finance, or a company that stops answering. If the mechanism for transferring ownership is not written down in specific terms, treat it as though it does not exist.
What to get in writing before you pay anything
- Which document is this. Hire, hire purchase or conditional sale. In writing.
- Who owns the car right now. Run an HPI check. If there is outstanding finance, ask exactly how it gets settled before title reaches you.
- The full agreement, before you pay a penny. Not a summary. Not a WhatsApp message. The document.
- Whether the business declaration is in there. Find it. Read it. Understand what it removes.
- The termination clause, both ways. Yours and theirs, and what happens to your payments in each case. Published exit terms in this market run from four weeks' notice and a modest fee at one end to sixteen weeks of vehicle payments plus a remarketing fee at the other, which is why what happens if you hand a rent-to-buy car back early is worth reading first.
- The transfer mechanism. What triggers ownership, what it costs, who pays the fees, what happens to the V5C.
- Who pays for repairs after year three, when the manufacturer warranty has gone.
- What the weekly figure actually includes. Insurance, servicing, MOT, breakdown cover, mileage allowance and the charge beyond it. Two weekly prices are not comparable until you know this.
- What happens if you stop driving. Illness, licence suspension, a written-off car.
Then two more, which are about the company rather than the paperwork:
Prefer a car that is already two years old. The steepest depreciation has happened and the price is realistic, so you are not paying a premium every week to buy a car at close to new money. Just go in knowing the manufacturer warranty is either gone or nearly gone.
Prefer a short commitment and a company with substance. A four-year tie is a long time to bet on one business. If your aim is ownership, the better plan is often a short commitment while you improve your credit position, then a normal regulated finance deal on your own terms. And if it does go wrong, you want a defendant worth pursuing, so check Companies House for how long they have traded and what they have filed.
Do not sign at the desk
That last one matters more than it sounds. We watch drivers scroll a contract to the bottom in about four seconds and reach for the pen. We stop them and walk them through the parts that will actually affect them, because a driver who does not understand their agreement is a problem for both of us later.
If the document is dense, and they usually are, take it home. Read it somewhere quiet where nobody is waiting for you. Ask us to explain anything. Get independent advice on anything significant. There is nothing wrong with pasting a clause into an AI assistant and asking what it means in plain English, and understanding it badly still beats not reading it at all. Just do not let a chatbot be your only advice on a four-year financial commitment.
Compare the real weekly number, not the headline
Weekly rates in this trade are advertised the way airline fares are.
Before you compare our price to anyone's, check what the advertised figure actually requires of you. Some low headline rates are conditional: a minimum number of jobs per week, a minimum number of hours, a platform you must work through, an admin fee, an insurance excess that only shows up when you need it, or a mileage cap with a charge beyond it.
And compare like with like. A weekly hire figure is not the same kind of number as a car payment. Ours carries comprehensive hire and reward insurance, scheduled servicing, maintenance, MOT and 24/7 RAC cover. A finance payment carries none of that, and you will be buying insurance separately at private hire rates.
Work out the real weekly cost with the conditions applied, then compare. We would rather you did that than take our number on trust, because we tend to do well out of the comparison.
Where we stand
We do not offer rent-to-buy at the moment.
That is a deliberate choice and it costs us business. Rent-to-buy done badly is how drivers lose years of payments, and there is not much protecting them when it goes wrong. We are not willing to sell somebody a four-year commitment on the morning we meet them. If that changes, we will say so here.
What we do is rent, and the mechanics of the alternative are set out in what rent-to-buy PCO car hire is and how it works so you can judge it on the paperwork rather than on the pitch.
If you are renting from us, everything is on one weekly price: insurance, servicing, MOT and 24/7 RAC cover. No excess mileage surprises. If you want to talk about ownership later, we will have that conversation once we know each other.
So which one?
If you want the car to be yours at the end, and you have the credit to arrange finance in your own name, do that. It is regulated, you own the asset, and you are not depending on a rental company still existing in 2030.
If you cannot get finance yet, rent. Rent a good car, earn at the top of the market, fix your credit position, and buy properly when you can. Renting is not the lesser option. It is the one that keeps you flexible while your circumstances change.
And if you do go rent-to-buy, go in knowing exactly what you signed.
Come and see the i7 and the S580Le if you want to make the decision with the cars in front of you rather than on a spec sheet. If you are still working out the licensing side first, start with our guide to getting your PCO licence in London.
This article is general information about how these agreements are commonly structured. It is not legal or financial advice. Before signing a long-term agreement, take independent advice on your own circumstances.