Last year BMW took ample heat for its plans to turn heated seats into a costly $18 per month subscription in numerous countries. As we noted at the time, BMW is already including the hardware in new cars and adjusting the sale price accordingly. So it’s effectively charging users a new, recurring fee to enable technology that already exists in the car and consumers already paid for.
The move portends a rather idiotic and expensive future for consumers that’s arriving faster than you’d think. Consumers unsurprisingly aren’t too keen on paying an added subscription for tech that already exists in the car and was already factored into the retail price, but the lure of consistent additional revenue they can nudge ever skyward pleases automakers and Wall Street alike.
Mercedes had already been toying with this idea in its traditional gas vehicles, but now says it’s considering making better EV engine performance an added subscription surcharge:
Mercedes-Benz electric vehicle owners in North America who want a little more power and speed can now buy 60 horsepower for just $60 a month or, on other models, 80 horsepower for $90 a month.
They won’t have to visit a Mercedes dealer to get the upgrade either, or even leave their own driveway. The added power, which will provide a nearly one second decrease in zero-to-60 acceleration, will be available through an over-the-air software patch.
Again, this is simply creating artificial restrictions and then charging consumers extra to bypass them. But this being America, there will indisputably be no shortage of dumb people with disposable income willing to burn money as part of a misguided craving for status.
If you don’t want to pay monthly, Mercedes will also let you pay a one time flat fee (usually several thousand dollars) to remove the artificial restrictions they’ve imposed on your engine. That’s, of course, creating additional upward pricing funnel efforts on top of the industry’s existing efforts to upsell you on a rotating crop of trims, tiers, and options you probably didn’t want.
It’s not really clear that regulators have any interest in cracking down on charging dumb people extra for something they already owned and paid for. After all, ripping off gullible consumers is effectively now considered little more than creative marketing by a notable segment of government “leaders” (see: regulatory apathy over misleading hidden fees in everything from hotels to cable TV).
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Source: Mercedes Locks Better EV Engine Performance Behind Annoying Subscription Paywalls | Techdirt
So you pay for something which is in YOUR car but you can’t use it until you pay… more!
Robin Edgar
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