Last Updated on: 30th December 2022, 11:44 am
You probably know this already, but I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Even if you’re certain you’ve heard the stupidest thing you’re ever going to hear, there’s always going to be a stupider one waiting for you just around some corner somewhere.
Today’s example comes to us by way of the good folks at Mercedes, who are hoping that they can get someone to please pay them $1200 a year for basic engine functionality that amounts to essentially nothing.
The new Mercedes ‘Acceleration Increasse’ subscription costs $1,200 USD (roughly $1,607 CAD) annually and shaves 0.8-0.9 seconds off the car’s 0-60 mph time in Dynamic mode. This subscription unlocks more power already available in the Mercedes-EQ EQE and the EQS electric vehicles.
The update page on Mercedes’ website suggests that the upgrade will come to all EQS EVs the company sells, but the “performance boost at a glance” section only mentions the 350 and 450 trim lines. The more expensive, and faster, EQS 580 isn’t on the list. This suggests the subscription brings the slower models up to par with the flagship, but even that isn’t the case.
The top-of-the-line 580 has a 0-60 time of 4.1 seconds. The slower 450 can only be upgraded to hit a maximum speed of 4.9 seconds. So if you care about speed, you’d still need to shell out the cash for the 580 anyway.
No, you are not reading that wrong. For the small price of $1200, which bears repeating is an annual fee, you too can go a little faster a little faster.
Who this is for is quite frankly beyond me. Unless you’re planning to drag race it or have a frequent need to speed away from things with a slight head start, less than a second of acceleration is going to make literally zero difference to your quality of life. That $1200 a year, on the other hand…
On the surface, this is little more than an example of the old saying about a fool and his money. But it also strikes me as a test case to see what the limits are to how much subscription creep people are going to put up with. If it works, they can literally monetize whatever they want. Remember, this is performance that already exists in the expensive car you’ve bought. If you’re fool enough to pay for that, I don’t want to hear any complaining when you have to subscribe to whatever the rolling down the windows subscription is going to be called.
