For a couple of years Some automakers have experimented with an idea ripped straight from video games. Somebody somewhere figured hey when people are ready pay for a game and then spend more money on the game they already bought, then they could do the same for cars – a far more expensive and lucrative deal.
e.g. BMW offers a subscription service where you can get heated seats for $18 a month, or pay to unlock adaptive cruise control. Tesla has a more expensive ($99-$199 a Month!) Subscription for its self-driving software in some cars, and Volkswagen, Toyota, and GM have all tested similar subscription-based unlocks or features.
However, headlines this week were for an example that is the most egregious since Tesla locked battery range behind a paywall. Mercedes has announced a digital purchase for its all-electric vehicles called “Acceleration Boost,” which costs $1,200 per year and, upon purchase, “can improve an EQ vehicle’s acceleration by 0.8 to 1.0 seconds.”
While cars have always come with expensive add-ons – a pillar of the whole business model – these used to be tangible purchases. If you paid for bigger wheels, you got bigger wheels. If you part with a few extra thousand for leather seats, you got fancy leather seats.
However, what is happening to these car subscription services is far more ominous. You don’t really get anything. Instead, thanks to advances in operating systems and communications in modern cars, you’re buying a vehicle with certain features that may be restricted or locked out then activated remotely.
It’s the same argument video games went through over a decade ago – and which we collectively just shrugged and postponed from – when people found out that the DLC they bought was already on the disc they bought. It’s the same story here; The engines in these Mercedes vehicles could always go that fast, and locking certain elements of their performance behind a digital paywall is absolutely galling.
A common factor in all of the worst of these examples is that they’re limited to expensive luxury vehicles and are aimed at rich folks who probably don’t give a shit about spending a few extra bucks a month (which is for them) when they have over 100,000 dollars spent on a car. The danger, of course, is that if these rich people start buying this stuff and it becomes a successful business, it won’t too long before we start seeing it in a Toyota Corolla and… oh. Big.
