Mercedes Makes Better Performance a $1,200 Subscription in Its EVs

Like many others here, I&#x27;ve read quite a bit of science fiction pondering what the future might be like for humankind. As far as I know, there isn&#x27;t a single work of science fiction that explores the impact of <i>subscription fatigue</i> on the human soul.<p>I&#x27;m so sick and tired of getting asked to subscribe to yet another service. For electricity, there&#x27;s no choice, and we&#x27;re used to it; for mobile phone service, it&#x27;s a modern necessity too; for internet connectivity, also; for video streaming services, sure; for music streaming services, sure; for email applications, sure; for office software, sure; for news outlets, sure; for web applications and services, sure; for webcam services, sure; for food delivery services, sure; and now, for &quot;car performance&quot; services too?[a] There&#x27;s no obvious end to it.<p>It seems we&#x27;re on the path to a hellish future in which we all have to pay up for hundreds (thousands?) of subscriptions to go about our daily lives.<p>--<p>[a] For a while, Tesla has been charging extra for a software update that enables greater acceleration: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.teslarati.com&#x2F;tesla-mobile-app-upgrades-acceleration-boost&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.teslarati.com&#x2F;tesla-mobile-app-upgrades-accelera...</a> -- Mercedes is just going the extra mile, so to speak!

If I can&#x27;t <i>own</i> it then I&#x27;m not buying it. Period, end. Full stop.<p>This is why I don&#x27;t use services such as Spotify. This is also why I still buy DVD&#x27;s and Blu-Ray. You can make fun of me all you want but at least I <i>own</i> these things and I don&#x27;t have to keep paying for them ad infinitum.<p>That&#x27;s also why I use software such as LibreOffice and Gimp. These tools are installed on my machine and I can use them whenever I want for as long as I want. I don&#x27;t have to keep paying to continue using them. I pay them when I upgrade.<p>Bottom line, I&#x27;m not against <i>paying</i> for things so long as I <i>own</i> them. I&#x27;m against <i>subscribing</i> to durable goods. At the rate this nonsense is going Ryobi is going to start demanding a subscription for me to continue using my mitre saw. Nonsense!

We&#x27;ll eventually need open source EV solutions for major auto manufacturers. This is just the start of being held hostage to these companies trying to create recurring revenue streams. For auto manufacturers, EVs are not about the environment but from ripping off customers until the very end.<p>Wonder if any open source EV projects have started.

So do you no longer own the car? How can they stop you from hacking it once the warranty is over? It&#x27;s your car, doesn&#x27;t need internet for more performance.

I hate these things already, but putting them on a car that starts over $100,000 is just asinine. No thank you!

What a hilarious and asinine way to torpedo your own brand. It seems that Mercedes and BMW want to be known as the &quot;Spirit Airlines of electric cars.&quot;<p>...except at least Spirit Airlines is cheap. The Mercedes EQS sedan starts at $102k for relatively middling performance of 5.9s 0-60 and range of 350 milse. I have no doubt that the EQS is a more luxurious car, but the Tesla Model S is $105k for significantly better performance of 3.1s 0-60 and better range at 405 miles.<p>I doubt anyone is cross-shopping a Model 3 against a Mercedes, but the economics are almost comical in favor of the 3. Model 3 $63k for 3.1s 0-60 and 315 miles of range.<p>I can only wonder who would buy this. Pay a significant premium for a Mercedes and then stuck with a $100&#x2F;month subscription? I&#x27;d love to hear from someone who is into this, and why.

Interesting comments. My dad was in the printing business. He did about every faction of it: printed ads for supermarket chain, bought &#x2F; sold equipment worldwide, etc I also asked him why printers shunned digital printing in preference of offset printing. The digital printing could do everything! Saves ink! Customs jobs! Low volume jobs!<p>His answer &quot;they can shut your machine down with the click of a mouse. You miss your payment? Shut off. New software update you don&#x27;t want or need, but they can legally do? Pay or you&#x27;re off.

it&#x27;s amazing how far detached from the customers these &#x27;legacy&#x27; car companies are. Bring on the car hacking!!!<p>with ev&#x27;s it seems the less premium brands like hyundai + others have seen their opening and are taking it and it&#x27;s working the ev6 seems to be really well liked online.

Isn&#x27;t this illegal to do in New Jersey?<p>Will there now be a New Jersey spec of the vehicle software in a similar vein as having a CARB spec for ice emissions?

Microtransactions, subscriptions for damn near everything, in-app purchasing for every little addon, *aaS...<p>I hate the modern tech world in a lot of ways. It is ridiculous.<p>OEMs: &quot;oooh.. EVs are just computers with Wheels. I bet we can do the same thing everyone else is doing!&quot;<p>I really, really hope there is so much backlash that they drop it. It should be illegal to purposefully gimp something like a car just to milk more money out of it.<p>I can understand something that has to be maintained like sat radio or OnStar etc. Those are actually &quot;value-adding services&quot;. But freaking performance? It&#x27;s like the bullshit with Tesla and restricting battery capacity.<p>What next? your cellphone wont charge past 50% without a subscription? Your car&#x27;s headlights will only operate at 60% brightness without a fee? Your fridge&#x27;s ice-maker will make ice slower without a &quot;premium&quot; addon?<p>You can&#x27;t use certain colors without paying a fee... oh wait.<p>&#x2F;smh

It&#x27;s funny to see HN complain about this, but at the same time not say anything about how you can upgrade IntelliJ IDEA (and other software) from Free to Pro to Ultimate which is exactly the same thing - receive a code to unlock functionality which is already baked into the code.

The people buying these cars (and buying these subscriptions) must care a lot about bragging rights. Literally telling people they pay extra all the time for this stuff. &quot;Oh you got an EQS? But do you have the UPGRADE? See how much money I spend!&quot;

EVs apparently have around 30 moving parts compared to ICE vehicles&#x27; 3000 ish.<p>Which suggests we could be on the verge of a golden era of automotive simplicity, modularity, tinkering, etc.<p>But no, this is what we will get. Locked subscription-only features, pay-per-mile, spyware, crapware, bloat, software-enforced maintenance and obsolescence, software-certified components (no 3rd party replacements), etc, etc, just like printers, but even worse.<p>The manufacturers should restrain themselves, or ownership will become so onerous that people don&#x27;t bother and just use uber etc.

This isn&#x27;t all that new. IBM mainframe contracts were handled this way decades ago. When you eventually need&#x2F;want more compute, an IBM field rep shows up and enables a thing on the hardware already on your premises for what you pay for. The IBM P and Z series (midrange and mainframe hardware) still uses a similar scheme.

This is nothing new. The 1.5l EcoBoost Ford Focus in Europe had two trim options: 150BHP and 182BHP. The only difference was software. Just instead of a subscription you had to buy the option upfront.<p>Of course barely anyone took the 182BHP version considering every other mechanic could perform the necessary upgrade.<p>One friend of mine even did that <i>during the lease</i>.<p>Considering 2&#x2F;3 of premium brands&#x27; stock is usually leased and returned after that period anyway, I think this trend will only continue.<p>Sucks to be the third owner of such a vehicle I guess, but the manufacturers never cared too much about the used market, considering they make most of their money on the initial sale&#x2F;lease and authorized dealership maintenance.<p>Personally I&#x27;m now even less likely to ever get a premium brand car, because it&#x27;s becoming increasingly obvious that I&#x27;m not the target market.

More reasons why I’ll be keeping my ICE until I have to get an EV again. Total operational cost per month is about 300-400. My Tesla was nice (but cost me about 1500&#x2F;mo) maybe by the time I have to get a new car the interior quality will be much better.

&quot;You no longer own the car&quot; - plenty of BMW, Mercedes and other premium brands customers don&#x27;t want to own the car any more. They just want to lease it, get the updated model every few years and especially don&#x27;t care to maintain it. In this context it makes sense to tax for a 20% increase in power. That will put significant additional stress and wear on the car so you need to cover the increased maintenance. Now I don&#x27;t know if this is the exact context because the article doesn&#x27;t really give details. Might be just a money grab that applies even to sold and post warranty cars.

The mechanism auto lobbyists will (attempt to?) push through can be modeled after what we do with mobile modem software. For the uninitiated, there are open source stacks out there for running 4G, LTE base stations, and for the modems on the device side. However you&#x27;re not allowed to operate them without FCC approval and licensing.<p>The car industry can similarly say, we can&#x27;t legally stop you from modifying the software in a car you own, but we can get the government to outlaw anyone running un-govt-approved&#x2F;unlicensed auto software on public roads.

Every piece of hardware is just turning into a vehicle to sell subscriptions.<p>Really what bothers me even more is that people are so apathetic about this. They are just lying down and taking it.

As long as these subscription features are only for “performance options” is okay and legit, if you want more speed you pay more (I don’t know who need it but I don’t judge).<p>The important thing is to keep the basic features free from this method.<p>And for basic features I mean all the safety stuff&#x2F;ADAS. You can pay more to gain speed but not to gain safety!

Subscriptions should have required operational costs (cloud, map updates, content updates)<p>- OR - (inclusive or)<p>Subscriptions should be sub-to-own. Unlock a feature for the same price as it would have been on the original purchase. This smooths out purchase price, so it may be worth it for some consumers.

Could you not observe the CAN bus via the debug port, figure out what they enable and disable... and then just toggle it?<p>I expect the answer is no, but I would like to know how the answer is no.

I have a &#x27;99 Honda. That&#x27;s what it costs, on average, in maintenance costs to keep it on the road. I&#x27;m just going to keep doing that. New cars are just nuts.

I hear the auto industry is working on car loot boxes too given how successful the DLCs are<p>There is also group wondering whether early access users could potentially do crash testing betas<p>&#x2F;s

I&#x27;m sure that with enough time, from this website, we can build an open source, standardized, laws compliant and profitable e-vehicle.<p>And without subscription scam.

It feels like I can&#x27;t drive more than a dozen hours without being in a situation where rapid acceleration is definitely a safety feature.

Combining the downsides of owning and renting is such a cool business model!

Regulation is supposed to stop this shit to happen. But it won&#x27;t.

That’s funny. I was just considering buying a Mercedes. Never again.

I bet this gets hammered by the EU courts.

Fortuitous timing for this post &#x2F;u Geeek! I wrote this up last night after a cybersecurity mentoring session I conducted as a means to analogously try to get others to comprehend since so many are blind to what is happening. Having decades of experience in technology at all levels I tried to sum up the focus points of why this is wrong in a dark humorous manner. Enjoy!<p>====================<p>U.S. public national big box stores look to capitalize on the rent seeking model with new internet of thing toolings. No longer will this industry miss out on the technology explosion and revenue opportunities that being smart brings. Formerly dumb tools are being modernized with cellular connectivity and features that will bring significant revenue for this brand while setting in motion the modernization of this overlooked industry. Revenue will come from the unique features and hidden charges that clients cannot live without such as in the case of the smart shovel in current testing that bills per scoop. There are no talks at the moment on bulk scoop discounts however if enough revenue is generated they stated it would not be considered. Currently protected under NDA several of the smart tools are in smart testing and the smart customers have provided overwhelming smart feedback which is showing great signs of significant income for the brand even in limited deployment. One client&#x27;s happiness sums it up below.<p>B.K. states: &quot;I am overwhelmed at the simplicity of using my smart shovel which doesn&#x27;t really help me dig more but certainly adds weight to the tool use but I don&#x27;t mind since I am strong. I do have to charge my shovel daily and the firmware updates have been a burden at times taking up to an hour of my day per update per shovel but I understand cybersecurity is important and I would hate for my shovel to get hacked. The best time is at the end of the month when I have to pay my bill for data use and features such as with each hole I dig as it charges per scoop so I have really optimized my hole digging process. The smart app is the best as it shows me nothing but I do have a cool avatar and I can connect all my shovels as well as my friends shovels into my &quot;YouBeenScooped&quot; social network. I have given feedback that the social network should be all tools in one place but I don&#x27;t understand the internet so that may not be possible but I trust them to not rip me off or waste my time. As a local home building contractor just getting by I cannot wait to replace all my dumb tools and make them smart but I will have to adjust and sacrifice my family&#x27;s life style to afford the benefits of being smart. I really look forward to the smart hammer which I have not yet tested but I am informed it has biometric authentication, remote lockout with electric shock and a gps find feature. There are even rumors that the hammer may have regenerative capture so while each swing will cost me plenty the more I swing it the longer I can go without charging! Of course I have to pay more for this regen feature which is another monthly charge but it will save me money since I also have to pay them to charge my shovel currently. All in all I am all in on being smart!&quot;<p>Well folks there you have it from the anonymous testing clients feedback. The era of dumb tools is coming to an end so all hail the smart shovels, smart hammers, smart trowels, smart crowbars, smart screwdrivers and more which will be released in phases starting in the Spring of 2023 timed with the next housing building boom. We cannot wait to see the improvements that these smart tools will bring as we move into the new era of smart home building!<p>*edit spellcheck

I&#x27;m honestly curious, is Mercedes still relevant enough for post-boomers for anyone to <i>actually</i> care? As far as I understood they try to position themselves more into the premium niche anyway.

I&#x27;d never buy a Mercedes, but....<p>Mercedes is the car you buy your wife to signal that you&#x27;re a person of means. A person of means does not scoff at the wishes of their wife, especially not for such a paltry sum.