Unfortunately, in recent years, major car manufacturers have increasingly begun to look towards paid subscription services, as this allows you to get impressive additional profit from an already sold vehicle. And while some subscriptions do make sense, extending the car’s features to users who actually need it, BMW’s heated seat feature for a subscription has created a lot of buzz online. However, as it turned out, this did not affect the plans of major European brands in any way – Mercedes-Benz also decided to enter the subscription race by implementing a rather strange function.
- To the point: Not only heated steering wheel in BMW: car features that in theory could become subscription
The fact is that a paid subscription function has appeared on the official website of Mercedes-Benz in the United States, which provides owners of premium EQE and EQS electric cars with the opportunity to increase the total output power of the vehicle for an additional $ 100 per month. Probably, it will seem to someone that this sounds extremely wild – how can you increase the power of an electric car, in which the power of the power plant is laid down from the factory, using an online subscription? It’s quite simple – at the factory, the output power of the electric power plant is reduced and blocked at a certain level.
Accordingly, when the user pays $100 for a month of subscription (or $1200 for a year), the system will unlock the missing capacity of the power plant. For example, the EQE 350 electric car has a standard power plant of 288 horsepower, but after purchasing a subscription, it rises to 349 horsepower – an increase of 61 horsepower or 21%. Moreover, if before subscribing, the electric car accelerated from zero to hundreds in 6 seconds, then after increasing the power, acceleration takes 5.1 seconds – this is an impressive increase in speed, which cannot be obtained without a subscription.
The EQS 450 benefits even more from the subscription – initially the user gets 355 horsepower, but if you subscribe to a paid subscription for $ 100 per month, the car gets an additional 88 horses. As a result, the total power of the power plant already reaches 443 horsepower with acceleration in just 4.5 seconds. It turns out an extremely unpleasant situation – a premium car, which already costs impressive money, does not give the user all the power that he paid for from the factory. And only with a paid subscription, the power plant gives an increase of 20% of power, although more aggressive subscription formats may come out in the future, in which even more will be squeezed out of the engine.
Source: Trash Box
Charles Grill is a tech-savvy writer with over 3 years of experience in the field. He writes on a variety of technology-related topics and has a strong focus on the latest advancements in the industry. He is connected with several online news websites and is currently contributing to a technology-focused platform.
