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When you pay a good amount of money for a car, you expect to be able to access all of the features that were loaded onto it before you signed on the dotted line and drove it off the lot…right?
Well, if you’ve purchased a certain model of Mercedes-Benz electric vehicle, or are planning to in the future, you’ll have to rethink that assumption, because they are locking the full performance ability of their electric vehicles unless owners pay around $1200 a year.
They claim the “acceleration increase” will “unleash enhanced performance” on a few of its models.
The cars in question are not at all cheap, going for between $90-$195k to begin with, and the acceleration in question will only add about 1 second in their ability to go from 0-60.
Here’s what the company had to say in a statement:
“Acceleration Increase boosts this performance even further; electronically increasing the motor’s output also increases the torque significantly. Fine tuning of the electric motors increases the maximum motor output of your Mercedes-EQ by 20 to 24 percent, depending on the original output from factory. The torque is also increased, enabling your vehicle to accelerate noticeably faster and more powerfully.”
Since the upgrade is in the software, not the hardware, though, the cars already have the capabilities offered by the subscription – they’re being remotely weakened to get folks to pony up more dough.
Tesla recently implemented a similar in-app upgrade, though after some pushback by backers they scrapped it on some models.
It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out, but it doesn’t seems like these fees will be totally going away anytime soon.
Just one more thing to think about as more and more drivers consider moving away from traditional gas-powered vehicles toward something cleaner…because nothing is as simple as it seems.
