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For a few years now some car companies have been experimenting with an idea ripped straight out of video games. Someone, somewhere figured that hey, if people are willing to pay for a game then spend more money inside the game they already bought then they might do the same for cars\u2014a far more expensive and lucrative business\u2014as well.<\/p>\n

BMW, for example, offers a subscription service<\/span> where for $18 a month you can get heated seats, or pay to unlock adaptive cruise control<\/span>. Tesla has a pricey ($99-$199 a month<\/em>!) subscription service<\/span> for its self-driving software in some cars, and Volkswagen, Toyota and GM have all trialled similar subscription-based unlocks or features as well.<\/p>\n

Making headlines this week, though, is an example that\u2019s the most outrageous since Tesla used to lock battery range behind a paywall. Mercedes has announced a digital purchase for its all-electric vehicles called an \u201cAcceleration Increase\u201d, which costs $1200 a year and when bought \u201ccan improve an EQ vehicle\u2019s acceleration by 0.8 to 1.0 seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n

While cars have always featured expensive add-ons\u2014it\u2019s a pillar of the whole business model\u2014those have previously been tangible purchases. If you paid for bigger wheels you got bigger wheels. Parting with a few extra thousand for leather seats got you fancy leather seats. <\/p>\n

What\u2019s happening with these car subscription services, though, is far more ominous. You\u2019re not really getting anything. Instead, thanks to advances in the operating systems and communications found in modern cars, what you\u2019re buying is a vehicle with certain features limited or locked off, which can then be then enabled remotely.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the same argument video games went through over a decade ago\u2014and which we have collectively just shrugged and moved\u00a0on from\u2014when people found out the DLC they were buying was already on the disc they bought. It\u2019s the same story here; the motors in these Mercedes vehicles could always go that fast, and locking certain elements of their performance away behind a digital paywall is taking the absolute piss.<\/p>\n

One common factor among all the very worst of these examples is that they\u2019re limited to expensive, luxury vehicles, targeting rich people who probably don\u2019t give a shit about spending (what\u2019s for them) a few extra bucks a month when they\u2019ve dropped $100,000+ on a car. The danger, of course, is that if those rich people start buying this stuff and it becomes a successful business model, then it won\u2019t be too long before we start seeing it in a Toyota Corolla and…oh. Great<\/span>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For a few years now some car companies have been experimenting with an idea ripped straight out of video games. Someone, somewhere figured that hey, if people are willing to pay for a game then spend more money inside the game they already bought then they might do the same for cars\u2014a far more expensive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":40387,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.kinja-img.com\/gawker-media\/image\/upload\/c_fill,f_auto,fl_progressive,g_center,h_675,pg_1,q_80,w_1200\/5b5dcc30672139f9e50034a67d1447a2.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pc"],"yoast_head":"\n