Electric Mercedes offers to subscribe your old car to make it more powerful for a monthly cost

BMW pioneered monthly payment for multi-industry use, including heated seats. General Motors then followed this practice, as did Mercedes-Benz which used electric cars as a gateway to the subscription model.

It's not something new

A few months ago, Mercedes introduced a new option in its American configurator: an increase in the power of some of its cars for an annual subscription. Owners of the brand's high-end electric cars could, for an additional fee, upgrade their vehicle with more power through temporary official reprogramming performed via an OTA update . However, if the subscription was not renewed, the additional CVs obtained were lost.

Mercedes continues to work on this subscription system and has announced new subscriptions, as well as broader ways to access them, on the occasion of the launch of its electric flagship, the Mercedes EQV SUV .

Just like the Mercedes EQE sedans and SUVs , as well as the EQS sedan , the new EQS SUV can improve its power through a software update. This improvement also leads to an improvement in its performance, as pointed out by Mercedes.

Using the update on the base version of the Mercedes EQS 450 4MATIC SUV , it gains 80 HP, from 360 HP to 440 HP. This improves its acceleration from 0 to 100 km/h in almost a second, dropping from 5.8 seconds to just 4.9 seconds. Owners can unlock this upgrade for an annual cost of $900, or just under $820 at the current exchange rate.

However, the cost of the update depends on the car, since the same subscription for the Mercedes EQE 350 4Matic and EQE 350 4MATIC SUVs costs 600 dollars per year (546 euros), and these models only benefit from a gain of 60 HP, rather than the 80 HP achieved on the EQS SUVs .

Two new options are now available on the brand's website to improve its Mercedes vehicles , in addition to the annual option already offered. These options are available to anyone who wants to benefit from the latest improvements.

The first option is to pay a monthly fee to access the update, which costs $60 per month for EQE and EQE SUVs , and $90 per month for larger models. The second option, called "lifetime enhancement", is more expensive and allows you to maximize the car's potential, but it requires digging deeper into your pocket. Prices vary depending on the model, for example, for the EQE and EQE SUVs it costs $1,950 (1,775 euros) to obtain an additional 60 HP in the 350 versions, while for the EQS and EQS SUVs, it costs $2,950 (2,685 euros) to get an extra 80 horsepower for life.

It's important to note that these upgrades are not cheap, given the high prices of such luxury cars, such as the EQS SUV which retails from 144,946 euros.

It's remarkable that Mercedes offers an extra to get all the power out of some cars that aren't particularly cheap. These vehicles could be equipped from the factory with 60 or 80 additional CV, but Mercedes prefers to reserve them to earn more money from customers wishing to exploit their full power.

This practice is reminiscent of that of BMW, which offers heated seats as a paid option, but also in the form of a monthly subscription, although this practice is not new. Indeed, Mercedes has long charged its customers extra to unlock the power of certain Mercedes-AMG models.

Take the example of the Mercedes-AMG E53 whose standard top speed is limited to 250 km/h, even if it is capable of going much faster. However, for an additional 2,837 euros for the ' AMG Driver Speed ​​Code ' option, its maximum speed limit increases to 270 km/h.

Audi proceeds in the same way with several of its models. By default, the Audi RS 3 does not exceed 250 km/h, but at an additional cost of 2,095 euros for the option "Maximum speed increase to 280 km/h" it can reach 280 km/h .

There is a similarity in the way certain brands structure their range by offering different levels of equipment and power, which makes it possible to offer cheaper entry-level versions. Most buyers are aware that they will have to pay more for a more powerful version of the same car model.

However, some car enthusiasts do not understand why the same car with the same engine is sold at a lower price by offering a "deflated" version. Conversely, they also do not understand why you have to pay more for a more powerful version equipped with a technically identical engine. An example is the BMW 118d and the BMW 120d, which had exactly the same engine.

However, BMW has deliberately limited the power of the 118d through electronics, just like Mercedes does with its electric cars. By paying a little more, it was possible to get the BMW 120d with increased power simply through electronic modifications.