Mercedes limits speed behind $1,200 subscription

Mercedes has joined the bandwagon of terrible car-based subscription plans alongside the likes of BMW’s heated seats, in-car nav and Siris XM radio.

The new Mercedes ‘Acceleration Increasse’ subscription costs $1,200 USD (roughly $1,607 CAD) annually and shaves 0.8-0.9 seconds off the car’s 0-60 mph time in Dynamic mode. This subscription unlocks more power already available in the Mercedes-EQ EQE and the EQS electric vehicles.

The update page on Mercedes’ website suggests that the upgrade will come to all EQS EVs the company sells, but the “performance boost at a glance” section only mentions the 350 and 450 trim lines. The more expensive, and faster, EQS 580 isn’t on the list. This suggests the subscription brings the slower models up to par with the flagship, but even that isn’t the case.

The top-of-the-line 580 has a 0-60 time of 4.1 seconds. The slower 450 can only be upgraded to hit a maximum speed of 4.9 seconds. So if you care about speed, you’d still need to shell out the cash for the 580 anyway. In Canada, the 580 is the only trim model Mercedes sells, so Canadians won’t have to worry about this yet, but I’d expect pricing like this to show up soon.

This update is strange not only because it just unlocks something already in the car, but because it’s such a minimal upgrade. Sure more torque is fun, but the cars already have rapid acceleration, so charging over $1,000 to get just under a second shaved off your drag time seems like the most foolish investment ever. Maybe if you loved taking your EV to the dragstrip, you’d shell out for it, but the market the Mercedes targets seems less interested in quarter mile times.

The upgrades are also worded to sound like it changes the driving characteristics of the car and more interestingly, might allow drivers to adjust their own “motor characteristic curve, torque and maximum output.”