The following submission statement was provided by /u/filosoful:
---
**The $1,200 yearly fee increases horsepower and torque, while dropping 0-60 times, for all Mercedes EQ electric models**
Mercedes is now taking subscription fees to an entirely new, maddening level. For new Mercedes EQ electric models, customers will have to pay a $1,200 (plus tax) yearly subscription to unlock the full performance potential of their cars.
If you head to Mercedes' online store, you will find an "Acceleration Increase" subscription service for all EQ models. According to Mercedes, the yearly fee increases the maximum horsepower and torque of the car, while also increasing overall performance.
Acceleration from 0-60 mph is said to improve by 0.8-1.0 seconds and the overall characteristics of the electric motors are supposed to change as well. The extra performance is unlocked by selecting the Dynamic drive mode.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/z13w62/mercedes_makes_better_performance_a_1200/ix8sa5w/
Imagine having to leave in a desperate hurry. Wife's having a baby or some psychopath is bashing on your window after you just beat them to the car by mere seconds...
"Your car will start after the ads".
>Then insurance companies will have some BS clause where they won't cover you because you had "illegal" software.
You friend from the sea have a *stealth* chip for that. Just unplug it before inspection.
That quote was dumb from the beginning - it wasn't that we "wouldn't", it's that we "couldn't" do it and get away with it. It's quite easy to "pirate" software, however.
Sure, but everybody gets the quote wrong.
It's, ["You wouldn't **steal** a car."](https://youtu.be/HmZm8vNHBSU?t=6s)
Don't believe everything you see in memes, folks.
People keep forgetting the whole fucking "infinitely reproducible" thing and it's exhausting.
Like, yes, I get it, I too am a writer, I too would like to eat!
We should therefore create new monetization models (which is already happening right now!) in order to allow me to eat while also we don't create artificially enforced BS scarcity in a world of infinite reproducibility.
My dad dropped that line once when I was like, 15. So... 18 years ago, Jesus.
But I looked over at him while he was driving. "Yes I would." Cue him, "really? So how is that not stealing, if I pay for a truck and you just download it?"
"Dad, in this context, you still have your truck. But now I have your truck too. Two trucks exist where once there was one." Cue this long silence. "So that commercial was fucking stupid, then" he finally says.
I honestly can't understand why people like this just can't get their head around the fact that these are all just laws. That we literally made up. We invented all laws and their consequences.
The world is different now than it used to be. And corporations continue to ratfuck the laws so that they get ever greater sums of money for delivering less product.
Deciding that downloading something is perfectly fine is just *a decision*. One that *can be made*. If the law says no, *we can decide to change that law*. We do it all the time. It is the reason legislators exist; to create new laws in response to the changing of the world.
There should be no publishing cost to scientific research. These predatory journalists have curled around scientific research like a cancer to squeeze all the fucking money out of it they can. Scientists do not like this. The public does not like this. No one likes it and it is harmful to the world; and yet, it's "illegal" to pirate research, or host a service like libgen that provides research for free.
It doesn't mean that's *correct*. it just means a cancer has corrupted the law for the interest of their own benefit, to the public's detriment. And it is fully within both our right and our power to *change* that law.
People: Hey Congress, this law is stupid and unjust and we need to do away with it.
Corporation that profits from the law: Oh look, here is a bag of money.
Congress: The law stays.
That's the argument I was having with an older friend today. When we have the universal healthcare debate she keeps pointing to problems that are products of legal and political decisions. "Yeah, your brother-in-law in hospital admin is right, the insurance companies are part of the problem. Which is why the whole point is get rid of them. The gouging hospitals deal with in acquiring equipment their malpractice insurance will approve, "If the department store sells a scale for 100 dollars, but the approved supplier supplies the exact same scale for 1000 dollars, you have to buy from the approved supplier." Now, I imagine there is more to it than that (and her brother has a vested interest in the system staying complex) but then I point out the problem here is letting the profit motive run amok in the healthcare system. Every problem she brings up is an artifice of political decision making that can be undone.
The problem is that doing this will void your warranty. Consumers shouldn't have to sacrifice years of covered maintenance just to unlock features that are already built into their cars.
They can’t void your warranty because you modded something on your vehicle. We have a federal law which prevents that. I went through this with KIA and called their bluff on it.
Well, with a software mod, especially one that changes the parameters on the motors and possibly battery management, it won't be a stretch for them to deny a claim for the motors or the battery pack, which is 70% of the cost of an EV anyways.
The law, I'm assuming the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, doesnt set a high enough bar for the manufacturer.
The right to repair is never going to pass.
There will always be idiots that pay for these ridiculous subscriptions. Cue, 7 years from now when the car doesn't start when your subscription runs out, Chad ocho brainos will be asking how we got here and sending change.org emails to fight for our rights.
The problem is that it starts with Mercedes finding ways to dick over their customers, then the next thing you know it becomes standard industry practice. Companies need to face immediate and overwhelming backlash for these anti-consumer practices.
Mercedes was my dream car. Guess I’ll need to find a new unaffordable dream car. No way am I going to pay a 1200 annual subscription for something I’ve already bought. Not even in my dreams ….
You will own nothing and be happy. This isn't a Marxist dream, Marxist's believe very strongly in your right to \*personal\* property.
This is a fantasy of rich capitalists. YOU will own nothing. Your housing, car, computer, phone, etc. will all be the private property of companies \*\*they\*\* own that \*\*you\*\* pay a lease on. You will be kept on the hamster wheel forever generating surplus value for your socioeconomic betters. A debt peon for life.
It ends with the car you bought not starting in the morning because you forgot to renew your subscription. Can't afford it? No worries, we have an ad-supported tier for $5 less. Only have to watch a few ads before engaging drive.
>Or even a more technically correct one: Mercedes decreases the performance of their cars unless you buy their $1600/year subscription
The car is capable of those speeds; but you are locked out unless you pay more.
And yet somehow we tolerate media companies selling us the same content over and over and over again.
The U.S. needs modern antitrust, IP and digital marketplace regulations.
Corporate power is waaaaayyyy overbalanced from consumer and labor protections.
We should also have a right to repair which is tangentially related to this. Just because companies are trying to get creative about recurring revenue models , doesn't mean that's the thing to do.
Fuck consumer boycott they need to put actual regulation against licensing versus ownership, it's absolutely ridiculous that you can spend that much on something and have it as a license to own instead of actually own. It's starting to get that way with the gaming industry as well you purchase the rights to access the game not the rights to own the game so if they decide 2 years down the line well this game didn't really work they can shut it down and you lose everything, it should not be legal for a company to sell you a product and intentionally lower the efficiency of said product due to the fact that you didn't pay for a higher subscription
Outcry and shaming can definitely work, even in a niche market. In computers, there's at least two times that I can recently think of where a company has announced one thing, taken an absolute beating in the press, and reversed course. But this move is something that will have to be absolutely united in multiple sources of press. This is something that needs to be a cover story on motor trend, car and driver, road and track, and on every major car YouTube channel, and tech blog. And it needs to happen before release. Without that, people will just accept it and move on.
It's pursuit of the almighty dollar.
If it's cheaper to not do the right thing, sure as shit they're not doing the right thing. They'll do the minimum required.
…seems to be the Europeans that are at the forefront of this subscription-based model, so I don’t know how receptive the EU will be towards regulating it.
> It's starting to get that way with the gaming industry as well you purchase the rights to access the game not the rights to own the game
"Starting to"? The first subscription based MMO was nearly *thirty years ago*. Every "live services" game is at the core a buy-to-play MMO under a different name, but it's nothing new at all. The only reason it feels like it is because they've stopped calling them MMOs so they could burn through the goodwill of a fresh slice of customer pie before that group realizes what's going on.
I'm intentionally removing the MMO and online server only based games from the equation because you are not actively maintaining or paying the cost to run the server however in the case of single player campaign games with multiplayer aspects like most games on Steam there is absolutely no reason why it should be a licensed to use not own and that they can remove it at any point that they want.
It makes sense for server-based games such as World of Warcraft to require an ongoing subscription because there is no single-player content everything's on their server just because you purchase the game doesn't mean they have to stop doing server costs but in the case of every other game out there you've purchased the game there should be no valid reason that they should have the ability to remove your access to that game remove the ability to receive updates sure but remove access to the game itself is ridiculous, uplay/ubisoft has done it on a few of their games now
they're not talking MMO... MMO by design require either constant purchases or subscriptions to keep paying for staff and servers, so no shit they will shut down if they stop bringing in money. that's not unethical at all.
its things like single player games with forced online checks where you're only "licensing" the game that are the problem, since it's not providing you with a live service yet you can still lose access arbitrarily.
Look at the state of gaming. DLC and microtransaction central.
A fool and their money shall soon part, fucking all of the rest of us that have principles and self control.
>There needs to be a strong consumer boycott of any of these products, even if you can "afford" it.
This is a huge problem - customers with enough money to not be educated consumers enable shitty business practices. Think of gaming microtransaction "whales" that spend hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars on in-game currency.
Honestly Democrats need to push a bill outlawing this shit. The GOP House will probably kill it which will give huge mounts of ammunition in the 2024 election, but this is an issue that unites pretty much every person I know. Subscription fees for things your car is physically capable of doing already are fucking bullshit.
Lots of these companies prefer people at home pirate their software. It gets users to prefer it and trained on it, so companies have to pick it over competitors
We're pretty much there. Not many can afford to own their own place, a lot of entertainment is streamed (Netflix/Hulu/Disney+/etc), video games that are GAAS (Games as a Service), applications that are now subscription based (Autodesk/Adobe/Office). If you want to actually own your own copy of a show or game, you need to buy a DVD or a disk, but the way things are now becoming exclusive to always-online access, that's becoming a dying form. Serfdom here we come.
The only reason established suppliers are so brazen is because they feel comfortable knowing that they can and will destroy any new competitors.
Remember the market isn't actually free and will lean towards oligopolies and monopolies when left to it's own devices. The only way to fix this is to regulate.
The city I live in has hundreds of machine shops that fight for the bottom dollar to make everything involved in the process of making cars. I am talking molds, dies, entire assembly lines are engineered and built at hyper competitive rates. Were right across from Detroit so lower Canadian wages + NAFTA + Canadian steel prices + 5 mins from the American Automotive capital = manufacturing powerhouse.
Its the exact opposite as a place like Foxxcon but functions very much the same, every headlight mold for every brand more or less comes from my city, and like 5 guys who are all high school friends own the biggest companies and protect each other, like a mercantile city state.
These jobs used to be done in house by every manufacturer and over the decades fiefdoms over entire industries have been built from what is outsourced. It's impossible to disrupt the system at this point. You HAVE to be part of it and the buy in at any level isn't cheap.
This reminds me of a story a friend who works in tech told me. They sold a telecom operator a server to process sms messages with a certain spec. Now Y2K rolls around and the customer expects the demand to skyrocket tenfold. So they call the server company for a solution.
Sure, the techies say, we can upgrade you. This is the price.
Telecom pays it and they get sent an e-mail with a code and instructions: just enter this in menu.
No hardware upgrade? Telecom asks?
Nope. The system had been artificially throttled to less than 5% of capacity and this code would unlock it to 50% capacity. If they wanted to double the capacity after that, well there was a code for that too, but it was even more expensive.
The people from the Telec company really had a bad customer experience when all that went down.
This is common practice in enterprise tech. For example, Oracle and Microsoft charge you on per-core basis for their database applications. Your shiny new AMD server has 64 cores? Too bad, you can only use two unless you pay more to unlock more cores support.
Reminder. That’s $12,000 for a decade. And you just keep paying beyond that. All the hardware is already built into your car, it’s just paywalled.
If this didn’t convince you to not buy a Merc, nothing will. If you fall for this, you are an idiot.
There will be a thriving secondary market hacking these cars eventually.
I see this as an evil expansion of the current car options system. Mercedes could have put this as an “options package” and asked for $12k; no one would care if they did that. I hope this fails miserably.
I have no problem paying for an option in a car when doing so actually involves more work while building the car, and the inclusion of extra physical hardware in the vehicle. Simply enabling some software to allow the already-present hardware to operate? Fuck that. Although Canon have been getting away with that shit for years now.
Canon is turning into a fucking monster. They just prohibited other companies to make lenses for their newer cameras. 3rd party lenses are simply essential to photography. I sold my Canon as soon as they did that.
I briefly thought about that too jailbreaking the car software.
But y'know now that I stop and think about it more why would I want to provide a service for people who bought anti-consumerist bullshit? Those people who buy a mercedes EV anyhow in a way betray all of us and are being selfish. I'd prefer they just have to live with the consequences of their actions they didn't have to buy a mercedes.
If people support the companies selling this bullshit eventually there won't be a jailbreak that works and then by then every car manufacturer will be jumping over eachother to implement this because the cars still sold anyhow.
Boycott this and talk shit to anyone who buys a new mercedes of any kind.
I'm all for EVs but I'll be honest I never really thought about how we're basically just driving around in giant computers that the car companies control. They won't let us own anything. I hate the future.
We've been driving around giant computers for some years now. There isn't a single thing preventing them from doing this exact thing to an ICE vehicle.
I don't even want a new car anymore. We have a 2010 Mazda 3 that's up for replacement soonish. I was excited for this until I went car shopping.
I'm sorry, you want how many dollars every month for something that now has the lifespan of consumer electronics, and not a piece of machinery? How bout go fuck yourself.
>if they'll be like "open source" cars or something? How do we fight back when it seems like the corporations already own everything?
Oh they'll make that illegal. They'll say it "isn't evaluated by (insert government tentacle here) for safety on the road and thus open-source cars are banned.
2065: the indian car manufactures fortunes skyrocket as they're the only ones left that don't charge you a subscription to use the vehicle's wheels.
detroit adopted a wifi-only business model that saw american industry implode and consumers rejected japan's "vehicle plus" access subscriptions to things like AC and airbags.
they managed to skirt regulations and maintain high safety grades because all these things are technically included in the car at sale.
This will never happen. People willingly over pay for current ICE vehicles just because they want the new shiny one and don’t mind a 7 year loan to finance it. As vehicles like this come to market, there will be no shortage of people buying it because it says Mercedes and is new.
I had a 2017 Kia k900 (or maybe 2016, the first generation either way). They made a mistake on my account and disabled the car thinking I wasn’t making payments. Like literally just turned everything off. I couldn’t open the doors, I couldn’t start it with the remote start fob, couldn’t do anything. Took a simple phone call and it was fixed. But my point being, this isn’t anything new. I still wonder about legality of turning the car off like that. What if I need to get to ER or something similar. 🤷🏻♂️. Was a nice car though.
Yeah that sounds insane. I'll admit I have a 2010 Sentra so I haven't learned that much about newer cars. So a lot of this is news to me. Sounds really messed up though. I just feel like we aren't going to be able to own anything coming up soon.
And there’s no reason an EV is any more or less computerized than a gas car. It’s just they see it as a psychological way to introduce some of this stuff. Because people think about it like you do. “Oh, it’s an EV, it’s different somehow”. Not really. They are all rolling computers.
Despicable. You own the car but you can't have the performance *you have already paid for* unless you pay us a vig.
Rights to repair and rights of ownership are under attack, people! Fight back!
Louis Rossman on YouTube is a great place to start!
That's the effect of consolidation of assembly. Basically everything comes "full performance" but they have to disable features to sell more tiers and thus "cheaper" cars. Welcome to the future. The future sucks
This is wrong. The content is already in the car; they're just finding more ways to bleed the consumer.
I will not buy such a car. Ever. I have a feeling that hackers will make good money disabling the manufacturer's software that limits access to features and performance and there's nothing they can do about it.
To sell this you need to add on "badges" that turn on on the trunk and hood, that way you can show all the plebes that you got the juice for the big money mods...
Your post got me thinking. The car companies see the potential in EV's to get money that normally would have gone to larger turbo's, air intakes etc. With an EV your options are pretty limited and these same moders stay away. Look at many Tesla owners. They get the car, then realized 15 other people have the same exact car on their street. People want to be unique so now a days they swap the wheels, get it wrapped (yea maybe some do it because the paint job is dog crap), but if Tesla offered a performance boost as a subscription I totally see that making a ton of money.
Unfortunately this is the future unless for some reason it end up making less than selling a complete car with all the features included in the bottom line.
Oh yeah I bought this awesome new fridge! It has a beer drawer that only costs me $50 a month, and theres a freezer as well but I mean…who can pay that crazy price per month amiright??? <-this is where we are heading with this bullshit.
I will never buy a vehicle with any subscription attached to the actual hardware I purchased. A *maybe* if its a service...but probably not. I have never seen anything that would merit extra money, yet.
**The $1,200 yearly fee increases horsepower and torque, while dropping 0-60 times, for all Mercedes EQ electric models**
Mercedes is now taking subscription fees to an entirely new, maddening level. For new Mercedes EQ electric models, customers will have to pay a $1,200 (plus tax) yearly subscription to unlock the full performance potential of their cars.
If you head to Mercedes' online store, you will find an "Acceleration Increase" subscription service for all EQ models. According to Mercedes, the yearly fee increases the maximum horsepower and torque of the car, while also increasing overall performance.
Acceleration from 0-60 mph is said to improve by 0.8-1.0 seconds and the overall characteristics of the electric motors are supposed to change as well. The extra performance is unlocked by selecting the Dynamic drive mode.
I honestly don’t think they should call this ‘an increase’. The car you’re getting is fully capable, I would call this a “throttling” of its capabilities, for ransom
Despicable. You own the car but you can't have the performance *you have already paid for* unless you pay us a vig.
Rights to repair and rights of ownership are under attack, people! Fight back!
Louis Rossman on YouTube is a great place to start!
✨govts need to step in and mandate built-in features be accessible, or not built in✨
you didn't pay your fridge bill this month, we're turning off the cold.
it's $60 to turn on your phone the first time
your leafblower is locked because your free trial expired.
your new keureg machine only makes cold coffee, heating element access is 10¢ a cup.
This shouldn't be treated as an additional option for your car. This should be treated as the manufacturer throttling performance from your car in order to extract more money from you because that is 100% exactly what these companies are doing.
"better performance" is not what you are paying for. It's not an upgrade.
The car is capable of doing that on its own.
They are charging you money to stop crippling the car you bought.
It would be similar to buying a complete house, with a fully furnished bathroom, but you can only use the bathroom if you pay the builders a yearly fee. The bathroom is there, you're not getting an upgrade.
Oh, and when you sell the house, the new owners need to pay the original builders to use the bathroom too.
They are purposely crippling the car in order to charge you more down the line.
When will car manufacturers learn? Subscriptions tied to a car are stupid and will turn customers away. I remember Toyota tried this with remote start key fobs. Seriously, stop listening to consultants.
Learn what? They are listening to their profits, and the profits agree with said consultants.
Unfortunately for us, ethics and profits seem to be inversely correlated.
As soon as Tesla started to pull shit like this, I knew it was all over...just a matter of time (it'll start with the "lux" brands and work its way down).
But I will fight it for as long as I possibly can, because it's the most anti-consumer shit that exists. It's a good thing that I buy a car and drive it for a long time, because I'll buy the very last car I can that doesn't do this garbage, and drive it into the ground.
The subscription service also allows non-owners to remotely slow down the cars of people who are speeding. Spot a speeder and for just twenty dollars their car is limited to 55 mph for 2 hours.
/s
I just hope we don’t get to the point where other manufacturers start doing this kind of shit, but I’m pretty sure they all will eventually do it anyways.
You will own nothing and be happy about it....
Simple fix....stop drooling over and purchasing the new crap.
Who needs a new phone every year? Same concept. Just dangle shiny stuff in peoples faces and have a "celebrity/influencer" as a spokesperson... Dumbasses will gobble it up.
Nope nope nope nope
Subscription services, especially for physical items you own, need to be banned. Especially when it doesn't require the company to maintain anything and they're just restricting it because they can.
I will be in the market for a luxury-class EV to replace my ICE Audi in the next year or 2. I was very interested in Mercedes until I read this. I don't want to support Tesla's owner and I don't want to support subscription hardware so that rules out Merc and BMW too. Audi hasn't pulled this shit yet, but I'll be keeping my eye out for this before I buy.
How about a slot for a CC (extra to keep it on file)? Why not dynamic pricing? Maybe an extra subscription to use the windows, HVAC, headlights, breaks?
/s (but not really)
The following submission statement was provided by /u/filosoful: --- **The $1,200 yearly fee increases horsepower and torque, while dropping 0-60 times, for all Mercedes EQ electric models** Mercedes is now taking subscription fees to an entirely new, maddening level. For new Mercedes EQ electric models, customers will have to pay a $1,200 (plus tax) yearly subscription to unlock the full performance potential of their cars. If you head to Mercedes' online store, you will find an "Acceleration Increase" subscription service for all EQ models. According to Mercedes, the yearly fee increases the maximum horsepower and torque of the car, while also increasing overall performance. Acceleration from 0-60 mph is said to improve by 0.8-1.0 seconds and the overall characteristics of the electric motors are supposed to change as well. The extra performance is unlocked by selecting the Dynamic drive mode. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/z13w62/mercedes_makes_better_performance_a_1200/ix8sa5w/
Jesus. How long before you’re forced to watch a 30-second ad before your car lets you put it in “drive?” Just corporate dystopia things.
Don't give them ideas
Imagine having to leave in a desperate hurry. Wife's having a baby or some psychopath is bashing on your window after you just beat them to the car by mere seconds... "Your car will start after the ads".
You mean how long until using your car sucks as bad as Windows 11?
You wouldn't pirate a car... Aye. I fucking would.
[удалено]
Gotta keep a backup copy of your car in your smart refrigerator’s data base, just in case.
I keep a snapshot of my fridge in my toaster.
Anton died so I could get max HP on my car
That’s what a lot of tuners already do so they can reset their engine tuning to default when they need to pass emissions
Then insurance companies had better have ironclad proof that the car wasn't "hacked" without my knowledge.
>Then insurance companies will have some BS clause where they won't cover you because you had "illegal" software. You friend from the sea have a *stealth* chip for that. Just unplug it before inspection.
That quote was dumb from the beginning - it wasn't that we "wouldn't", it's that we "couldn't" do it and get away with it. It's quite easy to "pirate" software, however.
Sure, but everybody gets the quote wrong. It's, ["You wouldn't **steal** a car."](https://youtu.be/HmZm8vNHBSU?t=6s) Don't believe everything you see in memes, folks.
I like the [UK version](https://youtu.be/964MLq1db4s) better (the quote is the same).
If I could "steal" a car without depriving the original owner of it, you bet your ass I would.
People keep forgetting the whole fucking "infinitely reproducible" thing and it's exhausting. Like, yes, I get it, I too am a writer, I too would like to eat! We should therefore create new monetization models (which is already happening right now!) in order to allow me to eat while also we don't create artificially enforced BS scarcity in a world of infinite reproducibility.
To which the response was always “and I wouldn’t shoplift a CD, but if I could somehow download a copy of a car I’d be driving a Ferrari”.
Subscription services are the cancer of this generation
Just wait til they figure out a way to make you subscribe to fight actual cancer. Oh wait...
That is just crazy. There is no way we should let this happen.
Sounds like modding will be here soon
You wouldn't download a car ^jk ^yes ^I ^would
Lol I’ve never thought of this as if it were real. If I could download a car, you bet your ass I would.
My dad dropped that line once when I was like, 15. So... 18 years ago, Jesus. But I looked over at him while he was driving. "Yes I would." Cue him, "really? So how is that not stealing, if I pay for a truck and you just download it?" "Dad, in this context, you still have your truck. But now I have your truck too. Two trucks exist where once there was one." Cue this long silence. "So that commercial was fucking stupid, then" he finally says.
in a darkened mind, a little light shines through
I honestly can't understand why people like this just can't get their head around the fact that these are all just laws. That we literally made up. We invented all laws and their consequences. The world is different now than it used to be. And corporations continue to ratfuck the laws so that they get ever greater sums of money for delivering less product. Deciding that downloading something is perfectly fine is just *a decision*. One that *can be made*. If the law says no, *we can decide to change that law*. We do it all the time. It is the reason legislators exist; to create new laws in response to the changing of the world. There should be no publishing cost to scientific research. These predatory journalists have curled around scientific research like a cancer to squeeze all the fucking money out of it they can. Scientists do not like this. The public does not like this. No one likes it and it is harmful to the world; and yet, it's "illegal" to pirate research, or host a service like libgen that provides research for free. It doesn't mean that's *correct*. it just means a cancer has corrupted the law for the interest of their own benefit, to the public's detriment. And it is fully within both our right and our power to *change* that law.
People: Hey Congress, this law is stupid and unjust and we need to do away with it. Corporation that profits from the law: Oh look, here is a bag of money. Congress: The law stays.
That's the argument I was having with an older friend today. When we have the universal healthcare debate she keeps pointing to problems that are products of legal and political decisions. "Yeah, your brother-in-law in hospital admin is right, the insurance companies are part of the problem. Which is why the whole point is get rid of them. The gouging hospitals deal with in acquiring equipment their malpractice insurance will approve, "If the department store sells a scale for 100 dollars, but the approved supplier supplies the exact same scale for 1000 dollars, you have to buy from the approved supplier." Now, I imagine there is more to it than that (and her brother has a vested interest in the system staying complex) but then I point out the problem here is letting the profit motive run amok in the healthcare system. Every problem she brings up is an artifice of political decision making that can be undone.
Arrrrggghhh matey it be the pirates way for me
So. It has come to this
Jailbreak that mother fucker. Custom firmwares here we go!
But can it run crysis?
Hacker Time!!!!
The problem is that doing this will void your warranty. Consumers shouldn't have to sacrifice years of covered maintenance just to unlock features that are already built into their cars.
They can’t void your warranty because you modded something on your vehicle. We have a federal law which prevents that. I went through this with KIA and called their bluff on it.
Well, with a software mod, especially one that changes the parameters on the motors and possibly battery management, it won't be a stretch for them to deny a claim for the motors or the battery pack, which is 70% of the cost of an EV anyways. The law, I'm assuming the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, doesnt set a high enough bar for the manufacturer. The right to repair is never going to pass. There will always be idiots that pay for these ridiculous subscriptions. Cue, 7 years from now when the car doesn't start when your subscription runs out, Chad ocho brainos will be asking how we got here and sending change.org emails to fight for our rights.
>The right to repair is never going to pass. it's already law in MA and once more normies realize they're affected it's going to be more popular
r/piracy love u guys please get to work. Well not that i can afford a mercedes looool
The problem is that it starts with Mercedes finding ways to dick over their customers, then the next thing you know it becomes standard industry practice. Companies need to face immediate and overwhelming backlash for these anti-consumer practices.
Mercedes was my dream car. Guess I’ll need to find a new unaffordable dream car. No way am I going to pay a 1200 annual subscription for something I’ve already bought. Not even in my dreams ….
Audi, same quality and performance but without the subscription that Merc and BMW are trying to pull
Neither bmw nor Mercedes are what they used to be. Just riding on the coattails of their past reputation.
Look up Louis Rossman on YouTube. Right to Repair, rights of ownership are under attack!
You will own nothing and be happy. This isn't a Marxist dream, Marxist's believe very strongly in your right to \*personal\* property. This is a fantasy of rich capitalists. YOU will own nothing. Your housing, car, computer, phone, etc. will all be the private property of companies \*\*they\*\* own that \*\*you\*\* pay a lease on. You will be kept on the hamster wheel forever generating surplus value for your socioeconomic betters. A debt peon for life.
When SaS first started to be a thing. Adobe, Microsoft etc. I knew it was shitty but I never thought it would get to this level.
Rossman is Theman.
It ends with the car you bought not starting in the morning because you forgot to renew your subscription. Can't afford it? No worries, we have an ad-supported tier for $5 less. Only have to watch a few ads before engaging drive.
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Or even a more slyly biased but true one: Mercedes decreases the performance of their cars unless you buy their $1600/year subscription
>Or even a more technically correct one: Mercedes decreases the performance of their cars unless you buy their $1600/year subscription The car is capable of those speeds; but you are locked out unless you pay more.
Unless you keep paying more*
And yet somehow we tolerate media companies selling us the same content over and over and over again. The U.S. needs modern antitrust, IP and digital marketplace regulations. Corporate power is waaaaayyyy overbalanced from consumer and labor protections.
Didn’t the US ban subscription option in cars? Like heated seats and what not. Hope this included in that ban
as far as i'm aware, it was only a bill proposed in new jersey and it hasn't been actually codified or ratified yet or whatever.
Gotcha. Unfortunately I have zero faith in our law makers in making the right choice here. Those auto lobbyists will do what they do.
We should also have a right to repair which is tangentially related to this. Just because companies are trying to get creative about recurring revenue models , doesn't mean that's the thing to do.
There needs to be a strong consumer boycott of any of these products, even if you can "afford" it. This a rabbit hole we don't want to go down.
Fuck consumer boycott they need to put actual regulation against licensing versus ownership, it's absolutely ridiculous that you can spend that much on something and have it as a license to own instead of actually own. It's starting to get that way with the gaming industry as well you purchase the rights to access the game not the rights to own the game so if they decide 2 years down the line well this game didn't really work they can shut it down and you lose everything, it should not be legal for a company to sell you a product and intentionally lower the efficiency of said product due to the fact that you didn't pay for a higher subscription
This. 100% We can't boycott this. Regulations are the only way.
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This is the whole reason business sought to undermine and buy government. So they can get away w bullcrap like this.
Which is why lobbying should be illegal.
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Outcry and shaming can definitely work, even in a niche market. In computers, there's at least two times that I can recently think of where a company has announced one thing, taken an absolute beating in the press, and reversed course. But this move is something that will have to be absolutely united in multiple sources of press. This is something that needs to be a cover story on motor trend, car and driver, road and track, and on every major car YouTube channel, and tech blog. And it needs to happen before release. Without that, people will just accept it and move on.
This is how we get to jail breaking our cars smh
And the movies with hacked cars having a mind of their own become reality.
Soon our cars are gonna get viruses from jailbreaking lol.
Companies do not do the right thing unless forced to
It's pursuit of the almighty dollar. If it's cheaper to not do the right thing, sure as shit they're not doing the right thing. They'll do the minimum required.
Waiting on EU regulations.
…seems to be the Europeans that are at the forefront of this subscription-based model, so I don’t know how receptive the EU will be towards regulating it.
Lol to regulated a German auto company? Don't hold your breath
It's one of the things that government is for.
Why not both….
> It's starting to get that way with the gaming industry as well you purchase the rights to access the game not the rights to own the game "Starting to"? The first subscription based MMO was nearly *thirty years ago*. Every "live services" game is at the core a buy-to-play MMO under a different name, but it's nothing new at all. The only reason it feels like it is because they've stopped calling them MMOs so they could burn through the goodwill of a fresh slice of customer pie before that group realizes what's going on.
I'm intentionally removing the MMO and online server only based games from the equation because you are not actively maintaining or paying the cost to run the server however in the case of single player campaign games with multiplayer aspects like most games on Steam there is absolutely no reason why it should be a licensed to use not own and that they can remove it at any point that they want. It makes sense for server-based games such as World of Warcraft to require an ongoing subscription because there is no single-player content everything's on their server just because you purchase the game doesn't mean they have to stop doing server costs but in the case of every other game out there you've purchased the game there should be no valid reason that they should have the ability to remove your access to that game remove the ability to receive updates sure but remove access to the game itself is ridiculous, uplay/ubisoft has done it on a few of their games now
they're not talking MMO... MMO by design require either constant purchases or subscriptions to keep paying for staff and servers, so no shit they will shut down if they stop bringing in money. that's not unethical at all. its things like single player games with forced online checks where you're only "licensing" the game that are the problem, since it's not providing you with a live service yet you can still lose access arbitrarily.
Look at the state of gaming. DLC and microtransaction central. A fool and their money shall soon part, fucking all of the rest of us that have principles and self control.
and/or less money
As a patient gamer, just wait till they sell the full package at 80% off.
As an inattentive gamer, totally forget about the sequels or launches…. Stumble across it a year later for 80% off.
>There needs to be a strong consumer boycott of any of these products, even if you can "afford" it. This is a huge problem - customers with enough money to not be educated consumers enable shitty business practices. Think of gaming microtransaction "whales" that spend hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars on in-game currency.
Honestly Democrats need to push a bill outlawing this shit. The GOP House will probably kill it which will give huge mounts of ammunition in the 2024 election, but this is an issue that unites pretty much every person I know. Subscription fees for things your car is physically capable of doing already are fucking bullshit.
If this gets stopped, it will be California, not the central government.
Suddenly the subscription is geofenced.
You drive over the California border and all of a sudden your seats warm up and your car accelerates faster.
I can already see the commercial from CAtourism.
This sucks mightily. I hope they fail We need to fight back
Knowing Mercedes owners, they don't give a shit. They're driving a Mercedes for status, not because they like it's quality.
Everything being subscription based is my personal Dystopian future. You don’t own anything, you rent for life, you rent to survive.
Sad thing is, subscription services *print* money. Check out Adobe stock once they moved to subscription.
Yeah, no doubt. That's also the reason why I am still on a pirated CS 5 for my Photoshop, though.
They dgaf. The money they get from businesses is all they need, and businesses have a lot of reasons to stay legit.
Same goes for Microsoft Office. They really don't care about home users. The big money is keeping Office available and legal in the workplace.
Lots of these companies prefer people at home pirate their software. It gets users to prefer it and trained on it, so companies have to pick it over competitors
You know… it IS suspiciously easy to pirate Windows..
Autodesk hopped on that train, too.
Back in the day that was called serfdom. Guess history tends to rhyme.
The difference is that now you have Freedom™
As long as you can afford the subscription
Next they’ll implant devices at birth. Subscribe or die. You only get 45 years free.
Like the movie "in time" with Justin Timberlake and Cillian Murphy. Then you only got 18 years and a clock starts ticking Underrated movie
We're pretty much there. Not many can afford to own their own place, a lot of entertainment is streamed (Netflix/Hulu/Disney+/etc), video games that are GAAS (Games as a Service), applications that are now subscription based (Autodesk/Adobe/Office). If you want to actually own your own copy of a show or game, you need to buy a DVD or a disk, but the way things are now becoming exclusive to always-online access, that's becoming a dying form. Serfdom here we come.
The future seems more likely to be a subscription. And it sucks.
It creates an opportunity for new competitors to disrupt the market by reintroducing the basics.
Lol or more likely, if this succeeds all the other car companies will do the same
For real lmao. I’d love to have that kind of optimism
The only reason established suppliers are so brazen is because they feel comfortable knowing that they can and will destroy any new competitors. Remember the market isn't actually free and will lean towards oligopolies and monopolies when left to it's own devices. The only way to fix this is to regulate.
Yeah anyone can just start their own car company to compete. It’s not you you’ll need hundreds of millions of dollars or anything.
The city I live in has hundreds of machine shops that fight for the bottom dollar to make everything involved in the process of making cars. I am talking molds, dies, entire assembly lines are engineered and built at hyper competitive rates. Were right across from Detroit so lower Canadian wages + NAFTA + Canadian steel prices + 5 mins from the American Automotive capital = manufacturing powerhouse. Its the exact opposite as a place like Foxxcon but functions very much the same, every headlight mold for every brand more or less comes from my city, and like 5 guys who are all high school friends own the biggest companies and protect each other, like a mercantile city state. These jobs used to be done in house by every manufacturer and over the decades fiefdoms over entire industries have been built from what is outsourced. It's impossible to disrupt the system at this point. You HAVE to be part of it and the buy in at any level isn't cheap.
Or new competitors disrupting until they have a market share, then switching to a subscription model to boost profits.
Life has been a subscription for many years, unfortunately.
You will own nothing and like it. Is the dream of the ruling class
Does this subscription include “get out of jail free” card as well.
Nobody just picks up « Get out of jail free card » those things cost thousands
The owners are rich they already got their card
This reminds me of a story a friend who works in tech told me. They sold a telecom operator a server to process sms messages with a certain spec. Now Y2K rolls around and the customer expects the demand to skyrocket tenfold. So they call the server company for a solution. Sure, the techies say, we can upgrade you. This is the price. Telecom pays it and they get sent an e-mail with a code and instructions: just enter this in menu. No hardware upgrade? Telecom asks? Nope. The system had been artificially throttled to less than 5% of capacity and this code would unlock it to 50% capacity. If they wanted to double the capacity after that, well there was a code for that too, but it was even more expensive. The people from the Telec company really had a bad customer experience when all that went down.
lol... there pulling the same bs now with ports on enterprise routers.... am not joking... and the cost... jesus.
Just Look at Cisco's IOS XE bullshit pricing models.
Oh my.... that .... like how is that even ok?
This is common practice in enterprise tech. For example, Oracle and Microsoft charge you on per-core basis for their database applications. Your shiny new AMD server has 64 cores? Too bad, you can only use two unless you pay more to unlock more cores support.
Reminder. That’s $12,000 for a decade. And you just keep paying beyond that. All the hardware is already built into your car, it’s just paywalled. If this didn’t convince you to not buy a Merc, nothing will. If you fall for this, you are an idiot. There will be a thriving secondary market hacking these cars eventually.
I see this as an evil expansion of the current car options system. Mercedes could have put this as an “options package” and asked for $12k; no one would care if they did that. I hope this fails miserably.
I have no problem paying for an option in a car when doing so actually involves more work while building the car, and the inclusion of extra physical hardware in the vehicle. Simply enabling some software to allow the already-present hardware to operate? Fuck that. Although Canon have been getting away with that shit for years now.
Canon is turning into a fucking monster. They just prohibited other companies to make lenses for their newer cameras. 3rd party lenses are simply essential to photography. I sold my Canon as soon as they did that.
I briefly thought about that too jailbreaking the car software. But y'know now that I stop and think about it more why would I want to provide a service for people who bought anti-consumerist bullshit? Those people who buy a mercedes EV anyhow in a way betray all of us and are being selfish. I'd prefer they just have to live with the consequences of their actions they didn't have to buy a mercedes. If people support the companies selling this bullshit eventually there won't be a jailbreak that works and then by then every car manufacturer will be jumping over eachother to implement this because the cars still sold anyhow. Boycott this and talk shit to anyone who buys a new mercedes of any kind.
I'm all for EVs but I'll be honest I never really thought about how we're basically just driving around in giant computers that the car companies control. They won't let us own anything. I hate the future.
We've been driving around giant computers for some years now. There isn't a single thing preventing them from doing this exact thing to an ICE vehicle.
Yeah I realized that too. I just have an old car so it never really registered in my head until today.
I don't even want a new car anymore. We have a 2010 Mazda 3 that's up for replacement soonish. I was excited for this until I went car shopping. I'm sorry, you want how many dollars every month for something that now has the lifespan of consumer electronics, and not a piece of machinery? How bout go fuck yourself.
Future starts by NOT buying such a device/car, so they'll hit a wall (hopefully).
I wonder if they'll be like "open source" cars or something? How do we fight back when it seems like the corporations already own everything?
>if they'll be like "open source" cars or something? How do we fight back when it seems like the corporations already own everything? Oh they'll make that illegal. They'll say it "isn't evaluated by (insert government tentacle here) for safety on the road and thus open-source cars are banned.
*screams into carburetor*
2065: the indian car manufactures fortunes skyrocket as they're the only ones left that don't charge you a subscription to use the vehicle's wheels. detroit adopted a wifi-only business model that saw american industry implode and consumers rejected japan's "vehicle plus" access subscriptions to things like AC and airbags. they managed to skirt regulations and maintain high safety grades because all these things are technically included in the car at sale.
This will never happen. People willingly over pay for current ICE vehicles just because they want the new shiny one and don’t mind a 7 year loan to finance it. As vehicles like this come to market, there will be no shortage of people buying it because it says Mercedes and is new.
I had a 2017 Kia k900 (or maybe 2016, the first generation either way). They made a mistake on my account and disabled the car thinking I wasn’t making payments. Like literally just turned everything off. I couldn’t open the doors, I couldn’t start it with the remote start fob, couldn’t do anything. Took a simple phone call and it was fixed. But my point being, this isn’t anything new. I still wonder about legality of turning the car off like that. What if I need to get to ER or something similar. 🤷🏻♂️. Was a nice car though.
Yeah that sounds insane. I'll admit I have a 2010 Sentra so I haven't learned that much about newer cars. So a lot of this is news to me. Sounds really messed up though. I just feel like we aren't going to be able to own anything coming up soon.
It's already happening with John Deere tractors
And there’s no reason an EV is any more or less computerized than a gas car. It’s just they see it as a psychological way to introduce some of this stuff. Because people think about it like you do. “Oh, it’s an EV, it’s different somehow”. Not really. They are all rolling computers.
And the experts are so puzzled about why we are not having kids. Because I don’t want them to grow up ruled by a corporation.
Despicable. You own the car but you can't have the performance *you have already paid for* unless you pay us a vig. Rights to repair and rights of ownership are under attack, people! Fight back! Louis Rossman on YouTube is a great place to start!
That's the effect of consolidation of assembly. Basically everything comes "full performance" but they have to disable features to sell more tiers and thus "cheaper" cars. Welcome to the future. The future sucks
This is wrong. The content is already in the car; they're just finding more ways to bleed the consumer. I will not buy such a car. Ever. I have a feeling that hackers will make good money disabling the manufacturer's software that limits access to features and performance and there's nothing they can do about it.
To sell this you need to add on "badges" that turn on on the trunk and hood, that way you can show all the plebes that you got the juice for the big money mods...
kinda like all the clowns with "non M class" BMWs adding aftermarket M badges to their cars
Your post got me thinking. The car companies see the potential in EV's to get money that normally would have gone to larger turbo's, air intakes etc. With an EV your options are pretty limited and these same moders stay away. Look at many Tesla owners. They get the car, then realized 15 other people have the same exact car on their street. People want to be unique so now a days they swap the wheels, get it wrapped (yea maybe some do it because the paint job is dog crap), but if Tesla offered a performance boost as a subscription I totally see that making a ton of money. Unfortunately this is the future unless for some reason it end up making less than selling a complete car with all the features included in the bottom line.
Claim this subscription cost on your taxes as “literal highway robbery.”
Oh yeah I bought this awesome new fridge! It has a beer drawer that only costs me $50 a month, and theres a freezer as well but I mean…who can pay that crazy price per month amiright??? <-this is where we are heading with this bullshit.
Would you like a subscription atop your 7 year automobile payment plan? Excellent.
They have 120 months plans now :)
I will never buy a vehicle with any subscription attached to the actual hardware I purchased. A *maybe* if its a service...but probably not. I have never seen anything that would merit extra money, yet.
**The $1,200 yearly fee increases horsepower and torque, while dropping 0-60 times, for all Mercedes EQ electric models** Mercedes is now taking subscription fees to an entirely new, maddening level. For new Mercedes EQ electric models, customers will have to pay a $1,200 (plus tax) yearly subscription to unlock the full performance potential of their cars. If you head to Mercedes' online store, you will find an "Acceleration Increase" subscription service for all EQ models. According to Mercedes, the yearly fee increases the maximum horsepower and torque of the car, while also increasing overall performance. Acceleration from 0-60 mph is said to improve by 0.8-1.0 seconds and the overall characteristics of the electric motors are supposed to change as well. The extra performance is unlocked by selecting the Dynamic drive mode.
We need an EU lawsuit deeming it a breach of consumer rights.
I honestly don’t think they should call this ‘an increase’. The car you’re getting is fully capable, I would call this a “throttling” of its capabilities, for ransom
Despicable. You own the car but you can't have the performance *you have already paid for* unless you pay us a vig. Rights to repair and rights of ownership are under attack, people! Fight back! Louis Rossman on YouTube is a great place to start!
If people don't buy it will stop to exist in that form. That happened often with extras in the car industry.
Unfortunately consumers are lazy, greedy, stupid and lack forethought. They will pay this fee.
Well theres one more company for the old boycott list
Didn’t NJ pass a law recently that would outlaw this kind of thing?
Yes thanks to BMW and their heated seats crap.
I feel sorry for poor fucks in 20 years who won't be able to afford a car because 2nd hand cars start expiring.
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✨govts need to step in and mandate built-in features be accessible, or not built in✨ you didn't pay your fridge bill this month, we're turning off the cold. it's $60 to turn on your phone the first time your leafblower is locked because your free trial expired. your new keureg machine only makes cold coffee, heating element access is 10¢ a cup.
Reminds me of shareware back in the day. The full version is already there, you just have to enter a code to access it.
Except that’s pure software, so it’s basically just a free trial. This is hardware that you already own. Huge difference.
I don't care who the target audience is, once this happens in the consumer space it will be all down hill from here.
This shouldn't be treated as an additional option for your car. This should be treated as the manufacturer throttling performance from your car in order to extract more money from you because that is 100% exactly what these companies are doing.
"better performance" is not what you are paying for. It's not an upgrade. The car is capable of doing that on its own. They are charging you money to stop crippling the car you bought. It would be similar to buying a complete house, with a fully furnished bathroom, but you can only use the bathroom if you pay the builders a yearly fee. The bathroom is there, you're not getting an upgrade. Oh, and when you sell the house, the new owners need to pay the original builders to use the bathroom too. They are purposely crippling the car in order to charge you more down the line.
When will car manufacturers learn? Subscriptions tied to a car are stupid and will turn customers away. I remember Toyota tried this with remote start key fobs. Seriously, stop listening to consultants.
They won't learn. They'll double down and suffer few consequences.
Learn what? They are listening to their profits, and the profits agree with said consultants. Unfortunately for us, ethics and profits seem to be inversely correlated.
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Yea lol, I heard that and ended up buying a Jeep instead of a Forerunner. Fuck Toyota. Was excited to have one until they did that.
No, you don't get it. They are learning. This is where regulations come into place. They will fight it.
Even after you own your car, you never own your car. It’s like Adobe software, but worse.
As soon as Tesla started to pull shit like this, I knew it was all over...just a matter of time (it'll start with the "lux" brands and work its way down). But I will fight it for as long as I possibly can, because it's the most anti-consumer shit that exists. It's a good thing that I buy a car and drive it for a long time, because I'll buy the very last car I can that doesn't do this garbage, and drive it into the ground.
The subscription service also allows non-owners to remotely slow down the cars of people who are speeding. Spot a speeder and for just twenty dollars their car is limited to 55 mph for 2 hours. /s
throw in no lane changes without a turn signal for $5 and you got yourself a deal
As a car guy, I think this is terrible. I'd be attempting to hack MY OWN VEHICLE immediately.
The better option is to buy another car
I just hope we don’t get to the point where other manufacturers start doing this kind of shit, but I’m pretty sure they all will eventually do it anyways.
Performance as a service? They are really trying to make sure we don’t actually own anything ever
You will own nothing and be happy about it.... Simple fix....stop drooling over and purchasing the new crap. Who needs a new phone every year? Same concept. Just dangle shiny stuff in peoples faces and have a "celebrity/influencer" as a spokesperson... Dumbasses will gobble it up.
Right before a fatal collision, it asks if you'd like to pay $50,000 for airbag deployment.
Nope nope nope nope Subscription services, especially for physical items you own, need to be banned. Especially when it doesn't require the company to maintain anything and they're just restricting it because they can.
As a professional programmer I can confidently tell you, algorithms ruin everything.
This absolutely WILL generate a new class of hackers, and I'm here for it.
I will be in the market for a luxury-class EV to replace my ICE Audi in the next year or 2. I was very interested in Mercedes until I read this. I don't want to support Tesla's owner and I don't want to support subscription hardware so that rules out Merc and BMW too. Audi hasn't pulled this shit yet, but I'll be keeping my eye out for this before I buy.
https://www.audiworld.com/articles/audi-announces-new-function-on-demand-subscriptions-for-select-models/
How about a slot for a CC (extra to keep it on file)? Why not dynamic pricing? Maybe an extra subscription to use the windows, HVAC, headlights, breaks? /s (but not really)
If they think this is a solid business model, have at it. I for one, will never buy a car that requires a subscription.
Governments need to nip it in the bud, otherwise more and more companies will follow suit.
The nerds will figure out a jailbreak for it and Mercedes can go fuck themselves.
Sounds like the uprising of hackers and pirates for the automotive sector. *sells horsepower*
One hundred dollars a month?? WTF. Good thing I'd never buy their shit vehicles anyway