Mercedes to offer more power by subscription

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Seems Mercedes have also decided follow BMW and go the way of the subscription.

US based (for now, or at least I can't find mention of it in the UK/Europe) but it's pretty despicable.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/23/23474969/merce...
https://www.thedrive.com/news/mercedes-makes-bette...
https://shop.mbusa.com/en-us/connect/pdp/Accelerat...

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Wills2 said:

Despicable?

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/despicable

Cambrige Dictionary said:

Very unpleasant or bad, causing strong feelings of dislike

Yep, pretty much sums it up.

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abzmike said:

How is that different to paying for a remap, except you do it online?

That you have to keep paying every year?

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2Btoo said:

I wonder how hard it will be to 'jailbreak' this? i.e. Whether a third-party company would be able to offer this service on such a car without needing to go via Mercedes.

I'm sure it would be but at the cost of the warranty and with the connectivity of modern cars its going to be harder than "remapping" an ICE (which itself was fraught with risks if you then needed to rely on the warranty).

That said, personally I would rather pay a "tuner" $1000 to jailbreak it than pay Mercedes.

Similar in fact to what I did with our Golf, original owner hadn't bought the App Connect option. To go via VW was (IIRC) £230 just to enable it. Instead I took it to a specialist who enabled everything that could be enabled for £100.

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cologne2792 said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0emYMLwtcc

...but yes. They've intentionally hobbled it *just* so they can sell what it can do by on-going yearly subscription rather than upfront.