Mercedes-Benz is set launch an online subscription service in the United States to help its electric vehicles accelerate faster.
The company will allow some of its vehicles to accelerate from 0-60mph in less than a second for an annual cost of $1,200 (£991) excluding tax.
It comes after rival manufacturer BMW introduced a subscription feature for heated seats earlier this year.
Mercedes has confirmed to BBC News that it does not intend to introduce “Acceleration Increase” in the UK at this time.
It will be available in the United States on the Mercedes-EQ EQE 350 and EQS 450, as well as their SUV counterparts.
According to the Mercedes US online store, the feature “electronically increases” the output of the car’s motor, as well as the torque.
All told, it estimates this amounts to a 20-24% increase in output, allowing a Mercedes-EQ 350 SUV to accelerate from 0-60mph in about 5.2 seconds, as opposed to 6.2 seconds without the subscription.
‘Consumer backlash’
Jack McKeown, Association of Scottish Motoring Writers president and motoring editor of the Courier newspaper, in Dundee, said Mercedes’s new feature was “unsurprising but dispiriting”.
“When you pay a monthly subscription for a phone or for broadband, you’re paying for the company to supply and maintain a data network,” he said.
“Mercedes is asking you to pay for hardware it has already installed in the car – and which it presumably already made a profit margin on when you bought the car.
“Trying to leverage even more profit out of subscription services is a worrying trend and I hope there is a consumer backlash against it.”
‘Coming soon’
In July, BMW faced a backlash when it announced customers could pay £25 per month to unlock heated seats and steering wheels in their cars.
And in December 2021, Toyota announced it would charge some drivers $8 per month to remotely start their cars using a key fob.
In 2019, Tesla introduced “Acceleration Boost”, which makes its Model 3 vehicles accelerate from 0-60mph half a second faster for a one-time fee of $2,000.
The Acceleration Increase subscription is listed as “coming soon” on the US Mercedes storefront, with no exact date given for its release.