Welcome to the era of vehicle DLC!
I'm old enough to remember 5 minutes ago when you bought all of a car when you dropped your entire life savings to purchase one.
Now you have to "unlock" the full potential of your vehicle with cloud-toggled features that add up to an extra week or two worth of groceries for the average family (BMW charges $18/month for heated seats).
More from the The Autopian:
There are practical limits to how fast your electric car can go but, much like gas-powered cars, it's rare that automakers give you 100% of the go-fast horsepower right off the dealer floor. This is why it's still popular to "flash" ECUs on cars to try and squeeze extra power by adjusting various parameters. In theory, this is also possible with electric cars, which are primarily designed to optimize range over performance.
Mercedes just announced its plans to do exactly that, with the succinctly named: Performance Acceleration On-Demand Upgrade.
"PAODU," which I pronounce as "Poodoo."
The Autopian says these subscriptions help automakers improve their razor-thin margins with EVs, which is weird, because they are already getting a ton of subsidies and tax breaks from the government for hailing in the glorious era of batteries powered by coal plants. In order for profits and margins to be so bad, you'd have to be investing in a product that has artificially-created demand and tons of inefficiencies due to bureaucratic bloat.
Here's what the monthly plan will cost for you people out there who have way more discretionary income than the average person:
