Locked Up: Mercedes-Benz to Charge for Access to EQS' Rear-Wheel Steering
If you want the more-advanced version of the rear-wheel steering system on the Mercedes-Benz EQS, and you live in Germany, prepare to pony up to unlock the software.
It will cost you about $575 a year to get an over-the-air update that will unlock the 10-degree rear-wheel-steering system. Unless you sign up for a three-year subscription, in which case you’ll pay a bit over $1,300, which is a bit of a discount in terms of per-year rate.
For now, American buyers won’t need to worry about this — the 10-degree system is standard here (the base in Germany is 4.5 degrees of rear-wheel steering). But it’s yet another example of automakers flirting with the idea of charging customers subscription fees to access certain features.
I’m not trying to be alarmist here — just because automakers are testing the idea, it doesn’t mean it will become standard operating procedure. Automakers might find consumer backlash to be too harsh, for example.
Yet it’s one more way in which the carmakers are at least trying to see what does and doesn’t work when it comes to subscription-only access to features. No matter how the future plays out, these dipping of toes into the water, so to speak, bear watching.
[Image: Mercedes-Benz]
Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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While I very much dislike the idea, as long as this subscription nonsense stays in the > $90K neighborhood, i don’t really care. If someone is going to pay $175K for a car and let MB soak them another 575/year to unlock bits and pieces of it, that’s his business.
Isn't this a bit like subscribing to something just to start your own car with a keyfob?
The comments seem to be mostly right on. 3 year subscription fits in with the lease and expected reliability. I suspect car companies will not be happy when they turn into software/IT companies.
I'm not surprised. We had a 2008 ML550 and after about 2 years of ownership I wanted to activate the Bluetooth feature and came to find out that Mercedes charged about $425 if I remember correctly per year for the "privilege" of using it. No thanks, Mercedes. Gave me another reason not to buy that brand again.