BMW and Mercedes with subscription model – Accelerate faster with “Season Pass”

Created: 11/25/2022, 9:30 am

By: Josh Grossman

Car fans are currently enjoying the benefit that gamers have been fighting for years.

DLC and Season Pass are already available for expensive cars.

Hamburg – Mercedes is currently making headlines with the “Acceleration Boost” for electric vehicles, which brings a “

” for a mere US$ 1,200 a year .

Other car manufacturers such as BMW also offer subscriptions with features that are actually already installed in the car.

The video game industry invented this trend with games like Call of Duty and Fortnite.

Now DLCs and Season Passes are coming for the car.

DLC for the car: performance and heated seats behind paywall – Mercedes and BMW imitate video games

What happened?

In an announcement from Mercedes, the luxury automaker presents a new feature that will be installed in vehicles of the EQ series in the future.

With the "Acceleration Boost" you should get 0.8 to 1 second faster from 0 to 100.

However, in order to be able to access everything that the engine installed in the car has to offer, you have to pay USD 1,200 (1,150 euros) a year - this is inevitably reminiscent of a season pass or DLC in a video game.

What are Season Pass and DLC?

"DLC" stands for "Downloadable Content" and is used in video games for content that only becomes available after release and often has to be purchased for a fee, although the data for the content is already in the game.

Online games like Fortnite offer a "season pass" that you can use to pay between 5 and 15 euros at regular intervals, depending on the game, in order to unlock additional premium content, such as cosmetic weapon skins.

As an example, we show the Battle Pass in Warzone 2.

So far, the Mercedes feature does not seem to be planned in Germany.

However, there are already manufacturers in this country who are committed to the DLC trend.

BMW offers the seat heating as a subscription and charges 17 euros per month for a function that doesn't really have to be a service.

Although you can permanently activate the seat heating, it costs 400 euros - for the same price you can have seat heating retrofitted in almost any workshop on any vehicle.

Cars with Season Pass and DLC - perfidious video game scam in the car industry

Nothing new for gamers:

This approach has been complained about by gamers all over the world for years.

More and more games from different developers are coming onto the market in an unfinished state.

In return, monthly prices for a Season Pass laugh at additional costs in the form of DLCs in the game's own stores.

This business model is so lucrative that not finding microtransactions in a game today is a surprising change.

Jan Böhmermann criticized streamers like MontanaBlack, who are supposed to advertise such offers on Twitch.

Subscription seat heating: BMW and Mercedes copy wicked gaming business model © Mercedes (Montage)

In the auto industry, that could be even more lucrative.

$100 a month for something basic like full power from the built-in motor will make manufacturers tidy money.

Video games seem to have proved that people really do buy anything, and the next step is for the auto industry to figure out how much they're willing to pay.

It can always get worse:

Monthly payment models have long since become a standard that is aimed at the negligence and passion of customers.

After all, we can be happy that car manufacturers have not yet found an equivalent to loot boxes.

Although it would not be so wrong to unlock a few new skins á la Need For Speed ​​for your own car.

With advancing technology, however, hackers will certainly start jailbreaking Mercedes, BMW and Co. - what is installed can also be used.