Originally published at: Mercedes-Benz launches new subscription service that lets you drive your car faster | Boing Boing
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Turn signals work in which price bracket?
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How long before toilet companies sell a smart toilet with a microtransaction superflush handle?
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97000000000000 / year
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I guess that explains why so few people use them.
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orrrr, is this actually a discount for people who want to be 1% less of an asshole…
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This sort of thing is why I’ve deluded myself that I can somehow keep my dumbcar from 2003 running for the rest of my life. I dread the day when the ONLY cars you can buy are loaded with greedy anticonsumer bullshit as though they were inkjet printers.
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I was afraid this kind of subscription and à la carte fees would be ushered in with self-driving cars. Stuff like pay x dollars to get to your destination faster, subscribe to use these roads, etc. Didn’t anticipate they’d lock down hardware features like heated seats and limit performance, etc. I guess my outlook wasn’t quite cynical enough. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of this purposeful limiting was done previously to simplify manufacturing, but you just didn’t know because you paid for a package of features up front. The remote on/off via subscription just lays bare what is going on.
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Seems like a carryover from how videogames are monetized. I’m sure there’s programmers somewhere trying to figure out how the Mercedes Benz loot boxes are going to work.
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Actually I beleive turn signals are only available on the base models.
Once your (self)important enough, then you get access to the delete turn signal option 
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That also explains simple fines for driving offences as a form of in-game microtransaction.
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Mercedes-Benz electric vehicle owners in North America
an extra $60 per month to rev your engine a little louder
I thought a selling point (for a lot of people) on EV was how quiet it was?
I hope high performance EVs end up sounding like the Audi S1 Hoonitron.
(That or an aftermarket for a straight cut planetary set / diff off the motor.)
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Dodge emphasizes three main areas that it says will “rewrite the rules” of the battery electric segment: a front R-wing that acts as an aerodynamic pass-through, a multispeed transmission with electro-mechanical shifting and finally, an exhaust that can reach 126 decibels. Yes, the automaker put an “exhaust” on an EV and gave it a dB that will make it as loud as a Hellcat-powered Dodge by pushing sound through an amplifier and tuning chamber located at the rear of the vehicle.
That seems to be fake noise, though. I dimly recall that there are racing vehicles which incorporate very high pitched motors, and are impossible to drive without hearing protection.
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Video games didn’t invent the rent-seeking business model, unregulated capitalism did.
As I say in all such threads, the hackers will save us all. Whatever code Benz is using to lock out these features won’t survive a concerted cracking effort.
All race cars require hearing protection, including all the ones I drove. It’s not about pitch, race engines are just loud. People don’t realize how loud car engines actually are because few people have heard an unmuffled one, and even fewer have heard an unmuffled one at wide open throttle on the back straight.
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Like VeronicaConnor said… but then there is this. I mean you could feasibly power that with an EV and still be screaming down the straight. And shame on Dodge, fake noise is some bull. I did like the sound of the electric Audi S1 that Ken Block drove, it had that Tron-esque sound to it. Sure it doesn’t have that angry, yet controlled sound of a finely tuned ICE setup, but it still had presence.
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And if anyone is wondering why in god’s name anyone would put straight cut gears in a car transmission, this is called a dog box. It’s a type of sequential transmission that shifts wicked fast, requires no clutch on up shifts, and is half the weight for the same strength because straight cut gears are stronger than quiet helical ones.
All in the name of speed and earplugs only weigh two grams. 
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So we are one coked up auto executive from the driving version of the 737 Max “pay for vital safety features” subscription
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Old joke, as in I first heard it in the 1980s:
Mercedes is the only brand that comes standard with the right of way built in.
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… it’s like a full-sized radio-controlled toy car
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Does the new subscription automatically get passed on to insurance companies?
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