Photo: Mercedes-Benz/edited by autoevolution
Forget the times of power upgrades with electric cars, at least if you own a Mercedes-Benz powered by batteries. The company is now selling a performance subscription package in the U.S. that will cost $1,200 per year and make EQE and EQS models more powerful.
For that price, the Acceleration Increase package can get a Mercedes-EQ EQE 350 4MATIC to go from 215 kW (288 hp) to 260 kW (349 hp). That makes the electric sedan reduce its time to go from 0 to 60 mph (97 kph) from 6 seconds to around 5.1 s. The same improvement is offered to the Mercedes-EQ EQE SUV 350 4MATIC. In this case, the acceleration times drop from 6.2 s to approximately 5.2 s.
In the EQS lineup, the performance subscription is offered to the Mercedes-EQ EQS 450 4MATIC. The output increase is a little bit higher. While the EQE gets 45 kW (60.4 hp) more, the EQS improvement is 65 kW (87 hp). That said, the flagship electric sedan jumps from 265 kW (355 hp) to 330 kW (442.5 hp). That lowers its 0-to-60-mph time from 5.3 s to 4.5 s. With the same performance improvement as the sedan, the SUV makes the same acceleration in 4.9 s instead of 5.8 s.
That will get traditional Mercedes-Benz customers to ask: if the cars could present this higher output, why weren’t they given that option from the get-go? The answer is that carmakers now want their vehicles to become a constant revenue source even after they leave dealership lots. As “computers on wheels” or “software-defined vehicles,” they can receive updates for new features. In this case, for more power.
Mercedes-Benz would probably make more money if it offered this performance upgrade for shorter periods of time. After all, anyone willing to have a more powerful car all of the time will go for the stronger derivatives of the vehicles they want, such as the Mercedes-AMG EQE 43 4MATIC instead of the EQE 350 4MATIC, the Mercedes-EQ EQS 580 4MATIC in place of the EQS 450 4MATIC, and so forth. A subscription to have more power is something people may only want to have when they are actually going to use it – on a track day or a road trip, for example.
In the EQS lineup, the performance subscription is offered to the Mercedes-EQ EQS 450 4MATIC. The output increase is a little bit higher. While the EQE gets 45 kW (60.4 hp) more, the EQS improvement is 65 kW (87 hp). That said, the flagship electric sedan jumps from 265 kW (355 hp) to 330 kW (442.5 hp). That lowers its 0-to-60-mph time from 5.3 s to 4.5 s. With the same performance improvement as the sedan, the SUV makes the same acceleration in 4.9 s instead of 5.8 s.
That will get traditional Mercedes-Benz customers to ask: if the cars could present this higher output, why weren’t they given that option from the get-go? The answer is that carmakers now want their vehicles to become a constant revenue source even after they leave dealership lots. As “computers on wheels” or “software-defined vehicles,” they can receive updates for new features. In this case, for more power.
Mercedes-Benz would probably make more money if it offered this performance upgrade for shorter periods of time. After all, anyone willing to have a more powerful car all of the time will go for the stronger derivatives of the vehicles they want, such as the Mercedes-AMG EQE 43 4MATIC instead of the EQE 350 4MATIC, the Mercedes-EQ EQS 580 4MATIC in place of the EQS 450 4MATIC, and so forth. A subscription to have more power is something people may only want to have when they are actually going to use it – on a track day or a road trip, for example.
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