Volkswagen is now charging owners extra if they want to unlock the full performance potential of their EVs.
Remember a time when buying a car meant you received the entire package outright? Sadly, that era seems to be a thing of the past now, as more and more digital connectivity creeps into the automotive world. And the clearest example of this trend has recently come from Volkswagen, which has decided to tuck away some horsepower behind a monthly subscription.
According to a recent report by Auto Express, Volkswagen’s UK consumer site currently lists the ID.3 Pro and Pro S as producing 201 horsepower, instead of their publicised 228 horsepower output. Owners will then now have to pay extra if they want access to that missing 27 hp.
The official configurator notes that buyers can “activate the optional power upgrade for a fee,” which also increases torque from 265 Nm to 310 Nm. In other words, the hardware is already there, but full performance only becomes available after VW gets its cut.
The pricing structure for this digital performance boost is rather telling of how far the industry is going with subscriptions. Volkswagen is offering a one-month free trial, followed by £16.50 (RM 100) per month, £165 (RM 1,000) per year, or £649 (RM 3,950) for a one-time lifetime activation. For what is essentially a software switch, that’s not exactly small change.
In attempting to defend this move, Volkswagen said in a statement that “offering more power to customers is nothing new – historically many petrol and diesel vehicles have been offered with engines of the same size, but with the possibility of choosing one with more potency. These traditionally are higher up in the product range, with more specification and a higher list price.” In other words, VW argues this is just a digital-era extension of long-standing product differentiation.
But let’s call a spade a spade here: this is simply a new layer of corporate greed. The really petty thing is that the power increase is modest at best, yet VW has chosen to place it behind a paywall anyway.
Now to be entirely fair, VW is not alone in this pursuit of recurring revenue. BMW, for instance, famously tried to push heated seat subscriptions a couple of years back, for which they received heavy backlash before eventually backtracking on this nonsensical idea.
Mercedes-Benz also flirted with software-gated performance upgrades for its EQ range, not to mention also locking rear wheel steering behind a paywall as well. Across the industry, automakers are increasingly eyeing software subscriptions as an ongoing profit stream, much like how tech companies monetise apps.
Though of course, with every new digital lock comes the inevitable question of “jailbreaking.” It is almost certain that some owners will eventually find a way to activate the extra power for free, just as enthusiasts have been tuning and modifying cars for decades. This will no doubt void warranties however, but then again, many owners already remove physical modifications before heading to service centres, and software tweaks are arguably even easier to undo.
