Mercedes-Benz Wants You to Pay to Drive Faster

If you gotta go fast, Mercedes-Benz says you gotta cough up some more dough. The German car manufacturer has unveiled a new feature called “Acceleration Increase,” which will increase your car’s ability to accelerate (get it?) but it’ll cost you $1,200 annually.

Drivers behind the wheel of a Mercedes-EQ—the company’s fully electric car line—can enroll in the Acceleration Increase from Mercedes-Benz, which can allegedly shave off 1 second from your acceleration time from 0-to-60 miles per hour. The new feature is more specifically available for Mercedes-EQ EQS and EQE cars and will increase the electric motor’s output from 215 kilowatts to 260 kilowatts for EQE models and 265 kilowatts to 330 kilowatts for EQS models.

“The feeling of driving your Mercedes-EQ is a new experience every day – particularly its powerful, immediate acceleration,” Mercedes writes on its website. “Acceleration Increase boosts this performance even further: electronically increasing the motor’s output also increases the torque significantly, giving you a faster 0-to-60 MPH time. Acceleration power you can feel.”

How fun. Acceleration Increase is simply “coming soon” according to Mercedes-Benz and while the price breaks down to $100 per month, the feature can only be purchased in one, annual fee of $1,200. As The Verge reports, the upgrade doesn’t actually change any of the hardware on the car, instead it unlocks more of motor’s ability, which could insinuate that Mercedes was throttling the the full potential of the cars in order to sell this upgrade.

To the average driver, an extra second of acceleration might not be the biggest deal, but it does point to a broader trend in subscription-based automotive microtransactions. Earlier this summer, BMW announced that it would be charging a recurring fee for heated seats, amounting to $18 per month, $180 per year, or a big $415 for unlimited access.