A lot of people here think building a successful subscription based product is the absolute goal in life. To them Mercedes (and BMW and others) doing this isn't dumb - it's super smart and worth applauding. Otherwise you're just leaving money on the table /s.
You put the /s, but I don't think this comment is inaccurate in any way. Some people really have enthusiasm for nothing but making money. No hobbies, no interests, no friends, no other goals.
It has also been understood to be fundamentally inherent to humanity as a consequence of our "need to survive", so trying to regulate it away is just inviting people to skirt said regulation
Since it's unavoidable, the best next thing is to design a system which takes greed as an input and outputs productivity. That system is called Capitalism and that is why it always wins.
honestly yes it's smart(doesn't mean it's kind), if I was selling 6 figures cars
I'd do my best to milk customers in every possible way as long as it's still
profitable in the long run
mercedes isn't selling baby formulas or epipens
plenty of other brands will take your 100 years of 3rd world salary to give you some shiny vehicle
should I cry for some pampered millionaires who just want to drive faster?
I find it really amusing that you think you need to be a millionaire to own one of these, but whatever - that's not a core of this argument.
The point is that everywhere outside of the powerhouse first world economies runs on second hand cars imported from those economies. I'd know - in my country most cars are ex-german cars. And then once we're done with them, they go to Ukraine(or they used to). Then after that they go to far east or Africa. Your 100k mercedes has 15 lives before it gets scrapped.
But you know what stops that chain early? If everything in the car has subscription and strong encryption to prevent messing with payment options, which "incidentally" will mean those cars can't be worked on by anyone other than the official garage. Wouldn't want anyone to pirate some subscription-only stuff now, would we.
I'm not mourning rich people wanting to drive fast - I'm mourning regular folks who will get these cars at 15-20 years old and find out that the heating seats don't work because Mercedes won't enable them on a "legacy" vehicle. Or it's from the wrong region so they can't do anything for you, sorry.
I don't believe that, I've met people living on minimum wage with brand new mercedes, and I call those people brain dead. Buying a six figures car only makes sense if you're a millionaire.
EV cars are most likely not going to be exported to have a second life.
What is already happening? Quick look at otomoto.pl shows plenty of ex-German EVs being brought over here already, I don't understand what you're insinuating.
