This should be considered a violation of the car owner’s property rights, especially if Mercedes put any DRM in place to try to stop owners from modifying their property to enable its full potential without paying the ransom.
This. If you have the money for a Benz, test drive other cars at their price points. You’re probably going to get more bang for your buck out of other manufacturers.
Although, if you want a car interior that’s styled like Bushwood Country Club, go for the Benz. They’ll happily give you more wood veneer than you ever wanted.
Not all of them. The new EX30 EV and the Polestars are.
IMHO, I think the big problem is that the current ICE platform was really designed to be a hold-over.
They’re moving aggressively toward electrification, which is rad, but it also means that the ICE architectures were not built to last for the business - and in turn, they’re kind of not built to last for the customer. A lot of people start having mechanical problems ~20k in.
Volvo came up with one platform that covers most of their ICE / hybrid vehicles. They can plug in and out batteries, turbochargers, superchargers, etc based on what the car needs. But, at the end of the day, it’s kind of an overly complex one-size fits all platform, and it’s prone to failures.
I get the sense that their play was, minimally invest in ICE, but remain competitive, and cut to EV asap. Meanwhile, encourage people to lease because the current crop are not really engineered for the long run.
On the one hand, it has zero impact on my life, since I will not be buying these cars for another 15-20 years, if ever. On the other, seeing evidence of enshittification everywhere I look is the thing that will radicalise me, much sooner than that.
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