While American Volkswagen shoppers haven’t been able to buy a small electrified model in years, over in Europe, drivers can buy a Volkswagen called an ID.3 Pro, a roughly Golf-sized electric hatchback capable of 228 horsepower. Sounds great, right? Well, there’s one catch: In Britain, the ID.3 Pro actually only makes 201 horsepower as standard.
It’s no secret that we’re in the monetize-everything era of the car, because automakers aren’t just looking for one-time revenue, they’re looking for recurring revenue to maximize shareholder value or something like that. If it can be downloaded over the internet, someone may try to make a subscription service out of it. That’s exactly what’s happened here – Volkswagen has put 27 additional horsepower behind a paywall. Once you buy the car, you can choose to subscribe to the horsepower boost or digitally purchase it outright. As AutoExpress writes:
This subscription currently stands at £16.50 per month. That’s almost three times the price of a ‘Standard with Ads’ Netflix subscription – following a one-month free trial – or a total of £165 per year. Owners can also choose to select a lifetime subscription for the grand total of £649, with this being attached to the car rather than the individual, meaning the upgrade will remain if the vehicle is sold on.
At the time of writing, that works out to $22.29 per month or $222.91 a year to subscribe to an extra 27 horsepower, or $876.77 to buy it outright. Not obscenely expensive, but not cheap on a vehicle that already costs the equivalent of $48,263. At least Volkswagen promises not to take it away should the vehicle change hands, but why not just include such a modest bump in output as standard?
To be fair, Volkswagen is only advertising the ID.3 Pro and Pro S at 201 horsepower, and it certainly isn’t the only manufacturer to put power behind a paywall. Ford offers a $995 “Performance Upgrade” add-on for the Mustang Mach-E GT, Mercedes-Benz offers an 80-horsepower boost on the EQS 450 4MATIC for the incredibly strong sum of $2,950, and Volvo offers a “Performance Mode” with an extra 33-horsepower on British twin-motor XC40 Recharge crossovers for £500. Then again, most of the vehicles I’ve mentioned are luxury or performance models.
However, here’s where putting horsepower behind a paywall gets uncertain: Insurance. As AutoExpress notes: “As the car is registered at 228bhp from the factory, owners won’t need to inform their insurance company, either way.” However, vehicle power output often plays a role in determining insurance premiums, so while it’s impossible to say for certain whether ID.3 Pro insurance would be cheaper if it were registered as a 201-horsepower car, it’s also impossible to say for certain that it wouldn’t be.
So what’s Volkswagen’s rationale behind this? Well, some of it is going to make you squint a little bit harder at your desktop, laptop, smartphone, tablet, whatever you’re reading this on. In a statement to AutoExpress, the automaker said:
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.
Historically, a high-output combustion model usually came with a different engine, which came with the cost of different physical parts, the support network for those different physical parts, and all the hidden research and development and homologation costs that come along with that change. Here, we’re dealing with the same battery pack, same motors, just a new software calibration that’s already approved for road use.
At the end of the day, if a car is capable of offering a feature with all existing hardware and no continuous outside digital support, why not just make it standard, especially if it’s already been developed and homologated? Surely, it won’t add £649 to the warranty costs of every car, yeah? While the outrage here is probably disproportionate, considering Volkswagen didn’t pull anything like a bait-and-switch, it’s okay to be a little mad. If this is the future, it’s not necessarily an improvement.
Top graphic image: Volkswagen
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Completely fucking absurd
“…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.”
The difference is you pay once for the higher output at the purchase or leasing instead of subscribing every month for the privilige. That remains transferrable to the next owner instead of being cancelled as Tesla does for its performance package.
Another reason to hate EV…I would always drive the plain ICE car.
In some countries, horsepower is also used to calculate and determine taxation. This could possibly be tantamount to tax evasion in those jurisdictions.
VW is playing a dangerous game here.
Every time I see an article like this it reminds me of one of the many reasons I drive an old bronco.
Here’s an interesting notion– in places where cars are taxed based on horsepower/displacement- or in the case of electrification, power output (I’m looking at you, Singapore), is this a way to buy the car for a lower tax rate and then upgrade it later?
That would have to be two separate versions at the dealer without an OEM upgrade available, I’d think, so they can track them accurately by VIN.
In theory, you can. But it’s a grey area and potentially risky.
Once again people are mad about being able to buy something. Where do you think the additional 35HP in the Armada Nismo comes from? Software. They even say it in the PR. They cranked the boost a little bit. You’re not getting two brand new upgraded turbos and a revised intake and exhaust to make an additional 35HP. Why doesn’t the regular Armada come with the additional 35HP if it’s just software?
If the car was sold with the additional 27HP at an even $49k instead of $48.2k or if you could tick an option for a “performance pack” for $800, everyone would be like “That’s a great deal. surely for only another $800 you might as well”. At least this way you could try it for a month for the cost of fast food meal and decide “Yeah I want the additional ponies” or “I didn’t notice a difference, I’ll save the additional $780.”
Surely some enterprising white hat has already broken VWOS so that you can unlock the additional horsepower for free for life.
If something is behind a paywall, the internet will always find a way around it. That’s just basic human behavior.
I’m sure it’s possible, however I don’t think many people would want to risk either losing warranty coverage or risking their car getting bricked.
Even if neither of those things happen, I’ve experienced enough software gremlins in newer cars WITHOUT trying to hack them that I’d do a hard pass. 27 hp is not worth having to worry about unintended acceleration etc.
I don’t think using software to tune the car to the owner’s specs is anything new. The only difference here is that the OS needs jailbroken to set some variable, likely named something like IsSubscribedToBoostUnlock from false to true. And yeah, I’d agree to wait until the warranty period is up before doing this.
So… If I own a 201hp version and ask for 27hp less, am I eligible to receive a $22.29 monthly payment from VW?
Still waiting for the 1st automaker to introduce microtransactions. Imagine the same concept except it’s $5 everytime you floor it and make use of the extra 27hp. Your heated seats button works, it just costs you $2 every time you press it. Remote start on a cold morning, reduced price of $2.99 for the month of November only, December 1st it jumps to $5.60
Stop giving them ideas. There’s enough stupid out there already that make the bean counters salivate.
At least they didn’t structure it so you get a “complimentary” trial for the first 6-12 months. That way customers would get used to the performance before the car suddenly felt sluggish. Hopefully no one from VW is reading this…
This is Chevy’s approach to their app. I got 5 years free, then they wanted $40/month to continue full access. I uninstalled the app, but all I lost was the ability to pre-heat or pre-cool the car from a distance.
This subscription nonsense needs to stop.
But that said, given the only real difference between the various modest hp versions of the VAG 2.0T is the tune, I have no problem with VW offering to sell various HP upgrades that are just software in an EV either. I could not care less about MOWR POWR, but lots of people seem to. And at least by making more go a stand-alone option, you don’t have to get a higher trim level with a bunch of other nonsense you might not want to get it. But it damned well better stay with the car when you sell it!
Yeah, you don’t pay a monthly subscription for a higher hp tune on an engine, you just pay up front to get it, and then you have it. EVs shouldn’t work any different
Gonna play devil’s advocate here.
What’s the difference between when you buy, say a Volvo Polestar tune for a gas engine V60 or when you buy a VAG+ (no idea what they’re calling it) tune for your ID.3? There really is none. The only thing that they’ve done was making it available as a monthly option instead of having to buy the perpetual license so to speak. They’re allowing the customer to have more options. Maybe they don’t need the extra power during snowy months, so they turn the sub off, and only run with the extra HP during the summer once they’ve put their summer tires on.
I’m not saying it’s right, but people are already paying for software-based upgrades. This is just cutting it into monthly subscriptions.
I don’t agree with any of it. Back when people were hacking out their own tunes on turbo cars, they were doing something that wasn’t possible yet. They had to put in the time and effort to figure out how to accomplish what they were packing up and selling without breaking the customer’s car. They took on risk and used resources. That, to me, is what you are paying for when you buy a tune.
Now, the manufacturers know exactly what their powertrain is capable of, so they can tier the output, selling the highest output as a “performance upgrade” when all they’re doing is holding back the maximum output. You already bought the hardware, they’re just kneecapping it so they can sell it back. There is no additional R&D to accomplish, they’re simply adjusting a slider to 10 on hardware that they darn well know is capable of doing it without issue.
Even pornography isn’t worth a subscription and it is the reason the internet is so successful and probably the most profitable industry ever.
The problem can be framed differently. Not as VW asking for extra money to get extra power.
Since the car has 228 hp in Europe and only 201 hp in Britain, then the problem becomes: why does VW put a 12% power cripple on the car for British market, unless people in only that market pay extra to restore it to its standard state?
This is a complete guess, but maybe the head of sales in other European countries said “Our customers will hates us, we won’t do that” when VW corporate suggested it, but only the British one went “Sure, why not?”. Or maybe the UK isn’t an important market for VW so they don’t mind trying out an unpopular idea here.
Could also have to do with EU vs UK consumer protection policies, they may be wanting to play nice with the EU but willing to push it in the UK, I’m not sure whether that’d be because they’re EU-based or because one is stricter than the other.
I bet the insurance companies are loving this. Collect the premiums for years, someone makes a claim, test it for the upgrade and disallow the claim. But I’m just a cynic insurance company wouldn’t do that. I also wonder after the diesel fiasco if you get any extra HP at all.
I swear car insurance companies in the UK are nearly as evil as health insurance companies in the US. They pull a TON of nonsense that really doesn’t happen over here, and their rates make the worst states here look cheap in many cases..
Wait a few months it will be here when they realize our government condones that behavior now
Sadly likely true, though at leas there the pendulum WILL swing back the other way, and they know it. I doubt very many corps are making long-term policy decisions based on the current occupant of the White House.
We all know insurance companies are not known for being honest but they are known as being shady as can be .
There is no profit in paying any claim you don’t have to.
Don’t forget that a minimum of 3rd party insurance is mandatory in the UK. (ie you have to have cover for any damage you might do to people or property).
My first car was £100, my first year’s insurance as a new driver was £200.
No different in the US, with the exception of New Hampshire.
At this point, I think that VW is just trying to piss people off. From the awful all digital dash to no manual GTI, like wtf?
Wait.
It’s a new car. If you want that HP, just have the dealer drop their price by the same amount. Then you’re at the same price / payment. No problems.
Insurance?
Does that HP difference cross a line that bumps insurance? I hadn’t considered that.
Insurance here seems mostly concerned with the car’s replacement value, which wouldn’t be changed much.
Bleh
“Unsubscribe, please.”
LOL VW has always been under a subscription in the form of high maintenance costs 😛