General Motors charges Super Cruise subscribers $25 a month to keep using hands-free highway driving after a three-year trial expires, according to pricing GM announced when the plan launched, a fee for software running on cameras, radar and processors that were installed at the factory and paid for at purchase. Mercedes-Benz takes the same approach with horsepower itself: EQE and EQS owners can pay $60 or $90 a month to unlock an extra 60 to 80 horsepower the electric motors are already physically capable of producing, delivered instantly over the air, the automaker confirmed when it introduced the program. Automakers have increasingly split the cost of a car from the cost of using everything already bolted inside it, and the subscription list keeps growing even after one high-profile attempt at the practice collapsed under public pressure.
Performance You Already Own, Unlocked by the Month
Mercedes-Benz’s Acceleration Increase program is the clearest example of hardware-gated performance. The EQE’s subscription costs $60 a month, $600 a year, or $1,950 for the life of the vehicle, and raises output from 288 to 348 horsepower, a 0.9-to-1.0-second improvement in 0-60 mph time, delivered through an over-the-air update with no dealership visit required, per Mercedes-Benz’s own program details. The EQS version costs $90 a month, $900 a year, or $2,950 for life, adding 80 horsepower for a similar acceleration gain. The motors capable of that extra output are already in the car the day it’s delivered; the subscription simply removes a software limiter.
Driver-Assistance Systems Carry Their Own Recurring Bill
GM’s Super Cruise follows a similar structure, though the underlying feature is hands-free highway driving rather than horsepower. New Cadillac, Chevrolet, Buick and GMC vehicles equipped with Super Cruise come with a complimentary three-year subscription; after that, GM’s announced pricing runs $25 a month on its own, or $15 a month bundled with certain OnStar plans. On the 2021 Cadillac CT5, Super Cruise itself was listed as a $2,500 factory option, meaning owners paid for the cameras and hardware once at purchase and then face an ongoing bill to keep the system functioning once the trial period lapses. GM reported roughly 625,000 active Super Cruise subscribers by the end of 2025, with about 40% of eligible owners choosing to keep paying out of pocket once their free trial ran out, which means the majority let the paid-for hardware go unused rather than pay to keep it active.
Everyday Convenience Features Aren’t Exempt Either
The subscription model extends well past performance and driver assistance into features most owners would consider basic. Toyota’s Remote Connect service, which enables remote-start functionality through the key fob and smartphone app on 2018-and-later models, includes a free trial ranging from three to ten years depending on the vehicle, after which it costs $8 a month or $80 a year, according to Kelley Blue Book’s reporting on the change, which confirmed that the key fob’s remote-start button will not function once a vehicle’s subscription lapses, so the same physical fob button a driver used for free during the trial period stops working after the free period ends, even though nothing about the fob or the car’s remote-start hardware has changed.
One High-Profile Attempt Already Failed in Public
Not every hardware subscription survives contact with customers. BMW piloted a $18-a-month heated seat subscription, charging owners on a recurring basis to activate seat warmers that were already wired and installed. The backlash was immediate and public enough that BMW abandoned the plan in 2023, acknowledging that customers who had already paid roughly $50,000 for a vehicle did not accept being billed again for a switch that was already sitting in the dashboard. BMW said it would instead focus subscription offerings on software-based services like driving and parking assistance — the same category where Super Cruise and Acceleration Increase have found more durable footing.
Hardware Ownership and Feature Access Have Quietly Split Apart
What connects these programs isn’t the size of the fee but the underlying premise: the customer already owns the physical component that produces the feature, and the subscription buys nothing but permission to use it. BMW’s heated seats made that premise obvious enough to trigger a public reversal, but acceleration boosts, hands-free driving and remote-start convenience have all settled into recurring bills with far less resistance, largely because the industry has learned to frame them as software services rather than as fees for hardware customers already paid for once.