Opinion: VW’s horsepower subscription is great for consumers

Earlier this month, Volkswagen introduced a monthly subscription to unlock the full horsepower of its ID.3 electric car. The ‘optional power upgrade’, which raises output from 201bhp to 228bhp, will cost UK drivers £16.50 a month, or £165 a year. Because the car is registered at 228bhp from the factory, owners won’t need to inform their insurers if they choose to take out the subscription.

This announcement was greeted with anger by much of the automotive media, which is apparently still labouring under the old-fashioned misapprehension that actually buying and owning a whole thing is somehow better than renting a bit of it.

In fact, VW’s horsepower subscription service is a welcome breath of fresh air in an industry stubbornly resistant to change. 

After all, VW knows its customers. It knows some new-car buyers don’t want to be confronted with 228 rampant, snarling electric horses the moment they drive their ID.3 off the forecourt. They want to build up to it. Spend a while trotting in a friendly 201-horse paddock, before building up to the full fire-breathing whack. 

Sure, VW could just offer a lower-power driving mode accessed by, say, a physical switch in the car, but hey, it’s 2025! Why not make it a subscription? Everyone loves subscriptions! It’s just like HelloFresh, if HelloFresh somehow figured a way to stop your oven getting hotter than 60 degrees unless you gave them some more money.

Volkswagen understands some months are slow months. Don’t pretend you’ve never woken up on, say, the first day of September and thought, “Hmm, yep. This feels like one of those months in which I’m going to want ten per cent less power than my car’s actually capable of making.” VW understands that’s a totally normal human thought that real humans have, and it’s got you covered.

In fact, don’t think of it as a £16.50 tax to use your car’s full performance. Think of it as a £16.50 saving every month you choose to artificially limit your ID.3’s performance!

As VW explained, what it’s doing here is offering choice. Which is great, because when you’re buying a new car, there’s very little in the way of choice, apart from the choice of colour, and wheels, and interior, and extras, and the choice to buy a car that doesn’t refuse to give you all its actual power.

More choice is always better. Some folk want to buy the full Back to the Future three-disc box set, some people just want Back to the Future III. Some folk want to buy the full three-disc box set, but only receive Back to the Future III until they hand over yet more cash. Some consumers enjoy making bad decisions, and VW is here to help them.

With its horsepower subscription, Volkswagen is asking big, vital questions about our consumerist society. Questions like: for this morning’s commute, do you really require access to all the power your car was built to produce? Do you need to drive at all? Why not take the bus? Why not just stay in bed? 

And questions like: if you want to limit your car’s power, isn’t that what the accelerator pedal is for? If you wanted a slower ID.3, why wouldn’t you just save a load of cash and buy the base 168bhp version instead? Why wouldn’t you ditch the ID.3 entirely and get a Hyundai Ioniq 5 instead because it’s more fun and also doesn’t refuse to let you have all the power already available? These are the issues VW’s masterful gambit forces us to address.