Anyone here in the U.S. have the remote parking assist?
I’ve seen the You Tube video but do not have the option in ‘Settings’
Is it available only outside the U.S.? My salesman couldn’t get an answer.

 

It's verboten in the US is what I read.

 

Seems to be a hit-and-miss which features are supported where. I've got the remote parking assist but don't think I would ever really need it. Not enough room to leave/enter a parked car should be even more unlikely in the US.

I don't have the dash cam app even if many other European countries have it. Definitely not a legal issue within EU but some sort of a decision by the local MB importer.

The car manual also describes a "memory parking" feature but I did not find it from my car. Not sure if it would be able to park the car to my garage, perhaps not sufficient objects to identify the route but this I might use if it existed.

 

I actually looked for why it's verboten around here: I'm not sure this limitation isn't coming from MB legal? Certainly other cars are doing it so it doesn't seem to be a regulatory issue.

 

It's not verboten. Tesla offers the summon feature w/o regulatory issues. The issue is MBUSA doesn't want to have to support the remote parking app. It's the same story with AMG Track Pace. There's a companion app for Track Pace to download all the data and do offline analysis, but the app is not offered in the USA, because MBUSA doesn't want to support it. We also still don't get all the Mercedes me connect services, either. The Mercedes me connect Store was just rolled out finally on June 13 so we can actually renew the services and for models with MBUX purchase add-ons such as navigation. The Store had been available in other markets for a while. MBUSA is simply dragging their feet. It's kinda annoying. Supposedly Germany is in negotiations with them to support all these additional companion apps.

 

I just logged in and notice it says my map updates expire next year, not sure why that is since on my window sticker it says 3 years. I think there still getting everything up to date . I also noticed it shows the LED lights as some service also, not sure what kind of service you would pay for to use LED lights LOL.. Man they want to just charge you for everything these days

 

At least in the US they're not charging a subscription for the RWS, about the only win we get. Should be illegal; charging a subscription for equipment we should own outright having already having already paid in full.

 

Your window sticker is wrong. MY22+ only get a 1 year trial subscription. See the new Store pricing and the reminder at the bottom about the trial durations.

 

How could they charge for RWS.. It's ridiculous to me

 

Dunno.. Maybe is different for executive package. Its listed as option code 502 - NAVIGATION UPDATES FOR 3 YEARS INCLUDED on the build sheet. I'll take it up with the dealer if it doesn't fix itself after a bit. For 157k msrp I do expect to get what the build sheet says lol . This is the least of my problems, I still dont have friggen plates for this car and literally just stare it out for the last 2.5 weeks. Im ready to strangle someone

 

Your build sheet was likely printed before they updated their internal systems, so it's still saying 3 years. Ask the dealer to print the build sheet again. The build sheets and DOGs are expected to have mistakes. It's actually printed as a disclaimer in the DOGs. Literally it says "Mistakes are expected". Thought it was hysterical to basically say the DOGs can be full of mistakes. Neither the build sheet nor the DOG are binding documents. Its says it right at the bottom of the build sheet: "*Pricing is subject to change. Mercedes-Benz reserves the right to make changes without notification."

 

LOL.. Can you imagine such nonsense LOL.. I'll see what they have to say but what crapola if this is true

 

Unfortunately that's how it is. This is how they've been able to get away with dropping options due to all the shortages even on customer ordered cars and deliver the car with all kinds of missing parts. With the pandemic it's pretty much become the new normal that when you order a car you don't know what you gonna get until it's here. You can also ask to see the invoice, which usually has the correct information on it with everything the car actually came with. The build sheet is not the final word.

 

Well I spoke to him he insists it has 3 years of navigation updates. Now lets keep in mind these guys are usually morons, but he will contact MB tomorrow to see why there is the discrepancy

 

Yeah let me know what he says, but it's even right there on MBUSA.com under the standard features.

 

Next I’ll be expecting to see: $75 - steering wheel unlock and $25 - ability to put air in tires. Geez Louise

 

This nickel-and-diming is quite absurd after I just bought a car for almost $157k. Really? Twenty bucks here, seventy bucks there. I mean, if I like the features, obviously I’m going to pay but why not just build it into the pricing and stop with this nonsense? This marketing strategy should be beneath a brand like Mercedes.

 

These services have ongoing operations costs. Server farms need to be run and maintained and the developer staff wants to get paid. It's not the same as a good that is built and then sold and doesn't have any ongoing costs anymore. It's a matter of services vs goods. Goods are usually a one time purchase, but services have an ongoing monthly cost. You pay monthly for your cell service, too, even after you paid potentially over $1000 for the phone that's largely useless w/o the service.

The cost for the initial subscription is built-in to the price. The 3 years was a pretty good deal. Sad to see that they reduced it to 1 year, but I fully understand that at some point it's only fair to have to start paying for it, unless you buy a new car which again comes with an initial subscription. Otherwise how many years should they build into the price upfront? People who lease a new car every 3 years obviously don't wanna pay for more than three years on every car they lease.

At the end of the day, the operations costs have to be paid for. Whether you pay it upfront or on a monthly basis for as long as you use the services doesn't really matter. I think the latter is better, because then you only pay as long as you actually own the car or want the services. Somebody who always uses CarPlay or Android Auto for example doesn't wanna have to pay for these services, even if they are part of the initial purchase.

 

Many of those service require no back end at all. To remote start the car your phone can call the car directly, the dashcam costs then nothing, etc. Most of the services could have been set up without a cost beyond one built in the sales price but are purposely set up to create a fake cost for which nearly pure profit is generated.

Speaking of costs most of these have an actual ongoing cost that is a tiny fraction of what they're charging. They were set up from the start, and by design, to cost little to operate realative to their income so as to generate massive profits. It's why every corporate scumbag is trying to create services in their product in any way. I own my own business and I understand the point of running one but I don't look for ways to steal money from my customers.

I don't excuse corporate scumbaggery for any reason, at any time, ever. This is corporate scumbaggery.

 

I don't know what type of company you are running and whether it involves scalable cloud services that serve millions of cars worldwide requesting traffic data etc. and their owners, but I do run a software company and know the cost of developing and maintaining software. It's not just running the infrastructure, but there are things like support staff in each country, market specific customizations and regulations to do deal with, paying AT&T etc for the data service or did you think they provide that for free? etc etc.

No you wouldn't implement these services w/o a back-end, but even then somebody still has to pay the cellular carrier for the data service to the car each month. For security reasons, you wouldn't want your car to be on the Internet with open ports and accept direct connections from other devices on the Internet. Instead you implement something like this using a push notification or messaging infrastructure that the cars connect into and listen for messages. Just like you don't want your home network to be exposed with open ports and accept incoming connections. Plenty of bots out there continously scanning the Internet looking for devices that accept connections on open ports as potential hacking targets. There also needs to be a level of safeguards to make sure that whoever is trying to remote start is actually the current owner, and a way for MB to remotely deauthorize past owners when they sell their cars. You wouldn't want the previous owner of your car still be able to remotely unlock it. Sure some of that could be handled by authorizing one's phone directly with the car and then the new owner would need to deauthorize previous phones, but it's just better if this can be done centrally.

You are not forced to renew any of these services. There's always Apple CarPlay and Android Auto which do many of these things if you are more comfortable with Google and other companies offer so-called free services and selling your data instead. Price is what you pay, value is what you get, so it's up to you to determine if the value is worth the price. As with everything there are market forces at play, too. Considering that Audi for example only builds in a 6 months initial subscription and then charges about double for their services of what MB is about to charge, I'm kinda siding with MB here. But again, you don't have to pay these prices. There are alternatives.

 

Not going to work. I had several cars where I could remote start without any intervention from higher powers. I could send them directions. Any car can calculate a route without an Internet connection just as well as a remote computing source can do it. Certainly you're not going to insist that rear wheel steering requires help from corporate overlords? Or a cam that uses an owner supplied thumb drive? I've got no grief with services like map updates, live traffic, Spotify, anything that provides an actual service that wasn't built around finding a way to make someone pay for a service that had no reason to exist other than mining profits.

Don't buy the security angle either. If a data connection between my phone and an MB server can be made secure then a connection between my phone and the car can be also be made secure. I might add without the extra opportunity created by sending my data to MB and THEN having them send it to my car creating one more vulnerability that never needed to exist. Further I'm not much worried about getting hacked personally. Hasn't happened yet but large corps have had my data stolen more than a half dozen times. MB being in the loop gives me no piece of mind whatsoever; in fact how long was it since they were last hacked? Lol
Nor does having MB in the loop do anything to help security on a private sale where the two parties have to sort it out themselves. Meanwhile if it gets turned into a dealer they can reset any personal information in the car just the same with or without MB having ever been involved in the process.

I pay for my apps and many services without complaint so long as they aren't fake needs created to generate profit. And yes, going all the way back to the first of these fake services I encountered coming from Cadillac for OnStar they were positively giddy about the "highly profitable" service during the earnings calls. That was before the idea of charging for something like rear wheel steering which incurs no cost other than billing someone for nothing.

I think we're probably going to have to agree to disagree.

 

I’ve been in software business for the past 25 years and I agree with you on everything as far as the technical side goes. All I’m saying is, charge me an extra thousand, so that I don’t need to bother with purchases, renewals and all this nonsense. Oh, and quality of MB software sucks. Seems like they are releasing a large number of patches and hotfixes and just can’t get to a solid build.

 

We probably do, but just saying you are conflating onetime on-demand purchases such as RWS, dashcam w/ services that have an ongoing subscription charge such as live traffic etc. Software as you may or may not know is not owned by the end user. It's intellectual property and as such is owned by its creator and/or rights holder. All the end user owns is a license to use it. So a onetime charge for RWS etc. is simply a perpetual software license fee. I do agree with you on several parts. I think it's highway robbery to include 4.5 degrees RWS, but then charge an extra cost to unlock 10 degrees. On the other hand making options on-demand for later purchase allows used car buyers to add options that the original buyer didn't wanna pay for. There is certainly an aspect of extracting more money from a sold car down the road instead of just a onetime sale. If this lowers the initial purchase price by making features on-demand, though, then why not? We'll have to see how it goes. The consumer appetite to pay for extra services and features on cars other than perhaps connected car services doesn't seem to be there, but I've said this for a while, personal car ownership will go away eventually and we'll simply pay for transportation services, which may include a car subscription.

Oh, and just on the security front. We've already seen what's possible if cars can be directly accessed over the Internet. Jeep learned their lesson. Thankfully it was limited to a lab experiment. It's a lot harder to patch a software flaw in millions of cars already on the road vs. on their own servers.

https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hacker...-jeep-highway/

 

I guess that's lifetime subscription vs. monthly subscription. Personally, I'm not a fan of paying for a lifetime subscription, because I simply don't know how long I'm gonna keep the product. It generally is more expensive. Same reason I don't buy extended warranties ever. I've found over the years that they don't pay off. I rather pay for repairs as I go. Has been cheaper for me in the long run.

 

Still don't agree, but, not here to argue; you get a like for a reasoned and polite response. The Internet could use more of that...