Hey folks!

It may be that if you’re planning on buying a car, and if that’s Volkswagen, you might not own all its horsepower. Huh?

Yep. Instead, you’d have to pay a monthly fee to unlock the extra speed.

Now, before you worry, this isn’t in India yet — it’s just the UK for now. And the pitch is simple. Instead of paying upfront for a higher-powered engine model, you could buy a cheaper base version, and then subscribe later to unlock more engine performance. The "optional power upgrade", they say, will cost £16.50 per month or £165 annually, or £649 for a lifetime subscription.

Of course, this isn’t the first time automakers have tried this. BMW once offered ‘heated seats’ for $18/month and Mercedes sold faster acceleration for $1,200/year. But… both ideas faced backlash. And BMW ended up offering those features without costs.

So why does VW think it’ll work? Well, nothing much. It’s partly down to how EVs today are mostly software-defined. Most trims use the same motor and battery but the difference is in the code. A few lines of software decide how much power you can use or how quickly the throttle responds. So the vehicle already has the capability; the software just decides how much you can access. And it’s also how players differentiate their offerings from competitors.

That’s why VW is selling it as ‘flexibility.’ City drives? Stick to the cheaper plan. A long trip? Pay for a boost that month. For VW, subscriptions mean a steady stream of revenue. Tesla already makes billions selling software upgrades like Autopilot or extra battery range, and analysts think such add-ons could become a billion-dollar market in the years ahead.

Here’s the thing though. Aren’t we all fed up with… subscriptions?! An S&P Global survey found most buyers of connected car services were interested just for the free trial or didn’t want it altogether as they were put off by extra costs.

Because when ownership comes with a monthly fee, is it really ownership at all? Or just renting what’s already yours from the service provider? Imagine your car refusing to speed up unless you keep paying. So yeah, fingers crossed the future of driving doesn’t park speed behind a paywall.

Here’s a soundtrack to put you in the mood 🎵

Piece By Piece by Pharell Williams

You can thank our reader Ram Prasad for this unique rec!

Ready to roll now?

What caught our eye this week 👀

Why can’t India build sponge cities?

Copenhagen is on its way to becoming the world’s first full-fledged sponge city.

What’s that, you ask?

Think of a city designed like a giant sponge — soaking up rainwater instead of letting it flood the streets. Parks, lakes, green rooftops, rain gardens… all working together to catch and redirect rainwater back into the cycle. Smart, right?

But Copenhagen didn’t just magically wake up with this idea one day.

Back in 2011, it was hit by what they called a “once-in-a-1,000-year” rain. The city drowned. Since then, they’ve had multiple “once-in-a-100-year” cloudbursts too. Streets filled up with water, property was destroyed, and there were even dead rats floating around while sanitation workers fell sick. Add to that the rising sea levels — since the city sits on two islands — and they realised this problem wasn’t going away.

So they borrowed an idea from China: sponge cities. It wouldn’t just help them manage floods but would also cool the city and make it greener. And other global cities, like Germany’s Berlin, are already taking notes.

Which brings us to India. Because let’s be honest, every time it rains heavily, cities like Mumbai or Bengaluru come to a standstill. Offices shut, traffic goes underwater, and businesses lose crores. So if sponge cities make so much sense, why can’t we have them here?

Well, here’s the catch. Our cities just aren’t planned properly. In Bengaluru, for instance, drains don’t even have proper maps. Builders often get approval to construct right on top of water bodies or natural drains. So when it rains, there’s nowhere for the water to go except the streets. This is a city that used to be called “well-planned”. But with rapid urbanisation and an increase in population, that framework has collapsed.

Now sure, population shouldn’t be an excuse, you might say. China has a huge population too. But you also have to understand that the difference is, it has three times the land to spread its people across. So our real problem is corruption, poor planning, and the never-ending cycle of digging and re-digging the same roads without fixing the bigger issue.

But there are solutions. One of them could be to rethink how we build drains, because the old-school drainage systems just can’t keep up anymore.

Take Japan, for instance. Back in 2006, they built what’s called the “Underground Temple”, or officially, the Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel. Fifty metres below Kasukabe City lies a giant network of five silos, each connected by 6.4 km of tunnels. When typhoons or heavy rains hit, the system gulps down the excess water and releases it safely into a nearby river. It’s so massive and awe-inspiring that it even doubles as a tourist attraction, with ticket sales helping fund its upkeep.

Now, that’s smart city planning. And maybe that’s the kind of thinking Indian cities such as Hyderabad and Chennai — which have at least started experimenting with sponge zones — need to borrow. But places like Bengaluru, which still haven’t put this on the agenda, might need to make up their minds quickly, before the next flood makes the choice for them.

Infographic 📊

Readers Recommend 🗒️

This week, our reader Kshitij Bhatia recommends reading The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng.

Kshitij writes, “I have a unique habit, whenever I go to a place to visit I pick up their local bestseller and read it to get more cultural insight of the place. Last Year I visited Malaysia and picked up The Gift of Rain, a very critically acclaimed book which has received many awards. The book is great because it is a historical fiction based in Penang, Malaysia and is based on a grey character that has his fair share of moral dilemmas during the Japanese Occupation of Malaysia during World War II. I strongly recommend this because it has many cultural nuances that open up world view and also makes the readers question how they perceive themselves based on the decisions they take in their lives.”

Thanks for the rec, Kshitij!

Finshots Weekly Quiz 🧠

It’s time to announce the winner of our previous weekly quiz. And the winner is…🥁

Ghanshyam Patel! Congratulations. Keep an eye on your inbox and we’ll get in touch with you soon to send over your Finshots merch.

And for the rest of you, check out our Weekly Wrapup for your chance to win some exclusive Finshots merch. All you have to do is, answer all the quiz questions correctly by 12 noon on September 5th (Friday) and tune in to our Sunny Side Up next week to check if you got lucky.

That’s it from us this week. We’ll see you next Sunday!

Until then, send us your book, music, business movies, documentaries or podcast recommendations. We’ll feature them in the newsletter! Also, don’t forget to tell us what you thought of today's edition. Just hit reply to this email (or if you’re reading this on the web, drop us a message at morning@finshots.in).

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