it's a waste of money, but it's MB's fault they could not make good on their promise to retrofit comand systems into the already delivered vehicles, as the customer had paid for.

people that are buying $60k vehicles expect to get what they paid for, and mercedes doesn't want to risk losing those customers. many mercedes customers purchase a mercedes again, and they often move up a class in the process (C -> E, E -> S, etc.) which means much more money for MB in the end.

mercedes is a very successful company. they aren't giving cars away for the fun of it, and they know it's the right publicity stunt to pull when they don't have many viable options.