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What would you pay for autonomous driving? Volkswagen hopes $8.50 per hour

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Re: What would you pay for autonomous driving? Volkswagen hopes $8.50 per hour

#111

Post by midasuni »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #109
midasuni wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They run in several countries, but fundamentally they are very expensive (far more than $10 an hour)

My knowledge of them is from here[0] and I understand their availability to have generally declined over the past several years. [0]: https://www.seat61.com/motorail-trains.htm

Because they don’t justify the massive subsidies.

Sleepers have had a little resurgence over the last year or two, but motorail demand is low and costs are high. Demand at market price is even lower. With a good motorway network and reliable cars people just aren’t willing to spend 5 times the price to go on a train.

Even they were, it’s not sustainable. Far better to fly or train to a remote city and hire a car on arrival.

Re: What would you pay for autonomous driving? Volkswagen hopes $8.50 per hour

#112

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

VintageCool wrote: post #96
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding was that congestion on highways is mostly caused by bad drivers. A train isn’t affected by people randomly braking or weaving around different lanes because they lack driving skill. A train also isn’t as affected by inclement weather.

Cars are also tremendously space inefficient. The Tesla Model 3 is nearly as big (93.8 sq ft) as 3 Queen Size beds (33.3 sq ft). There is the classic set of pictures showing how much space is needed to transport 60 people by bus, by bike, and by car. https://humantransit.org/2012/09/the-photo-that-explains-alm... On my (pre-covid) morning commute to the office, most of the cars crawling along the highway had one pers…

> The slowness is the result of people trying to merge into the highway, not "bad drivers".

I stand by my point on "bad drivers". It's a well-studied phenomenon[0] and it's not a matter of opinion.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4m-OJosGaI

Re: What would you pay for autonomous driving? Volkswagen hopes $8.50 per hour

#113

Post by gitanovic »

mlyle wrote: post #77
tempestn wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually have watched a number of his videos, and while it is considerably better than the Tesla self driving, it's not something I'd currently pay to experience vs driving myself (or vs an Uber at a similar price point). The driving style is still too awkward and, to me, discomfiting.

Ah, to me it looks pretty good. And there's reason to believe it'd be better on freeways. I'd definitely pay a few bucks per hour for my car to drive me to Southern California while I read a book.

What I don't understand is: why don't you take a train instead?

I have never been to US, but whenever I hear about self driving cars I think: why don't people just use public transport if they don't want to drive?

Re: What would you pay for autonomous driving? Volkswagen hopes $8.50 per hour

#114

Post by tomcooks »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #103
ako wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easier solved than with a real driver, just flip a switch and transfer control to another drone pilot. Solves more issues: boring long trip, flip drivers every 30 minutes. One moment you're driving a car in texas, next moment you're driving a car in new york, and 30 minutes later you're driving the Hana Highway on Maui.

With no consequence to you if you decide to go GTA on the system, no peripheral vision, no feel of the road or wheel, assuming you at least have stereoscopic vision with a headset it’s still not at all going to work for white out or hard rain. It’s a fun idea that we can create a whole generation of Bangladeshi click farmers that drive people instead… but it’s a nonstarter for a bunch of reasons.

Why would there be no consequences? The person would have a driver contract, have passed driving tests, etc.

Not sure what you mean with Bangladeshi click farmers

Re: What would you pay for autonomous driving? Volkswagen hopes $8.50 per hour

#115

Post by CorrectHorseBat »

xivzgrev wrote: post #102
milchek wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said, and I think the idea that in the future people will own less and rent more is discussed quite often. In the tech space this has been true for some time, hell, I still remember buying a version of Adobe Master Suite and later lamenting at the switch to subscription model. I used to be quite negative about of going further down this path, but the way I see it now, what choice do we have in the future? The wo…

How is autonomous driving an increasingly scarce resource? The tech industry, with zero marginal cost, took to the subscription model with great success. Hugely profitable. Now every business looks to work in subscriptions. I think what we will end up having is that initial players to offer autonomous driving will be able to charge, because it’s scarce and to recoup investment. Eventually the tech will get commoditiz…

>How is autonomous driving an increasingly scarce resource?

Space is the scarce resource. In a city that's full of 90% of the time parked cars it doesn't really make sense for everyone to have their own car. Autonomous driving just combines the best of Uber and car sharing.

Re: What would you pay for autonomous driving? Volkswagen hopes $8.50 per hour

#116

Post by phlo »

holoduke wrote: post #13
aussieguy1234 wrote: post #3

If you don't have to also buy the car, this might be reasonable

I despise the whole sharing economy. I prefer the good old days where i own everything i use.

The _actual_ sharing economy is great. Your beef is probably with corporations that masquerade as part of the sharing economy in order to exploit regulatory loopholes (e.g. Uber, Airbnb).

For an example of the actual sharing economy: I'm a member of a local cooperative that owns and maintains a fleet of ~3k cars, distributed across the country at most train stations and in many neighborhoods. For an initial deposit of $1k, "my car" is whatever I need it to be at that moment. If I need to transport furniture in the morning, it's a Mercedes Vito. For a leisurely drive in the countryside at lunch, it's an Audi convertible. And for a quick grocery run before stores close, a cheap Citroën C1 will do the trick. And because the whole thing is a cooperative, per-km prices are around what I'd pay if I owned any of the cars myself.

Sharing is great. Regulatory arbitrage masquerading as the sharing economy, less so.

Re: What would you pay for autonomous driving? Volkswagen hopes $8.50 per hour

#117

Post by nix23 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #110
hyperhopper wrote: post #62

> In a swipe at Tesla, he said that by charging hourly fees, VW would make autonomous driving more accessible than “a car with a five-digit surcharge.” This is completely disingenuous at best, and malicious at worst. This is a perfect example of the boots theory of socioeconomic unfairness [1]. This is just taking advantage of the poor-middle class' inability to pay a larger upfront cost, to extort them for more over…

> This is 100% a way to extract more money from consumers, especially non financially stable consumers, while lying to all of our faces Isn't this hyperbolic? I split time between at least two cities. Being able to pay as I go represents a real saving in cost, time and attention. Sometimes buying is better than renting. But sometimes there are economies of centralization. AWS isn't a scam on companies too poor to buy…

>AWS isn't a scam on companies too poor to buy servers.

It often is, for small and medium business (traditional ones) it's often cheaper to rent DC-Space and buy some servers yourself...but hey if you pay and don't do the math, that's your problem.

Re: What would you pay for autonomous driving? Volkswagen hopes $8.50 per hour

#118

Post by nix23 »

chewz wrote: post #85
hyperhopper wrote: post #62

> In a swipe at Tesla, he said that by charging hourly fees, VW would make autonomous driving more accessible than “a car with a five-digit surcharge.” This is completely disingenuous at best, and malicious at worst. This is a perfect example of the boots theory of socioeconomic unfairness [1]. This is just taking advantage of the poor-middle class' inability to pay a larger upfront cost, to extort them for more over…

I agree with you. But this system is called capitalism for a reason. If you do not have capital you loose...

But it's called Volkswagen for a reason too ;)

Re: What would you pay for autonomous driving? Volkswagen hopes $8.50 per hour

#119

Post by croon »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #110
hyperhopper wrote: post #62

> In a swipe at Tesla, he said that by charging hourly fees, VW would make autonomous driving more accessible than “a car with a five-digit surcharge.” This is completely disingenuous at best, and malicious at worst. This is a perfect example of the boots theory of socioeconomic unfairness [1]. This is just taking advantage of the poor-middle class' inability to pay a larger upfront cost, to extort them for more over…

> This is 100% a way to extract more money from consumers, especially non financially stable consumers, while lying to all of our faces Isn't this hyperbolic? I split time between at least two cities. Being able to pay as I go represents a real saving in cost, time and attention. Sometimes buying is better than renting. But sometimes there are economies of centralization. AWS isn't a scam on companies too poor to buy…

> Sometimes buying is better than renting. But sometimes there are economies of centralization. AWS isn't a scam on companies too poor to buy servers.

Your example doesn't apply. You don't rent a server from AWS, you pay for their services. If the AWS cost was just getting you a VPS, then you would have a point.

I'm not saying AWS is (always) a good deal, but the cost is quantifiable, compared to buying a server or renting a VPS where all the extra ops work isn't (easily).

Re: What would you pay for autonomous driving? Volkswagen hopes $8.50 per hour

#120

Post by tchalla »

hyperhopper wrote: post #62

> In a swipe at Tesla, he said that by charging hourly fees, VW would make autonomous driving more accessible than “a car with a five-digit surcharge.” This is completely disingenuous at best, and malicious at worst. This is a perfect example of the boots theory of socioeconomic unfairness [1]. This is just taking advantage of the poor-middle class' inability to pay a larger upfront cost, to extort them for more over…

I’d me interested to see this math for subscriptions like Netflix, Spotify and AWS.
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