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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

#121

Post by ovi256 »

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…

> I split time between at least two cities

Please don't bring up minority use cases when discussing the average or modal use case.

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

#122

Post by throwawayzRUU6f »

RealityVoid wrote: post #79

This won't happen an VW hopes. Once self driving is achieved, it will eventually be a commodity, you will just pay 200$ on a box on your car and you will have self driving. This isn't my idea, came from listening some geohot interview but I think he is spot on.

This. 5-year-old state of the art is today's incubator open source, and a commodity 2 years from now. There's no reason to think autonomous driving will be an exception.

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

#123

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

midasuni wrote: post #111
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

I guess I'm surprised and dismayed that there isn't more of a market for it. Hire cars are a bland, pedestrian experience, and I'm sure quite many people would rather drive their own interesting car on interesting roads. Not everything needs to be a race to the bottom — there are still people who pay a premium for a better experience. I would think also that government subsidies for this kind of service are justified. Surely it's better for the environment and also safer.

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

#124

Post by gambiting »

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…

It's the same argument that BMW made, and it's just as faulty here. They said that instead of paying $500 upfront for heated seats, they will be available as an annual unlock for say $100/year. Since they know an average owner keeps a new BMW for only 3 years, this is a saving for new buyers - isn't that great??? I hate this argument with a burning passion though, it's turning ownership into subscription only to extract more money in the long run.

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

#125

Post by chewz »

nix23 wrote: post #118
chewz wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ;)

The name is from the other era ;-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen#1932%E2%80%931938:_...

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

#126

Post by JumpCrisscross »

gambiting wrote: post #124
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It's the same argument that BMW made, and it's just as faulty here. They said that instead of paying $500 upfront for heated seats, they will be available as an annual unlock for say $100/year. Since they know an average owner keeps a new BMW for only 3 years, this is a saving for new buyers - isn't that great??? I hate this argument with a burning passion though, it's turning ownership into subscription only to extr…

> instead of paying $500 upfront for heated seats, they will be available as an annual unlock for say $100/year. Since they know an average owner keeps a new BMW for only 3 years, this is a saving for new buyers

For someone who only occasionally needs heated seats, this is value adding.

I agree that forcing everyone into a subscription is coercive. But there are a lot of people for whom the flexibility of a subscription creates more value than it costs. Rejecting it ex ante because of its financing model is overly simplistic.

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

#127

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ovi256 wrote: post #121
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> I split time between at least two cities Please don't bring up minority use cases when discussing the average or modal use case.

> don't bring up minority use cases

There are a lot of minority use cases with cars. I suspect there are more, in aggregate, minority uses than there are cases in the mode. In any event, there is a massive non-extortive beachhead for this model, as deminstrared by Uber and Zipcar et al.

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

#128

Post by stefan_ »

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…

What do you call a model where you sell "fully self driving capable hardware" that isn't not once, but about 2.5 times?

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

#129

Post by gnicholas »

gitanovic wrote: post #113
mlyle wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Strangely, there are no direct trains from northern CA to southern CA. There is a line from Sacramento down into Santa Clara, and a line from San Luis Obispo down to San Diego.

But there's no direct way to get from SF/SJ to LA/OC via train. There are buses, but they are considerably less enjoyable than the Pacific Surfliner line!

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

#130

Post by tails4e »

mlyle wrote: post #60
tempestn wrote: post #49

Having finally had a chance to test-"drive" an advanced autopilot Tesla last weekend, I can confidently say at the current level of that tech I would pay less than nothing. At best (cruising down a well-marked highway) it was only slightly worse than useless, taking a different line in the lane than I considered optimal, leaving me feeling a background level of apprehension. From there it ranged through frustrating,…

Tesla's status on this is really controversial. Some people think that Tesla's sheer data advantage will put them way ahead soon and that it's imminent. On the other hand, Waymo is doing pretty well on most trips (admittedly within a small geofenced zone that has friendly weather -- you can watch oodles of video from jjricks on real trips here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61AfxOMu3wY )

I did think it was imminent at one point, but the fact the delivery date keeps pushing out shows its far from complete, and is only usable in controlled circumstances. I use it in traffic jams, or motorway driving, and that's it, anywhere else and it's just asking for trouble. It's useful in those limited cases, but it's a shame how many false promises have been issued, I've a lot of respect for what Elon has done, but he's really oversold this
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