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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

#171

Post by callamdelaney »

hughrr wrote: post #94
ec109685 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously you know your father best, but it at least seems from your words it makes him happy. As someone with similar car, you get to know it’s quirks and use it when it adds value.

It makes him tell everyone he's happy but that's where it ends. He's got too much pride to tell the truth. And those aren't quirks; they are big stinking problems. Never write down a problem as something that isn't one. I owned a Merc 190E once that was a bag of problems. My life got better and I got happier the day I acknowledged them and got rid of it.

I own a Tesla, have the base model 3 and didn't pay for full self driving. On motorways and A roads the self drive experience is reasonably adequate. Naturally, on any reasonably long journey there are dozens of times you'll have to take over from autopilot and steer around some corner or some hazard.

It really doesn't bother me whether it gets better or they add full self driving. Charging your car isn't a big stinking problem, it's an inherent feature.

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

#172

Post by GekkePrutser »

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…

You mean 250 hours a year, not a week. But 31 minutes commuting per day is super low, that's 15 minutes each way. I doubt that is really the average to be honest.

Of course with the pandemic commuting is not a big time sink anymore but I wonder how permanent this will be.

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

#173

Post by kwdc »

$8.50 eh? When autonomous driving is a thing, uber etc will get really interesting. Maybe even cheaper but I'm not hopeful by much.

Personally I'd suggest that autonomous vans will really shake things up. Especially the combination of EV and autonomous.

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

#174

Post by kwdc »

tomcooks wrote: post #114
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is how a lot of ideas get nonsensical holes put in them.

There would be licenses, regulations, threat of lawsuit, qualifications and all sorts of other mandatory requirements. If someone wants to be cynical then, yes, a lot of these safeguards would not be put in place until after a certain number of deaths had been exceeded. eg seat belts, air bags, traffic lights, speed limits, road rules in general.

The idea is still viable.

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

#175

Post by IanCal »

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?

Obligatory answer from someone that doesn't meet one of the requirements - I'm in the UK so can answer from that perspective.

Going to the city near me, I have these options to take two adults and a child:

1. Train - 5 minute walk, 1 hour travelling including a change. Trains run once per hour, costs £16 while my son is under 5.

2. Bus - 25 minute walk (at adult speed), 45 minute travelling each way. Runs every 20 minutes I think, costs ~£8.

3. Drive - 25 minutes travelling each way, no walk. Costs ~£1 in petrol + £2 tolls. Technically costs would be higher if you include wear & tear on the car itself but not by a great deal.

This is probably the least fair comparison to the car as well. Most other places nearby have the same major issues with travelling, or worse. A trip to the beach would be a 10 minute drive with no tolls but the same 25 minute walk to the bus stop and then a slow bus.

Added to this the amount of stuff we may have on us (pram, bag of various things for changes, snacks, lunch, etc). If there's more of us, or once our kid grows up more the costs go up for everything other than the car.

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

#176

Post by toto444 »

> This is 100% a way to extract more money from consumers, especially non financially stable consumers, while lying to all of our faces.

Nothing prevents them from buying a non autonomous car and renting one when they need, say, when have drunk more than they should.

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

#177

Post by jusssi »

Danieru wrote: post #162
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you're paying for ongoing access to a service with continuous improvements and a cost to the company to continue providing you Why wouldn’t this apply to an autonomous driving service?

Because the hardware and sensors are all local, installed on the car from the factory. There is no economic advantage, just a business advantage

I think we're not anywhere near a level where a car could drive fully autonomously just with the local hardware, without a detailed data set of all the roads and real-time updates on conditions. That data set needs to be continuously maintained.

Also, they'll probably need a liability insurance for cases when their autonomous car inevitably gets in a situation where it has to choose between killing it's passengers or killing someone outside the car.

Of course, they could offer a pricing model where all that is paid up front, but I doubt it would be very attractive.

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

#178

Post by hughrr »

callamdelaney wrote: post #171
hughrr wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes him tell everyone he's happy but that's where it ends. He's got too much pride to tell the truth. And those aren't quirks; they are big stinking problems. Never write down a problem as something that isn't one. I owned a Merc 190E once that was a bag of problems. My life got better and I got happier the day I acknowledged them and got rid of it.

I own a Tesla, have the base model 3 and didn't pay for full self driving. On motorways and A roads the self drive experience is reasonably adequate. Naturally, on any reasonably long journey there are dozens of times you'll have to take over from autopilot and steer around some corner or some hazard. It really doesn't bother me whether it gets better or they add full self driving. Charging your car isn't a big stink…

Model 3 is a much better proposition on features and price though.

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

#179

Post by fxtentacle »

For companies and business travelers, this is perfect.

Let me elaborate: If you purchase an asset, that is seen as a store of value so you need to spread out the tax reductions over the useful life of the product. But like this, self-driving is taxed as a service, not as an asset. That means all expenses are immediately fully deductible. Also, that means you can buy an affordable used car, gain full tax benefits (because the previous owner waited through much of the useful tax life already) and then upgrade to self driving and get full tax benefits again.

For me personally, that means this feature would be effectively free because the tax savings cancel out the price.

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

#180

Post by globular-toast »

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.

Well this won't apply to you then since you never use the public highways anyway, right?
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