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

arstechnica.com

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

#201

Post by Mashimo »

rho4 wrote: post #193

I already pay almost $20 per day for public transportation. Of course I would switch to robotaxis for $8.50/h. Door to door, guaranteed seat, privacy, isolation from body odors & food smells, noise, loud phone conversations, screaming kids, gossiping seniors, beggars, crazies, drunks, street musicians, touching arms & thighs, ads (maybe), conductors, jehovah's witnesses, campaigners and promoters. No more waiting in…

You still have to buy the car. So you have to factor that into the $8.50/h. (Unless you also got a car now)

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

#202

Post by mothsonasloth »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #164

The car refused to drive autonomously. It said, “$8.50, please.” He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the car. Again he tried the self-driving knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.” “I think otherwise,” the car said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this VW…

Reluctantly he coughed up the $8.50. The car then said, "I'm sorry Dave, Seatbelt yearly subscription is also expired. Please pay VW $200 to re-enable, or press the cancel button to drive without a seatbelt.

Dave pressed the cancel button with furious determination. The VW Bug sped off from his modest suburban house. It's high G wheels speeding up and zooming past Burb beaters and Bimbo wagons.

Unbeknownst to him a catastrophic situation was looming...

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

#203

Post by phreeza »

This seems a bit short sighted to me at least for the foreseeable future, because the data aquired while self driving will also be valuable. So it would make sense to encourage drivers to use the feature as much as possible, in order to improve accuracy and stay ahead of tightened regulations that will surely come over time. (E.g. disengagements per km).

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

#205

Post by gambiting »

erhk wrote: post #183
gambiting wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is already happening with property ownership being coagulated in cities. How is this a surprise

How is that the same?

It's as if you bought your house, but had one room walled off with the developer saying "for only $100 a month, we will open that room up for you! isn't that great? you only pay for it if you need the extra space!"

Except that obviously the room is there whether you pay the subscription or not, you paid for it in the cost of the house.

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

#206

Post by berkes »

turminal wrote: post #151
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…

>AWS isn't a scam on companies too poor to buy servers. Do the math and see how using AWS just doesn't make sense at the scale most companies operate.

Are you saying that if I did the math, I'd move my company to a more expensive heroku (I did), onto another, cheaper VPS provider (I did, Linode, DO, rackspace even, for other companies) or onto self hosted&maintained hardware (this hasn't been cost effective for me for decades)?

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

#207

Post by Mashimo »

zx2391 wrote: post #154

VW ships 3M cars per year, let's say a car is used 1h per day. Given all cars are used in this subscription model, we look at $765M MRR, or almost $10B per year, which is already about 10% of their current revenue. Given that autonomous vehicles do not suck time out of the user's budget, they might even be used more. At 3h/day, we already at $30B yearly revenue - almost half of what they made in 2020. And software ha…

> let's say a car is used 1h per day.

Just because the car is used, does not mean everybody unlocks the self driving mode.

I would not be surprised if you could unlock it unlimited fir a one time price.

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

#208

Post by Rygian »

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,…

What did you test-drive? Regular Tesla auto-pilot, or the limited-access FSD Beta?

They are radically different experiences.

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

#209

Post by rho4 »

Mashimo wrote: post #201
rho4 wrote: post #193

I already pay almost $20 per day for public transportation. Of course I would switch to robotaxis for $8.50/h. Door to door, guaranteed seat, privacy, isolation from body odors & food smells, noise, loud phone conversations, screaming kids, gossiping seniors, beggars, crazies, drunks, street musicians, touching arms & thighs, ads (maybe), conductors, jehovah's witnesses, campaigners and promoters. No more waiting in…

You still have to buy the car. So you have to factor that into the $8.50/h. (Unless you also got a car now)

Yes, only interesting if this is for an Uber like service without ownership. Didn't read that part.

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

#210

Post by rsj_hn »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #126
gambiting wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 subscript…

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

No, for someone who only has a 3 year lease on a BMW, this may be value adding (or value subtracting).

The money you save by not paying for heated seats when you buy the BMW does not go into your pocket when you sell the BMW without heated seats, as whoever buys the BMW from you will pay less for a BMW in which heated seats are free than one in which heated seats cost $100/year.

For a car with a 20 year life, you'd profit if 1 year of heated seat rental costs less than 1/20 the price of heated seats if bought up front. This is true whether you own the car for 1 year or 3 years or 20 years. It does not matter how long you personally plan on owning the car.

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