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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

#261
post #141
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, in this case, you're renting access to VW's autonomous driving service, which presumably comes with constant updates and improvements and humans behind to intervene in case of necessity ( à la Waymo).

> Well, in this case, you're renting access to VW's autonomous driving service which presumably comes with constant updates and improvements Yes, which can be bought elsewhere, which was the entire point. > and humans behind to intervene in case of necessity ( à la Waymo). I have no idea, does it?

You can buy it, but not use it. That's a really great deal for elsewhere.

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

#262
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Most companies have 1 server

Iron is cheap nowadays. It's the upkeep that kills you.

This "1 server" is equivalent to at least two part-time admins to ensure smooth operations. No biggie if said server just hosts a static website, big deal if runs mission critical processes.

That's the part too many "self-hosting" advocates conveniently leave out. A correct TCO calculation must include this cost (and proper risk assessment) and only then can a comparison be made.

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

#263
post #218
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much this. I hope I don't stand on too many toes here. Actually I don't care. My father has a self driving enabled Tesla Model S which he paid a hell of a lot of money for that he doesn't have as he's in his 70s, living entirely off the remains of the house he just sold. He's convinced it'll be any day now that he gets full self driving and that it'll change the world. He tells me he loves the car and phones me da…

I'm sorry for your father. It's sad to see Musk fan the cultism in his followers :-(

I rest in the knowledge that it is at least a relatively harmless cult in the scale of things.

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

#264
post #225

> 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…

Tesla charges $10k for not really self driving, with the promise that it will improve, and you should buy it now, because the price will increase in the future. I.e. they make you pay for something you don't have, with no guarantee that you will have it later. If it isn't a money grab, I don't know what is. And of course you can take a loan on that, so it isn't an upfront cost either. At least, with VW system, you pa…

> At least, with VW system, you pay when you use it. Doesn't work in your area, you don't pay.

"AWS has billed us tens of thousands of dollars because we forgot to turn something off/confusing billing" hasn't taught anyone anything?

There's nothing honest about VW's approach. They won't have self-driving either, it will be at best the same as Tesla's. And yet, they want to charge you, and charge you significantly more than 10k upfront (because they expect to extract this payment every time, all the time, for the entire lifetime of the car).

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

#265

I would rather pay someone to hack my car so I don't have to pay per hour.

Market price is about $2200 https://comma.ai

The comma two is $1299 including the harness... it would pay itself off in no time (153 hours).

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

#266
post #221

> 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…

Bill Gates says people shouldn't own land, should always rent. That another company from US (forgot name) that buys houses for 50% higher asking price, now this. These days we rent books, games, flats, soon we'll rent homes and cars. No need to own anything when you can pay more money to rent it.

>Bill Gates says people shouldn't own land, should always rent.

Private ownership of land doesn't work because land value goes up even with no input of the land owner.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Everybod...

You are free to own the house and car.

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

#267
I think it is a great idea for bringing autonomous cars to the market. Think about it: take a VW that costs $25k today. Now, fast forward 10 years and you can buy roughly the same car for roughly the same price but with autonomy-as-a-service. First and foremost, it's still a car worth $25k. And if it's your first autonomous car, you will naturally be sceptical if it's worth it. Getting you to pay $10k extra may be a hard sell. Selling you autonomous driving at €7/h is a great way to convince you it works. If you are convinced, you'll buy that $40k autonomous car in the future. Otherwise, you'll just go back to manual mode and won't regret paying $10k for a worthless feature. But I totally get the subscription fatigue we are all under that prompted so much negativity in the responses.

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

#268
post #60

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 think the data advantage is limited.

I used to work in high-frequency equity trading. We would run simulations against tick-by-tick data from real markets. The simulations were of very questionable value. As soon as you trade once in your simulation, from that point onwards the whole run is contaminated. Your trade, if it had actually happened, would have been seen by other participants, who would have changed their strategy, often in complex and unpredictable ways, and the timelines would have diverged rapidly and irreversibly from that point.

Data recorded from driving situations is useful for one thing - testing out split-second decision making - stop or accelerate? Steer left or right? This is a limited use case. Most situations don't have critical decisions like this. The ones that do, it's often hard to judge what would have been the right answer. Even accidents - where the post facto desired outcome is "don't have an accident", unfold over several seconds, involving several stages of actors responding to each others' actions. No one can be sure how the driver should have approached the very first interaction - the only one for which the data is meaningful.

Actual road testing, and meaningful simulation which isn't just replaying what actually happened is much more useful.

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

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the fact that you paid for the heated seats upfront increases the value of the car when you resell it. Likely by more than what you saved by renting? …or maybe that was your point?

Indeed. BMW's argument to this is that all cars will have all equipment built in - it will all be unlockable by subscription. Want adaptive cruise control? $200 a year. Heated seats? $100 a year. Sport modes for the engine/transmission? $400 a year. etc etc etc. It annoys me to no end because it means you are paying(in the cost of the car) to have all of this advanced tech in the car, but you can't use it without sub…

BMW is (has long been) an intelligence test.

If you bought one, you failed.

Overhyped and hugely underwhelming. I rate BMW as among the worst and most uncomfortable cars I've ever driven. And during my consulting days on the road I was in rentals probably 3 weeks out of 4, so got to do extended test drives of a significant number of vehicles.

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

#270
post #26

With that pricepoint, maybe you don't need to implement actual autonomous driving, but instead it could be implemented by employing millions of dronepilots in some far away country that drive your car for you.

Yes, just hide an Indian in the trunk...
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