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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

#291

Post by owl57 »

qayxc wrote: post #262
mavhc wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

And, if instead of a dedicated server you rent some combination of AWS services, you suddenly don't need admin or need a cheaper one?

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

#293

Post by imtringued »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #57
forgot_old_user wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if it crashes into someone, wouldn't you be responsible then?

And we haven't even gotten onto the ethics of - in a bad situation - choosing whether to sacrifice the passenger or another road user. Would you buy a car that throws you over a cliff to avoid ploughing through 20 kids running stupidly onto the road? I mean, in theory the autonomous driving will be good enough to protect both. But a similar scenario will come up somewhere/sometime and what is the correct answer? What…

This is just stupid. An accident is an accident and that is all there is to it, there are no ethics involved in a malfunctioning piece of equipment.

People hate ethics because of stupid crap like this. Because people have a hammer (trolley problem) and every thing turns into a nail but the point of the trolley problem isn't that there are trolleys and victims. You are falling into the trap of trying to make a thought experiment as real as possible, which is completely useless in practice. Comments like this give ethics a bad image and turn it into a sad joke.

Here is a real ethical dilemma: Early adoption of autonomous vehicles will cause deadly accidents during the development phase but the deployment of autonomous vehicles will save lives over the long term.

Should we accelerate the development of autonomous vehicles and accept early deaths in exchange for saving more people by deploying life saving autonomous driving earlier?

Should we delay the development of autonomous vehicles by two decades to avoid early deaths while letting people drive themselves and suffer an increased accident rate for 20 years that will ultimately cost more lives than the development of autonomous vehicles?

Tesla is following the first option. They are deploying technology that isn't ready to speed up the rate of progress.

Waymo is following the second option. Stay safe during development, even if it takes much longer for your product to actually decrease the fatality rate.

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

#294

Post by teachingassist »

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…

Yours is an anti-capitalist take which I don't see as a criticism of VW specifically here.

The reason this service can potentially exist is only because Tesla is charging such a high upfront cost, and because it may be more accessible (or indeed cheaper) for some people to rent on a pay-as-you-go basis.

"This is 100% a way to extract more money from consumers" is true of literally everything that every corporation does. That's the point of its existence.

Are they spinning it to sound good? Of course, that's part of the job. Do you have to take the service if it provides no additional benefit to you? No, you can still buy a Tesla (or not).

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

#295

Post by lonelyasacloud »

estaseuropano wrote: post #163
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I would buy this argument if they sold the initial car at a loss - but they don't do that. You paid for that feature when you bought the car, then you pay again to use it. This is just rent seeking.

> You paid for that feature when you bought the car, then you pay again to use it.

Short answer.

No, not really; a manufacturer can't simply lump the price of all the unused stuff onto the base price. It would hand the low end to their competitors.

Longer answer.

Assuming that the manufacturers are not operating as a cartel (which is a different discussion), a manufacturer simply adding the total cost of all non-activated equipment and services onto the base price would be competitive suicide in the low(er)-end market. So no sane manufacturer would ever do that - they don't need to.

Instead, as long as the manufacturer's cost reductions through simplified design, production, inventory etc., plus the upselling revenue are greater than the additional hardware and licensing costs. Then they can, at least in theory, include heated seats, air conditioning, self-driving and whatever extra crap they like for no, or very little, additional initial outlay to the base model purchaser.

Of course, purchasers (and the planet) will pay for it in degraded acceleration, braking and fuel economy if extra weight is involved. Perhaps I'm pessimistic, but given the number of pointless SUVs and Trucks on the roads, it's hard to imagine that'd be a concern to the average purchaser.

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

#296

Post by qayxc »

Animats wrote: post #135
mlang23 wrote: post #107

This is sci-fi. AVs are not there yet. And they will not be there for some time to come. Since Google started their damn AV-car-project back around 2014 (or was it even earlier) mainstream media is full of sci-fi. I had to explain to many people that what media is waiving infront of their noses is not something they will be able to consume in the next years. I really wonder why media is so sci-fi-heavy recently. Mayb…

In the more advanced cities, self-driving taxis are here.[1] Shenzhen, where else? Watch it make an unprotected left turn through an intersection cluttered with motorcycles, tuk-tuks, cars, and a mobile crane. WeRide has many videos of their self-driving cars. The production ones have no driver and are used on major roads. The experimental ones have a safety driver and struggle through urban villages with people, bik…

Nice demo - no traffic at all (the parked car in the beginning even looks staged), the car is running a stop sign, the left turn blocks the pedestrian crossing (not sure about the traffic law in China, but in my country this is illegal), 4 empty lanes yet 40ish km/h speed, etc.

These cars are packed full of additional sensors, are monitored remotely and only drive on fixed, selected routes. It's state-run propaganda.

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

#297

Post by rootlocus »

imtringued wrote: post #266
agilob wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. Same goes for stock markets and crypto currencies.

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

#298

Post by iso1210 »

dmitriid wrote: post #264
GuB-42 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mor…

That's the same argument against software-as-a-service

Maybe I'm not bothered about self driving for 90% of my journeys, but on occasion I'm going somewhere unusual or want to travel overnight or after drinking or whatever I'll just pay for a few hours.

Imagine a world where there was just a set fee of $x per hour and $x per mile to travel. Would allow a far easier choice between different modes of transport, as the marginal cost becomes the actual cost.

(Of course self driving is years away so this is all just spin)

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

#299

Post by iso1210 »

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…

They said that instead of paying $5000 upfront for a server, they will be available as an annual unlock for say $1000/year. Since they know an average owner keeps a new server 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

#300

Post by iso1210 »

gambiting wrote: post #205
erhk wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was looking at a house the other day, it said "option to continue rental of garage". That's not a new house by any means (1800s or so I think), nor is it in some modern hippy city with new ways of doing things.
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