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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

#361

Post by qayxc »

bsenftner wrote: post #328
qayxc wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about businesses here, not your private amusement, though. As a business you need to ask yourself: and who pays for the time it takes to educate at least two employees on this "basic and elementary matter"? If it really were so "basic and elementary", how come even critical infrastructure regularly falls victim to the most primitive of ransomware attacks? Misconfigured email and network access settings,…

It certainly helps if one begins with experienced engineers. I am not talking about personal projects, I am discussing funded startups. If your team has not run servers on their own in the past, get a different team. It is not as if there is not a giant population of grey beards with this knowledge seeking work... I accept your points, but far too many inexperienced devOps are given keys that should not have them. Fr…

> Just because a developer knows Docker does not mean they know how to expose that securely to the public

While that's certainly true, I think you missed the part where the guy specifically applied for a DevOps position.

The "Ops"-part wasn't optional and exposing a test system to the public in the first place is a big fail in and of itself obviously.

But that's besides the point: the point was that operating even a single server is more complex than many people tend to admit and you just confirmed this statement.

I also don't understand how you jump from "it's not hard" and "big scary nothing" to "funded startups" and getting a "different team" preferably consisting of knowledgeable "grey beards". Which is it? Is it simple enough to learn on a rainy weekend or do you actually need dedicated trained and/or experienced professionals, because far too many devs are unsuitable for this?

I have trouble following your train of thought tbh.

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

#362

Post by intricatedetail »

smarx007 wrote: post #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…

They should be required to release API and allow 3rd party self driving services. Otherwise it is a monopoly. They think this will fly because they are a German company.

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

#363

Post by nabla9 »

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…

How about compared to typical American car loan?

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

#364

Post by whoknew1122 »

bsenftner wrote: post #301
berkes wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)?

If you're any form of hi-compute, the cloud is insanely expensive and a no-brainer for colocation, even for as little as one server. If your service requires more than the average CRUD serving of media, the cloud quickly becomes far far too expensive.

It's all fun and games until that co-lo goes down and with it your entire business.

Speaking from someone who moved a SaaS operation from co-lo to AWS. Everyone (especially the C-suite) was much happier.

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

#365

Post by TheCondor »

prennert wrote: post #304
smarx007 wrote: post #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…

I agree. This allows you to switch on autonomous driving when driving to unfamiliar places, long distance, and for cases where you would make more than $8.50/hour by working while the car drives. Or just because you had a drink and want to be driven home in your own car. I am sure many people would opt to not use it most of the time, but having the option is great. As long as not using the option does not make the ca…

I agree that it seems like an interesting approach to bringing it to market. Imagine living in rural somewhere where they don’t have the same quality of data that they have for Silicon Valley, you don’t have to pay for the service that doesn’t work as well.

Also, I expect there will be a service component whereby mapping a models are updated regularly so some fee for that makes sense.

Then what if insurance was covered in that fee?

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

#366

Post by g00gler »

bluGill wrote: post #327
iso1210 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It won't be long after self driving arrives and you won't get that option. Humans are terrible drivers, even in the best cases. Once self driving is better survival than humans it won't be legal to drive on public roads.

A future where humans are no longer able to drive will have to be a decade or more after self driving arrives. It’s impossible for everyone to replace their non self driving cars immediately.

The used car market is a $150bn industry. A quick spot check found that a 2010 Honda Civic still costs between $5k and $10k depending on mileage, etc.

By the time that self driving is required by the NHSA or whatever body requires backup cameras and the like in new cars self driving will be standard.

A $20k Subaru will come with it out of the box, no add ons, just like a backup camera today.

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

#368

Post by amcoastal »

bluGill wrote: post #327
iso1210 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It won't be long after self driving arrives and you won't get that option. Humans are terrible drivers, even in the best cases. Once self driving is better survival than humans it won't be legal to drive on public roads.

Maybe where you live. There's a 0% chance human driving will be banned in America until we are all well passed driving age.

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

#369

Post by intricatedetail »

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…

I wonder why developers won't organise and demand royalty payments for their code? It's crazy that company pays once for the software and makes money off of it forever but don't share those profits with developers.

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

#370

Post by qayxc »

owl57 wrote: post #356
WJW wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't exactly need to be an expert in object storage to stick a file into S3 and download it again some time later, just as 99% of SQL queries don't need a full blown DBA to write efficiently. (In fact, most queries are so simple that most shops have automated them with ORMs and the like) It is always the 1% of difficult stuff that hits you, but it is very rarely the correct call to optimize for that 1% instead o…

Yes? Neither you need to be an expert in file systems to stick a file on a server. And, yes, 99% of the time you don't need a DBA, just install Postgres on said server and go ahead with ORM.

Unless that file is to be read by 1000 users simultaneously - that's where the fun begins ;)
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