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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

#381

Post by SamBam »

varjag wrote: post #374
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…

Yes seriously this is A level BS. I in fact own an ID.4 Max, and while it's a swell car you hardly save much buying this over a same class Tesla 3/Y where I live. It's clear that the autonomous driving has to execute locally on the car, so there is no physical basis to any "cost saving" other than sales mechanism optimization. Boo.

At the same time it's clear that autonomous driving is something that's going to need to be continually improved with over-the-air updates. This isn't a subscription for heated seats, it's something that you want them continually developing, month-in and month-out, and continually updating maps and stuff.

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

#382

Post by wil421 »

tails4e wrote: post #134
hughrr wrote: 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…

If you leave the self driving aside, the model s is an amazing car. Compared with a high end bmw/merc/audi you get more features as standard - though I do admit the finish/build quality on those cars is superior. I have a 4 year old MS, and genuinely like it and love the acceleration/nimbleness and have experienced very few issues. I'd consider tesla again for my next car, but FSD would not be a factor either way.

The interior of any Tesla is light years behind a BMW/Merc/Audi. My wife recently got an x7 and even my Grand Cherokee seems nicer in some ways than a Tesla.

For the price of a Tesla you should be getting so much more inside especially at the S/X price level. Compared to the Mercs and BMWs I looked at a Tesla was more comparable to a nice Honda.

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

#383

Post by relativ575 »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #168
CorrectHorseBat wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How is autonomous driving an increasingly scarce resource? Space is the scarce resource. In a city that's full of 90% of the time parked cars it doesn't really make sense for everyone to have their own car. Autonomous driving just combines the best of Uber and car sharing.

In a city having excellent public transport makes even more sense than cars :) And outside the city space isn't an issue.

Look around a residential area in Zurich. Not very far from a train station. Yet there are still a lot or cars, and many empty parking space. If a place with such a fantastic public transportation still requires that many cars, what does it tell you about people's habit?

https://www.google.com/maps/@47.4049509,8.5855091,3a,75y,292...

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

#384

Post by SamBam »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #320
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…

I see your point but I think you have to factor in: 1) The driver's time. If I can read on my way to work, that's a win. Price effectively reduced. 2) Time saved not getting an oil change, new tires, other maintenance, etc. Price drops a bit more. 3) I don't have to buy a "family sized" car that's only fully utilized a small percentage of the time. That over-pay / under-realized has a cost associated with it. Instead…

I think you're missing what the post was about. 2, 3 and 5 seem to assume VW is talking about renting the car, but it's about subscribing to the self-driving feature. 1, 4 and 6 are the same for either buying or subscribing the service.

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

#385

Post by SamBam »

jbverschoor wrote: post #158
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…

So a car is free to operate? No fuel/electricity No road tax No insurance No maintenance

No, they're talking about a subscription model for a feature. Read the article.

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

#386

Post by throwaway0a5e »

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.

>It makes him tell everyone he's happy but that's where it ends. He's got too much pride to tell the truth.

Toyota frames rust out. KitchenAid gears strip (and half the stuff they put their name on is just badged garbage to begin with). Snap On tools break. LL Bean stuff wears our prematurely. Being in a "good school district" fails to magically make your kid successful. The guy with the $2k fishing setup gets out-fished by the teenager with the $40 setup who knows what makes the fish in that spot bite. Fancy pans don't make you a good cook. But yet people do all sorts of mental gymnastics to justify the things they paid top dollar for as still being the best crap ever even when they fail them. Nobody expects stuff made at scale to be perfect 100% of the time but the owners of premium stuff sure act like that is the case.

You see this sort of failure denialism with all sorts of premium products. People actively refuse to believe that something else, something cheaper, could have been equivalent or better for their use case.

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

#387

Post by Nullabillity »

relativ575 wrote: post #355
Nullabillity wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber is a great example of how this model ends up awful for both drivers (who get awful working conditions and usually end up making a lot less net than promised) and customers (who get an awful experience, end up paying a lot more than they would otherwise, and still aren't making progress towards getting rid of that extra expense).

As a somewhat frequent user, Uber's rides have always been good experience for me. Never awful. One of nicest things is you can use it in many countries, from the same app. Taxi is a scam in a lot of places. The complaint I have is that Uber pickup is sometimes unreliable. They may cancel after being connected, or they didn't wait at pickup points and left without contacting me.

To be clear: my criticisms are primarily about taxis vs car ownership. Uber just cranks the taxi problems up to 11.

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

#388

Post by SamBam »

ec109685 wrote: post #91
hughrr wrote: 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…

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.

GP's post makes it sound like the father is stuck with wanting to love it, and needing to show how much he loves it, to justify his choice and stave off buyer's remorse. That's fairly common when people make a purchase that's too expensive and then is not quite as perfect as they had hoped.

Obviously we don't know GP's dad, but that was clearly the intent of GP's post.

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

#389

Post by pulse7 »

ako wrote: 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.

In some countries you could even get a real driver (sitting inside your car) for that money...

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

#390

Post by vimax »

intricatedetail wrote: post #369
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.

I like the idea, and the industry continues to screw over developers, but there would be practical problems to a royalty plan.

Companies don't pay once for software, they hire a software team to maintain the code.

How would the royalties work? Do they all go to the person who first wrote the code? Based on the git blame of every line, so devs are always looking to rewrite as much as possible?

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