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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

#391

Post by saturdaysaint »

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…

These are early adopter products that are, for some good reasons, expressly aimed at a fairly small subset of wealthy and technologically inclined people. Given the nascent state of the technology and the extremely high liability, they probably wouldn't want all of their customers to drive this even if it was magically cheap.

In the medium run, like GPS technology, competition will drive the cost of autonomy down to practically nothing and it will be enjoyed by working class people for free.

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

#392

Post by cactus2093 »

GuB-42 wrote: post #225
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…

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…

As someone with a non Tesla car with some smart cruise control features, I think you’re being too harsh on Tesla.

I have a 2020 Hyundai, and there has been no major refresh in the 2021 or 2022 models of the same car. But the software features have each gotten slightly better. The cruise control will only slow down and stop you on my model, but on the newer model, it will stop and then start going again. My model will sometimes correct the steering at the last minute if I start veering outside the lane, the newer model will more gradually keep you centered in the lane so you don’t even start to veer out. Pretty minor stuff like that.

There’s no way the hardware on my car is the limiting factor, but I will never get any of these improvements. Tesla is still the only car maker to decide that car software can be treated like almost any other software people use, and actually updated independently of the hardware.

Even if the 10k self driving charge is a little too ambitious, in my opinion Tesla are still miles ahead of all the other major brands in user-friendly practices.

It’s always interesting that people get so used to the status quo even if it’s actually inefficient or wasteful or arbitrarily worse than it easily could be. But if a company does something ambitious and new, but it has some downsides like a higher cost in the beginning, those downsides get judged so much more harshly than the downsides of the status quo.

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

#393

Post by kiliantics »

blhack wrote: post #139
gitanovic wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand is: why don't you take a train instead? I have never been to US, but whenever I hear about self driving cars I think: why don't people just use public transport if they don't want to drive?

It’s too much of a hassle to use public transportation. With your own car you can bring as much stuff as you want, stop where you want, leave when you want, go wherever you want at your destination, bring whoever you want, listen to what you want on the radio, stop where you want for side trips/tourist things along the way etc. Like for instance with my own car instead of a shared train, I can bring my golf clubs, my…

The vast majority of car trips are nothing like this though. Why don't we build more trains to take people on their usual short commutes and save cars for the occasional fun trips like this?

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

#394

Post by Larrikin »

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…

There is very little reason to believe Tesla will be best let alone first when it comes to self driving technology. I personally feel they are backing the wrong technology and will ultimately be unsuccessful without LIDAR sensors like Waymo and other startups and the beta testers with current model Teslas are going to ultimately end up disappointed.

I don't own a car currently (nor any Tesla stock) so I'm happy to wait and see if I'm wrong or right.

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

#395

Post by PaulHoule »

As an SW dev the first thing I experience at this is sadness, on a bad day I might feel my heart in my throat.

I am proud when I maximize the value the customer gets for the cost it takes to give them that value.

I'm skeptical about business plans that involve making value and then locking it away or (similarly) degrading value so you can some or all of it back to customers.

A good example is the airline industry that claims it needs the First class section to subsidize coach. Historically, they also put in complex rules that make you pay two or three times as much for coach ticket if you don't overstay the weekend.

The counterexample is that the most successful and consistently profitable airlines, like Southwest, don't play those games. On Delta or American you might wait 20 minutes for them to explain the 9 levels of boarding priority and which credit card entitles you to which priority and which status level on which partner airlines, etc.

On Southwest they would have the flight mostly boarded by the time the legacy airline had explained the boarding procedure. They wouldn't have to pay all the attendants to sit around, pay for the expensive jet stairs to be occupied, pay for the pilots to sit around, etc. They might even get another flight in.

"Price discrimination" frequently is "cutting off your nose to spite your face".

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

#397

Post by perryizgr8 »

sofixa wrote: post #230
perryizgr8 wrote: post #58

I would pay zero per hour/day/month/year. I would be open to paying a flat upfront price though. Like we have always done for car features. If this subscription trend continues, cars will become like iphones. For an Iphone you pay $800, get only 64GB SSD with about 50GB usable which will run out in a matter of months. Then you pay Apple $3 every month until eternity just to be able to use your phone, otherwise it wil…

We're talking about a new type of car feature, one that needs constant work and updates. It's not unreasonable to have to pay-per-use for it.

> We're talking about a new type of car feature, one that needs constant work and updates.

Why would it need constant updates? They should release and sell the feature when it is done.

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

#398

Post by ashtonkem »

amcoastal wrote: post #368
bluGill wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wouldn’t be so confident. I think you’re drastically underrating how much convenience will drive changes in behavior and social expectation. If self driving works (big if, I’m dubious about this), then the vast majority of us will switch over to using it for regular trips very quickly. As that happens, the perception about what is safe and socially acceptable will change quickly, as will the types of vehicles consumers demand.

This type of change isn’t instant, but it can happen faster than a human lifespan. Think about someone born in the 70s and what they’ve experienced with cigarettes. They were born into a world where close to half the US population smoked, and they’re now retiring in a world where smoking is de facto banned in most non-residential buildings. That is a drastic change, and remember that tobacco is addictive, which hampers change much more effectively than habits like driving.

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

#399

Post by ghaff »

PaulHoule wrote: post #395

As an SW dev the first thing I experience at this is sadness, on a bad day I might feel my heart in my throat. I am proud when I maximize the value the customer gets for the cost it takes to give them that value. I'm skeptical about business plans that involve making value and then locking it away or (similarly) degrading value so you can some or all of it back to customers. A good example is the airline industry tha…

Southwest also historically flew a bunch of fairly short haul routes where even business travelers didn't care much about seating.

Whereas most of the flights I do, I absolutely care about boarding priority, seat assignments, and the occasional upgrade.

Once upon a time, I actually flew Southwest a lot on short-haul flights to Houston. These days, at least pre-pandemic, I care a lot about status on a given carrier.

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

#400

Post by futevolei »

malozite wrote: post #271
mattlondon wrote: post #106

I can certainly see the value for those long boring trips we do just one/two/three times a year. Those long 4-6 hour drives we do only a few times a year for vacations or whatever. Totally worth it IMHO if it is 100% hands-off. I usually prefer to own my stuff than rent, but I don't think paying 10k upfront for something I only use sporadically is worthwhile so this seems great to me.

I honestly don't understand this. I enjoy driving, especially long distance. The benefit of being able to read a book or look at my phone rather than listen to music or an audio book is not worth anything like $8.50 an hour to me. The general inconveniences of long distance drives like planning food and toilet stops, or delays due to traffic, weather or accidents would still be present. I would pay a lot to be instan…

Other people don’t like to drive, simple as that. Some people would like to fly but can’t afford the ticket so they have to make a long miserable drive. Or maybe it’s one of those destinations that is a 5 hour drive where a car clearly makes more sense than a 45 minute flight (that ends up taking 5-6 hours door to door). Im sure you can appreciate how pay by hour would be a huge upgrade in this case.
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