Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 709 posts

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

#411

Post by jewel »

g00gler wrote: post #366
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.

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 requir…

It might be possible to add self-driving features as an aftermarket upgrade. My 2013 model car already has drive-by-wire features (for automatic parallel parking), so it just needs more cameras and a replacement CPU. Heck, as a last resort you could put a robot in the driver's seat, physically operating the steering wheel and pedals.

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

#412

Post by logifail »

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…

> A good example is the airline industry that claims it needs the First class section to subsidize coach [..]

If you talk to travel nerds and insiders you'll quickly find out pricing, inventory and revenue management in the [traditional] airline industry is labyrinthine on a good day.

It's also not true that the biggest comfiest seats necessarily subside the rest, it's far more likely that those booking last minute _in any class_ and those requiring ticket flexibility do subsidize everyone else.

"It is not surprising that both British Airways and Virgin Atlantic have said that, per square foot, premium economy is the most profitable part of the plane"[0]

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2019/apr/13/premium-econo...

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

#413

Post by chiefalchemist »

SamBam wrote: post #384
chiefalchemist wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ok. Fair enough. I'll swing again...

If you're buying a VW...alreaady a heft sum, tacking on some added fee and saying that it's disadvantageous the disadvantaged feel like a stretch.

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

#414

Post by jacquesm »

swongel wrote: post #288
jacquesm wrote: post #191

That's cheaper than parking in Amsterdam. They're on to something here but the side-effects will likely not be what you expect. Suddenly the roads are going to be parking space as well. It also - funny - is higher than the minimum wage in many places.

They'd probably make it illegal for cars to drive without passenger in cities like Amsterdam without a taxi license to prevent traffic jams of cars driving around to avoid parking costs.

But the whole point is to be able to send junior to school while dad or mom goes the other way.

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

#415

Post by growt »

ghaff wrote: post #399
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.

Why do you care about boarding priority? The plane leaves at the same time for all passengers. All you do is exchange maybe 5 minutes on a seat outside the plane for 5 more minutes inside the plane.

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

#416

Post by BenjiWiebe »

dmitriid wrote: post #331
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…

And then you forget to click a "don't use autopilot" setting buried in three levels of settings, and will pay for a month-worth of driving.

Seems to me it would be difficult to not notice your car driving itself.

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

#417

Post by GekkePrutser »

Firadeoclus wrote: post #229
gspr wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I usually think that Americans have an insane tolerance for commuting, but 31 minutes per day is nothing! 15 minutes door-to-door to work is pretty fantastic — so fantastic that I too doubt that it's the average in the US northeast. Does this average perhaps count people who aren't working as having zero commute?

There is no indication that 31 minutes is per day, so I'd assume it's one way.

But then the calculation on a yearly basis doesn't make sense, it'd have to be doubled.

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

#418

Post by Communitivity »

What galls me the most I think is that minimum wage in 20 states within the U.S. is still at $7.25/Hour. Driving does not require a huge amount of skill, and it's something many us already know. Why not hire a person to do this? Well, perhaps an argument can be made for safety, reliability. Then again, perhaps the same argument can be made that a good human hire is safer than the machine, which can be hacked (any machine can be hacked, given enough time and resources thrown at it).

Volkswagen and Tesla are at the forefront of a 'Great Reset' in cars: turning car owners into car renters. Sure the base car is owned, but all the extra services needed to get the most out of your car become rented, it might as well be rented.

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

#419

Post by ClumsyPilot »

squiggleblaz wrote: post #402
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…

> And of course it is to extract more money from consumers, that's the goal of every company. No it isn't. We don't have companies so that they can extract money from consumers. We have companies to help efficiently distribute wealth through the community to maximise the probability of social needs being filled. If the goal was to extract money from consumers and give it to those with spare capital, there are vastly…

"Why would they even bother producing valuable goods?"

Like opium by the East India company or drugs by mexican cartels?

Getting people to buy something is a lot easier than chasing them with a gun, just look at how bad we are at colecting taxes.

"We have companies to help efficiently distribute wealth"

There is no economic theory, from marxist to neoliberal, that claims conpanies are there to distribute wealth. They organise capital and labour, and maybe they fullfill needs, unless they are doing HFT or something similarly murky.

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

#420

Post by effingwewt »

gambiting wrote: post #348
NikolaNovak wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, is that an actual thing? There's a car with built in hardware system that costs annual service to unlock - not content (XM/Sirius/Whatever), but actual heated seats? And people buy this? I am beyond incredulous and want to pinch myself. Offering Apple/Android play as subscription was bad enough and an automatic deal-breaker, but this is just ludicrous.

BMW is selling this as a great solution to fleet cars - say your company buys 100 cars for your employees - this way everyone gets a "base" spec car at a low cost to the company, but if an employee wants a sport mode or adaptive cruise control they can just pay to unlock it from their own pocket. Like, it makes sense to a lot of people. BMW loves this, corporate fleets love this. But as it slowly becomes standard we…

This is complete bullshit, it started as a normal feature. My 2009 328i has heated seats I've never once had to pay to activate.

No one in a fleet vehicle pays for their own 'upgrades', man.

DLC on cars and people are here defending it, I lost my shit over games doing it. We went from pay once for the game, maybe another expansion thay doubled your vanilla game. Now every company nickles and dimes us to death. Does no one remember banks being shit on for that in the 80s-90s?

Post reply on HN