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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

#421

Post by JohnWhigham »

globular-toast wrote: post #350
JohnWhigham wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more about fighting the powers that be and them taking away the ability to own anything at a reasonable price, period. Great example is the WSJ story yesterday about asset managers and foreign investors snatching up every house on the market. Don't you want the ability to own something if you feel the desire to do so, or would you rather corporations buy it from out under you/rent it back to you and there be…

> Don't you want the ability to own something if you feel the desire to do so Well... that's not really how things work, is it? Already there are things that you will never be able to own and a lot of it depends on the circumstances of your birth. Since you mention houses it touches upon another point which you may have been suggesting. Should ownership of certain basic things be a right? What should be included in t…

A basic house of some standard? A car?

Well, 60 years ago those were attainable relatively quickly for someone without a high school degree. Now they aren't (unless you want to live in the middle of nowhere) for someone even with a college degree. So something went awry in the meantime.

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

#422

Post by ghaff »

growt wrote: post #415
ghaff wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Carry-on luggage for one thing. (And the luggage I take is comfortably within limits before you ask. I'm also frequently in a bulkhead seat so the luggage has to go overhead.) I also like to just get settled in.

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

#423

Post by ClumsyPilot »

I am just waiting untill I need to go to the hospital and a warning pops up: "this destination is not included in basic plan, do you want to upgrade to premium for $999" and then have it reject my card or crash or glitch out and leave me high and dry.

Or untill I get banned from VW for self-driving offensively, or having sex in the car. Or untill all this data leaks or the car pushes ads on me.

Capitialism is eating personal liberty.

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

#424

Post by Dah00n »

IgorPartola wrote: post #380
pjc50 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It makes him tell everyone he's happy but that's where it ends. He's got too much pride to tell the truth. This seems to be a very 21st century phenomenon; product marketing gets replaced by cult membership. You don't buy a Tesla to experience a great car, you buy Tesla to tell everyone how great the experience is.

It’s a very human problem from like 40k years ago. We evolved to belong to tribes and feel most comfortable in them. The difference is that with how mobile we are now, both physically and as far as our ability to communicate, we can now form tribes not based on our family and geographic location (which often times doesn’t fit us all that well) but based on what products we consume: cars we buy, video games we play, m…

There are alternatives that doesn't go as far as isolation or religion of course. You mention a great example yourself that shows how you can be extreme/religious for no good reason when a open alternative is clearly present:

It's a worldwide phenomenon that motorcyclists in general wants to be open and inclusive. We wave to each other when we pass on the road, talk when we meet at gas stations and so on. But a Harley is not a motorcycle, it is a Harley. Most don't wave back, all frown if you try to talk to them if not out on your own Harley today but some Japanese bike and so on. Tesla and Apple users are very often in the same category of religious fanaticism for no good reason except brand loyalty. That is sad as one should be able to own a Harley, be part of a Harley crowd and not be religious about it but most (not all!) fall into this trap.

A tribe that is divided because of some businesses PR is always sad and harmful.

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

#425

Post by ParkShark »

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…

It’s actually $300 one time payment.

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

#426

Post by cwilkes »

mnahkies wrote: post #132
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…

With a SASS product you're paying for ongoing access to a service with continuous improvements and a cost to the company to continue providing you. With heated seats the hardware to provide the functionality was either fitted or not, once it leaves the factory it's static and so it seems pretty unreasonable to me to charge an ongoing fee for the privilege. A world where my car gets micro-transactions to turn on the A…

> With heated seats the hardware to provide the functionality was either fitted or no

I don’t understand this argument. Would it feel different if you had to install the FooBar component to get it to work? That the act of having to do something physically can then justify the additional cost?

I’m all for a rental market like this. It no longer means that in the used car market there’s 100 different cars of model XYZ to look at as there’s 2^n different combinations of options to consider. All of that model are the same and then you unlock features.

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

#427

Post by mnadkvlb »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #386
hughrr wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-fi…

I will keep this comment as a favorite. Thank you. very few people dare admit to bad decisions. When you see someone open to admitting bad decisions, hire them if u can.

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

#428

Post by Damogran6 »

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…

When I commuted downtown, it was $15 for parking, $6 in gas, and about 90 minutes round trip...so an additional $12.75?

Not to get into hourly wages, but it doesn't sit right when X% of your day is spent simply paying off your ride to work.

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

#430

Post by wutbrodo »

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…

> This is just taking advantage of the poor-middle class' inability to pay a larger upfront cost, to extort them for more over a larger period of time.

How on earth is charging more money for a lower upfront cost "extortion"? If you remove the option, you're not magically granting people the upfront cost, you're just cutting them off from access at all. Are you not aware of the time value of money?

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