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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

#431

Post by adflux »

whoknew1122 wrote: post #364
bsenftner wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Always fun to see people compare bare metal costs to actual running cost of cloud infrastructure. For some reason such advocates always think the system administrators work for free, the network will always work, the machine will never break, the machine will not need to be replicated etc etc etc

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

#432

Post by forgingahead »

This is a hilarious decision not only because of the bozo pricing attempt, but also because as someone who has to drive a WV every so often, my opinion of their existing software capabilities is that it's just bad.

Start stop is poorly implemented, and can actively be dangerous in city driving. Many other aspects of the car that is software controlled is just crap. They can't even write code well enough for us to drive the car normally, now they want to drive the car for us, automatically?.

Hard pass.

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

#433

Post by cwilkes »

gambiting wrote: post #165
Danieru wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the hardware and sensors are all local, installed on the car from the factory. There is no economic advantage, just a business advantage

To add to this - I'd be ok with VW charging for software updates after the first 3 years, like they do with maps. But the hardware and software that shipped from factory should work in perpetuity, period.

> But the hardware and software that shipped from factory should work in perpetuity, period.

There’s a cost to VW to keep that system running. They have to staff SWEs that can write security patches, have to maintain outdated methods to update the software, etc.

And this isn’t really optional for VW to do it as if there’s a problem on a 2000 pound vehicle moving at 60 miles per hour things can get deadly quickly. For example what if there was a way to get into the car’s computer via the map software that was last updated 4 years ago? Maybe a hacker could then turn off power steering? Yes that is a hypothetical but there’s always problems with software and they need to get fixed when the consequences of not fixing them are high.

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

#434

Post by Dah00n »

Marciplan wrote: post #153
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…

Genuinely curious: why haven’t you helped him try to get these bugs and issues resolved?

In my experience that is equivalent to trying to help a Harley Davidson owner fix his engine so it doesn't leak or vibrate excessively.

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

#435

Post by drewg123 »

gambiting wrote: post #124
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is 100% a way to extract more money from consumers, especially non financially stable consumers, while lying to all of our faces Isn't this hyperbolic? I split time between at least two cities. Being able to pay as I go represents a real saving in cost, time and attention. Sometimes buying is better than renting. But sometimes there are economies of centralization. AWS isn't a scam on companies too poor to buy…

It's the same argument that BMW made, and it's just as faulty here. They said that 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 - isn't that great??? I hate this argument with a burning passion though, it's turning ownership into subscription only to extr…

I'd be surprised if nobody has hacked these systems.

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

#436

Post by wutbrodo »

ryathal wrote: post #409
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 on restricted access highways, but self driving isn't coming to dirt and gravel roads any time soon.

From a technology standpoint, this seems much much easier for AVs vs humans than many other AV challenges. When it comes to measuring physics precisely, complex computation, and rapid control, computers beat humans by a million miles. This is in stark contrast to, say, driving through a crowded urban environment with all manner of rule-breaking peds and bikes popping out of everywhere.

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

#438

Post by gambiting »

effingwewt wrote: post #420
gambiting wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wait, which part of it is bullshit? I have a feeling there is some terrible misunderstanding here.

>>My 2009 328i has heated seats I've never once had to pay to activate.

Yes, what's your point?

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

In modern 2021+ and higher BMW models in the US, they do, man. That is literally BMW's payment model on NEW cars. Don't know why you'd assume I'm talking about a 2009 model.

>>DLC on cars and people are here defending it

So far I had like 40 replies to my comment with maybe one or two people defending the practice. Is it really worth getting upset over it(the people commenting, not the practice)?

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

#439

Post by Dah00n »

hughrr wrote: post #146
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was working for a tier-1 supplier in Detroit when Tesla announced their first car that wasn’t the lotus body, a vp at a supplier laughed and said “they’re about to find out how hard it is to build cars”. This guy knew cars and every time I hear someone with negative feedback on Tesla’s I think about that. I’ve heard more people describe it as “a computer with wheels” than I can remember.

Yep. This. I’m even more sharp with the description. It’s a no brand android tablet with wheels. My Citroen feels better put together and it’s made of cooking foil.

To be fair Citroen has made a lot of innovation from cooking foil!
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