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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

#451

Post by bagacrap »

balls187 wrote: post #69
dheera wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to say, $8.50/hour autonomous Uber sounds amazing. $50 to get from the bay area to Mt. Shasta. But if you have to own the car, fuck that. If you own it you should own access to all features that the hardware is capable of.

At 8.50/hr, that gives you about ~53,000 miles of autonomous range for the same price as Tesla's add-on price for "full self driving ($10k surcharge). To me, an upfront $10,000 surcharge seems less scammy than what VW is offering, despite it likely being cheaper over the lifetime of the vehicle.

it would take me quite a few years to rack up 53000 miles so I'll take that 10k and invest it, thank you, and probably will still be ahead after 10 years

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

#453

Post by StrictDabbler »

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…

I see two futures here.

Future 1:

I'm working for a company and I buy the heated seats upgrade.

Eight months later I'm looking at moving to another company and I'll lose that value. Maybe that affects my decision.

So I'm paying for my own employer-lock-in loyalty perks? Am I a moron? No, so I negotiate away part of my salary, or my healthcare, to have the nicer car.

Future 2:

You get heated seats on certain luxury car brands as long as you have an American Express platinum. Just like airport lounge access.

I'd bet on Future 2.

They're both dystopian.

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

#454

Post by aqme28 »

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…

Not to be curt, but this is one of the most naive things I've read on this website.

90% of the time, people start companies to make money, not to "efficiently distribute wealth through the community."

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

#455

Post by symlinkk »

mikro2nd wrote: post #357
kcanini wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your favorite vehicles?

No favourites, really. To me they're "just transport" and cars bore me to tears, but the most comfortable drive I can recall was a Honda (model long since forgotten).

Do you seriously have this little self awareness? You aren’t a car enthusiast, that’s why you don’t understand the appeal of BMW

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

#456

Post by kortex »

ashtonkem wrote: post #398
amcoastal wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 consu…

I wouldn't be so confident 100% ("steering-wheel-less") L5 self-driving is possible. Long tail is a thing. There will for a long time be a need for manual override, for things like tricky parking or slow-speed maneuvering, bad weather, weird lightning conditions, etc.

That rules out de facto driving ban. That leaves driving ban by fiat. Also never gonna happen in this century, unless it carves out an exception for "classic cars."

As far as hazard ratios go, cigarette smoking is orders of magnitude more dangerous than driving. Not a good comparison.

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

#457

Post by aqme28 »

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…

Meanwhile, I'm a below-average car user. It would make much more sense for me to use this subscription plan.

Just because it isn't economical for the "average" consumer doesn't mean there isn't a large and profitable niche.

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

#458

Post by 34679 »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #164

The car refused to drive autonomously. It said, “$8.50, please.” He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the car. Again he tried the self-driving knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.” “I think otherwise,” the car said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this VW…

"Ah, fuck it", he said, "I'm not that drunk anyway."

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

#459

Post by hughrr »

SamBam wrote: post #388
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.

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.

Yea that’s exactly it.

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

#460

Post by vardump »

Larrikin wrote: post #394
dmitriid wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wa…

Tesla can already generate a pretty good "lidar point cloud" out of just camera input.

But we'll see.

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