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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

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post #146

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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!

Oh yes indeed. It’s cheap, safe, reliable and runs on mosquito fart quantities of gas.

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

#462
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post #291

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And, if instead of a dedicated server you rent some combination of AWS services, you suddenly don't need admin or need a cheaper one?

With services in particular you indeed don't need one. No need to ensure the software is up-to-date, no worries about hardware outages, no need to monitor the system, etc. etc. The person working with a rented service infrastructure can focus on what makes them money: the process. With self-owned hardware you need contingency plans, setup, maintenance, redundant ISPs, UPS, extra electrical setup (many offices automat…

> With services in particular you indeed don't need one.

> No need to ensure the software is up-to-date, no worries about hardware outages, no need to monitor the system, etc. etc.

> The person working with a rented service infrastructure can focus on what makes them money: the process.

No, that's just not even remotely true. VMs, managed services all require updates that are pushed to the end user of the service. Downtimes happen, and dealing with those are pushed to the end user of the service by cloud providers far too often. I have countless support tickets at all levels of the cloud stack of back-and-forth on issues, many as simple as "how about serving 200s, not 500s?"

I wish managed services were a rainbows and unicorns world of "I give you cash, you give me magic computer thing that scales and never goes down" … but that just isn't the case today for many cloud services. (I think about the one service I'd be willing to pin such a medal on is S3. It comes remarkably close, but even there, I've had an incident where we had an outage due to S3 that took much back & forth with support to finally get an engineer on their side to look at it.)

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

#463
post #225

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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…

> There’s no way the hardware on my car is the limiting factor

I'm not sure why you'd make that assumption. The newer models that can do more may very well have more/better sensors, faster processor(s), more RAM, etc. Just because the interior and exterior look the same doesn't mean that everything else is the same too.

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

#464

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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

The insults aren't necessary and aren't a good fit here:

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#465
Yeah, nonsense like a monthly fee to have my car perform a feature like that makes me want a car that comes with none of the self-driving tech necessities installed. Because I won't be using any of it.

Having said that, I don't see myself migrating to a "modern" car any time soon. They are full of touch screens that are a notoriously awful user experience (an outstretched human arm in a moving vehicle is NOT a good nor comfortable pointer device).

My current car is a Volkswagen from 2016. The last of its kind with knobs all over the place and the touch screen being entirely optional. It's an ICE car but comes with lane assist, adaptive cruise control, is fully automatic, accelerates from 0 to 100 km/h in about 6.5 seconds, has an amazing sound system, and takes me about 850 kilometers before needing to refuel.

In particular the ID.3 and such range of fully electric vehicles from Volkswagen are ridiculous. They are slow, have low range, are full of touch screens instead of tactile buttons, look like they are a design-by-boomer-committee result, and honestly they look like VW have been cutting corners everywhere to make the production costs as low as possible.

Autonomous driving is not going to be good for many years to come. I'll be very happy in my old-fashioned ICE car that I can refuel in 5 minutes flat, while the hip people are sitting in their E-cars recharging for 30 minutes to get home. If they can find a spot, that is.

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

#466

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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…

> There’s no way the hardware on my car is the limiting factor I'm not sure why you'd make that assumption. The newer models that can do more may very well have more/better sensors, faster processor(s), more RAM, etc. Just because the interior and exterior look the same doesn't mean that everything else is the same too.

I think the point stands that there is probably a ton most manufacturers could do in terms of over the air updates with existing hardware that they just don’t.

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

#467

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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…

My Jeep has features I can 'unlock' for a one-time fee. $500 will give me navigation, they constantly email me with offers of $75, $150 off

With navigation, that fee pays for licensing the map data. Much more legitimate than paying to unlock hardware that's already installed.

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

#468

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Maybe not bought but we rented a house where the owner padlocked 2 bedrooms shut and said if we wanted to use them it was an extra $200 a month to use them as home offices.

That's......beyond dumb. Like, if you don't pay him the extra $200, he's not extracting any extra value from these bedrooms. It's not like they can be rented to someone else in the meantime. So.....why do it in the first place?

If the rooms aren't used, they won't experience any wear and tear and they won't have to be cleaned again for the next renters.

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

#469

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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.

It wont be banned, it will just cost much more to insure (since it will be directly tied to risk, computers already drive better than humans). If you drive manually, you will need to pay for the privilege.

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

#470

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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 ca…

I mean, it will be like everything else - companies which really want to spoil their employees and who buy BMWs as fleet cars, will order them with every subscription option covered and just eat the cost. So the CEO doesn't have to worry about his 7-series not having heated seats.

But I can also totally see situations where if the choice is between say....a Ford Mondeo or a BMW 3-series, the company can go "you can get the BMW, but we're not paying anything for options - if you want them, that's on you".

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

If it's a subscription, then that value is lost anyway. You can probably get a partial refund for the unused months before you return the car.

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