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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

#471

Post by PaulHoule »

ghaff wrote: post #422
growt wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I hate the rollerbag phenomenon and fighting for the overhead compartments enough that I check bags even when I don't have to.

Often the people handling the luggage think I'm strange to pay $50 to check a bag when I haven't maximized my carry-on bags or even take advantage of the free bag I get because I have the credit card. It might even get me investigated by the TSA for being un-American.

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

#473

Post by jaywalk »

kbos87 wrote: post #466
jaywalk wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I see that as a separate and larger point, but it is true. The reasons for it are also more complex than "they just don't" though they aren't technological reasons.

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

#474

Post by ghaff »

PaulHoule wrote: post #471
ghaff wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I hate the rollerbag phenomenon and fighting for the overhead compartments enough that I check bags even when I don't have to. Often the people handling the luggage think I'm strange to pay $50 to check a bag when I haven't maximized my carry-on bags or even take advantage of the free bag I get because I have the credit card. It might even get me investigated by the TSA for being un-American.

I don't use a rollerboard and agree that they're a plague for the most part. I use a soft-sided travel backpack. With the amount of travel I normally do, I'm not checking if I don't need to but I probably would be more likely to if I didn't have boarding priority.

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

#475

Post by namdnay »

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…

It's strange that you give SWA as an example. They sell priority boarding, it's called earlybird checkin. and they have a whole rigmarole around boarding priority, with people connecting in the middle of the night to try and get an early position

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

#476

Post by twiddling »

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…

The National Driver's Association will arise with bumper stickers: "You can pry the steering wheel from my cold, dead hands"

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

#477

Post by ketamine__ »

Dah00n wrote: post #445
mft_ wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is important. From the original description, my suspicion is it’s the regular (i.e. not advanced beta) “full self driving“ package, which I have on my model 3. Truth is, it’s pretty limited, and you’ve got to learn the types of situations where it will and won’t cope. Through town, situations with parked cars, or weird lane markings, it will struggle. However, the flipside is that on longer journeys – with mostl…

The FSD beta is way worse. You have to be much more conscious about everything that happens around you than with the "old package". Then you might as well drive yourself. In my experience it's like how it feels being in a car driven by an old relative that clearly shouldn't be driving a car anymore but you're too polite to tell him.

The accidents are going to increase when FSD is released to the public with subscriptions.

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

#478

Post by pythonaut_16 »

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…

Paying a one time unlock fee and paying a subscription on a hardware feature are vastly different things. You might still disagree with both, but they are different.

Heated seats are a pretty standard upgrade that people will pay for, so I'm not sure that it makes much difference whether it's a physical upgrade or a software unlock, and there are valid reasons Tesla might choose a software unlock.

But charging a subscription fee on heated seats on a non-rental car is outrageous.

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

#479

Post by malozite »

futevolei wrote: post #400
malozite wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't understand this. I enjoy driving, especially long distance. The benefit of being able to read a book or look at my phone rather than listen to music or an audio book is not worth anything like $8.50 an hour to me. The general inconveniences of long distance drives like planning food and toilet stops, or delays due to traffic, weather or accidents would still be present. I would pay a lot to be instan…

Other people don’t like to drive, simple as that. Some people would like to fly but can’t afford the ticket so they have to make a long miserable drive. Or maybe it’s one of those destinations that is a 5 hour drive where a car clearly makes more sense than a 45 minute flight (that ends up taking 5-6 hours door to door). Im sure you can appreciate how pay by hour would be a huge upgrade in this case.

The situation with the 5 hour drive which would be a 45 minute flight + 4-5 hours of flight overhead is completely orthogonal to whether or not the car is self-driving.

If you like to drive, you are fine with or without autonomous cars. If you don't like to sit in a car for 5 hours, you are SOL in both cases. Only if you hate driving, but do enjoy sitting in a car not driving do self-driving cars add value.

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

#480

Post by pythonaut_16 »

jtbayly wrote: post #376
iso1210 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They said that instead of paying $5000 upfront for a server, they will be available as an annual unlock for say $1000/year. Since they know an average owner keeps a new server 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 extract more money in the long run.

This is very different because you didn’t buy a server. If you were talking about a leased car instead of a purchased car it would be a bit more comparable, but still wouldn’t work. Because with a lease you have the option to buy it in the end. Even a rental car doesn’t quite match, since you are in a particular car.

A rental car would at least make sense though. You're already paying a cost for temporary access to the car, adding on extra features doesn't seem outrageous.

It could improve availability of those features because a rental company could order a fleet with those features on all cars in their fleet and then customers who want it would be able to pay the surcharge, instead of being constrained by the portion of the fleet with those features installed.

Of course it would likely just be used as a way to increase rental car prices.

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