What would you pay for autonomous driving? Volkswagen hopes $8.50 per hour • Hacker News Board

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

#511

Post by aeturnum » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 4:00 PM UTC

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…

I agree that only selling self-driving as a subscription is exploitative, but I generally disagree with your analysis of which model is better for consumers.

First, the subscription model means that VW has an incentive to maintain the feature. Ofc, Tesla has been very generous with updates so far (even to older models!) but the key word is 'generous.' Once you've paid 10k (or more in the future) they have your money and you are at their mercy.

You're correct that, if you wanna self-drive everywhere, the subscription will eventually be a bad deal. But I think Tesla's approach actually keeps a lot more people from taking advantage than VW - because $10k is a lot of money! $8.50/hr is pretty reasonable for, say, a couple that wants to make out on their way to dinner or a parent who needs to keep their kids from fighting. These people don't self drive everywhere, but the option to pay for a bit of self driving is nice.

Or, to put it another way, whether or not Tesla's 10k charge is taking advantage of consumers "less" is based on usage and follow-through. You need a little over 1,000 hours of self-driving to get that 10k charge down to below VW's price of $8.50/hr and Tesla has said the $10k is gonna go up. So if you buy it and you ever stop using it within the first ~4.5 years, you are spending more compared to VW.

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

#512

Post by kube-system » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 4:03 PM UTC

cactus2093 wrote: post #392

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…

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, but I will never get any of these improvements. Tesla is still the only car maker to decide that car software can be treated like almost any other software people use, and actually updated independently of the hardware.

You also won't have any features removed, like Tesla has also pioneered.

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

#513

Post by DSingularity » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 4:03 PM UTC

jaywalk wrote: post #463

cactus2093 wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They will get sued for this one day.

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

#514

Post by smnrchrds » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 4:04 PM UTC

rho4 wrote: post #193

I already pay almost $20 per day for public transportation. Of course I would switch to robotaxis for $8.50/h. Door to door, guaranteed seat, privacy, isolation from body odors & food smells, noise, loud phone conversations, screaming kids, gossiping seniors, beggars, crazies, drunks, street musicians, touching arms & thighs, ads (maybe), conductors, jehovah's witnesses, campaigners and promoters. No more waiting in…

> I already pay almost $20 per day for public transportation.

You may be an outlier. Usually people buy monthly passes for 150-200 dollars. It gets expensive when you have to commute from another town though, like taking the GO Train in Toronto.

https://www.ttc.ca/Fares_and_passes/PRESTO/Monthly_Pass_FAQ....

https://www.gotransit.com/en/trip-planning/presto/fare-disco...

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

#515

Post by elzbardico » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

ars wrote: post #410

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.

> Humans are terrible drivers, even in the best cases. Humans drive correctly 99.99999% of the time. We can't can't even keep a computer up and running that well, never mind driving perfectly. See this thread with the math: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12012166 The future you are expecting is never going to happen.

Averages are extremely misleading here, on the human side you're lumping drunk drivers (that could be precluded from driving by the simple mandatory adoption of interlock system), commercial drivers, people driving in really bad weather, across all types of roads and with cars in variable state of maintanance. Remove all those factors (specially DUI) on the human side, then add all those conditions were self-driving doesn't even attempt to try, and the sheer superiority of the human visual cortex alone is indisputable.

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

#516

Post by davedx » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

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…

I dunno, you don’t need FSD like you need boots - it’s a luxury. I don’t think this is a bad idea at all. I consider in many ways VW to be the only real competition to Tesla (vertical integration, fully modular powertrain, etc), so it’s fantastic they are considering offering FSD under a different pricing model.

Whether they actually have the deep technical expertise to implement a FSD worth paying 8/hour for remains to be seen. They seem to also be copying Musk’s aggressive timelines.

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

#517

Post by skeeter2020 » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 4:07 PM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #419

squiggleblaz wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

"Why would they even bother producing valuable goods?" Like opium by the East India company or drugs by mexican cartels? Getting people to buy something is a lot easier than chasing them with a gun, just look at how bad we are at colecting taxes. "We have companies to help efficiently distribute wealth" There is no economic theory, from marxist to neoliberal, that claims conpanies are there to distribute wealth. They…

I guess they "distribute wealth" in the sense that they first extract it, then concentrate it and finally distribute it to a very limited audience. It's not usually the primary or emphasized act though...

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

#518

Post by mananaysiempre » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 4:07 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #319

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…

A lot of people turn subscriptions and pay per use into a tiresome religious argument. I don't want to pay an upfront for-all-time fee for everything I use. Sometimes I want to buy outright. Sometimes I want to rent for a period. And sometimes I want to pay per use. It depends on the thing in question, my usage patterns, and the amount of money involved. (And it can change over time.)

The issue with price discrimination (economic terminology) is that it not only brings the lower end down, but also the higher end up. Think of economy-class airline travel, where how much you pay is essentially determined by how much mental resources you’re willing to spend on planning.

That is assuming businesses are content with only getting the same revenue in the new pricing model and before you factor in issues like “people can’t count money” and “pretty much anything can get gradually normalized, and an undercutter’s market pretty much everything will”. For example, I honestly don’t know what I’d do if I wanted to buy a TV right now... Probably buy a normal underpriced surveillance node and spend the time to isolate it from public networks, but still, that’s depressing.

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

#519

Post by rout39574 » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 4:08 PM UTC

ars wrote: post #494

redbeard0x0a wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> since it will be directly tied to risk, computers already drive better than humans They do not! Are you comparing computer driving in "easy" situations with human driving in all situations?

I think the comparison is made over the entire range of situations.

If we can get rid of, or vastly reduce, the problems of inattention, exhaustion, rage, chemical impairments and the like, we have a huge improvement. I think that improvement is vastly more, cost measured in human life, than the problems we see with computer control in odd situations.

So yes. They do drive better than humans. The fact that their failings are wack-doodle to us (you drove _right_ into that truck??) is swallowed in the fact that their failings are profoundly fewer than ours.

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

#520

Post by rkk3 » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 4:09 PM UTC

Unsurprisingly they will try to capture as much value created as possible, hopefully competition is enforced and they aren't able to collude with other Automaker to price fix...

Are they expecting people to buy/lease cars and then pay a $8.50/hr service fee? With self-driving, ownership is a lot less desirable, compared to summoning one on demand.