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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

#521

Post by kube-system »

wutbrodo wrote: post #436
ryathal wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The ability to calculate the physics of driving dynamics has been solved for decades. But, if you feed garbage data to your physics models, you will get a garbage result. Computers are still very very awful at image processing as compared to humans.

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

#522

Post by midhhhthrow »

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…

You don’t have to use it ALL the time, right? I mean just use it for two hours a year and you’ll pay a lot less than thousands of dollar up front

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

#523

Post by awillen »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #483
aqme28 wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

He or she said: > We have companies to help efficiently distribute wealth through the community to maximise the probability of social needs being filled. We here presumably means society in general. We set rules and give privileges to people to run companies in order to better society. In a capitalist system this is done through the medium of 'enlightened self interest' so yes, one starts a company to make money but…

"so yes, one starts a company to make money but that is not the reason we have companies."

I don't understand this at all. The reason people create companies is the reason that companies exist. They're by definition the same thing - companies don't exist without people creating them. So if people start companies to make money, the reason companies exist is to make the people who start them money.

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

#524

Post by jaywalk »

DSingularity wrote: post #513
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.

They will get sued for this one day.

For what? Putting better stuff in newer models? That's how basically every product works.

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

#526

Post by hunter2_ »

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…

> My model will sometimes correct the steering at the last minute if I start veering outside the lane, the newer model will more gradually keep you centered in the lane so you don’t even start to veer out.

On my 2017 VW, this enhancement was merely a feature flag waiting for the customer to enable using VCDS/OBDeleven. It's an amazing difference!

Another good one I found and enabled is lane change assist, which makes it so that when you're on cruise control but slower than your set point (due to tailing a slow lead car) putting your turn signal on will immediate begin the acceleration that otherwise would only occur once you have completed the lane change and are no longer impeded by a slow lead car, so you're better matched with the flow of the new lane as you start entering it.

VCDS and OBDeleven are essentially emulators of the factory scan tools that only VW dealerships normally have. Way, way beyond OBDII code reading.

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

#527

Post by jbverschoor »

SamBam wrote: post #385
jbverschoor wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a car is free to operate? No fuel/electricity No road tax No insurance No maintenance

No, they're talking about a subscription model for a feature. Read the article.

You're right.

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

#528

Post by HWR_14 »

murukesh_s wrote: post #144
HWR_14 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider Tesla's $10,000 surcharge (that may reset when you sell the used car) to be quite scammy as well. I doubt I'll ever own a self-driving car, because I will never pay that kind of premium for full self driving. Either on an hourly basis or up front. Frankly, it seems cheaper just not have a car and to hail a cab/uber/lyft whenever I need one.

how about when you see everyone else is enjoying a beer while driving, or in more advanced versions don't even have driving seat.. ? its starting a trend and the price that Tesla and VW put will become the base pricing

> how about when you see everyone else is enjoying a beer while driving

I'm not such an alcoholic that I would pay $8.50/hr to drink beer on my way to work. And, realistically, we're decades away from being able to drink while AI drives.

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

#529

Post by headmelted »

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…

Honestly I think they're both fairytales at this point.

Tesla is WAY further away from fully autonomous driving than they're letting on to their customers, probably because a lot of people would demand refunds on their FSD charges if they knew there was a good chance it wouldn't arrive before the car's end of life in the best case.

Volkswagen's plan here is just as ridiculous. Autonomous driving is economically impossible to make work on a pay-as-you-go model. Who's going to front the cost for all the tech required in the car to allow for automated driving? Volkswagen? the customer?

What if the customer doesn't want automated driving - they're not going to just give you an extra few tens of thousands of dollars for a feature they don't want and would still need to pay extra for anyway.

If VW eats the cost then they'll go out of business making crazy expensive cars that people won't pay to reimburse. (Are you going to pay $8 for every small run in the car anytime you need to go to the shop for something?)

Just copy Waymo and Uber in terms of model (i.e. robotaxi) if you're going to do automated driving. At least that way the cars are consistently in use and generating revenue to cover their eye-watering BOM cost.

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