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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

#641

Post by ArkanExplorer »

King-Aaron wrote: post #56
ako wrote: post #26

With that pricepoint, maybe you don't need to implement actual autonomous driving, but instead it could be implemented by employing millions of dronepilots in some far away country that drive your car for you.

Driving along the freeway at 100mph and suddenly "sorry afk bro need to go to the toilet"

Highways are simple enough that car AI already works fine.

Human intelligence could be useful for navigating construction work.

Really, what we need is to overhaul road construction (and maybe roads in general) signage and protocols to make them machine-readable, not just human readable.

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

#642

Post by cactus2093 »

jaywalk wrote: post #606
cactus2093 wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I can't know for sure about any one particular feature. But as far as I can tell, the company doesn't ever backport any smart/autonomous features to older models. Whereas Tesla manages to do this continuously, and years earlier than other brands. I doubt that every single incremental improvement to one of these features relies on brand new hardware or sensors that was not available the year before. Some of th…

Tesla builds their cars with this in mind, and pretty much nobody else does. Even for updates that are purely software, that software may not even be updatable without physical access to the module(s) that run it. The idea of a car you bought being updated new features from the manufacturer down the road didn't even exist until Tesla. The legacy car manufacturers can't just turn on a dime and start doing the same thi…

I'm sure these are the same kinds of excuses the execs within the company give as to why they can't do what Tesla is doing. And that's part of why Hyundai stock is up ~30% over the past 5 years and Tesla is up over 1000%.

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

#643

Post by dmitriid »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #416
dmitriid wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then you forget to click a "don't use autopilot" setting buried in three levels of settings, and will pay for a month-worth of driving.

Seems to me it would be difficult to not notice your car driving itself.

It doesn't matter if the car drives itself or not. What matters is how money is withdrawn.

It's enough to have "on/off" somewhere in settings, and have it "enabled" even if you don't use it.

Good grief, there are countless articles even here on HN about dark patterns where people are tricked into subscribing to something, or being unable to unsusbcribe except when going through the hoops. But sure, a car manufacturer charging maney for a subscription will never ever do that as long as you "don't use a feature".

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

#644

Post by headmelted »

iamgopal wrote: post #532
headmelted wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 impos…

As with everything else, quite soon price of hardware required for fully autonomous driving will go down exponentially. While software to support the same will keep increasing. Hence VW action fully justified.

I don’t see how that’s possible.

If VW had:

1) a fleet of fully autonomous vehicles. (2) running for years gathering training data. (3) all over the world.

They would still have a really long way to go to catch up with Tesla - who are still (according to their recent statements to regulators) not even close.

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

#645

Post by mlyle »

kiliantics wrote: post #393
blhack wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s too much of a hassle to use public transportation. With your own car you can bring as much stuff as you want, stop where you want, leave when you want, go wherever you want at your destination, bring whoever you want, listen to what you want on the radio, stop where you want for side trips/tourist things along the way etc. Like for instance with my own car instead of a shared train, I can bring my golf clubs, my…

The vast majority of car trips are nothing like this though. Why don't we build more trains to take people on their usual short commutes and save cars for the occasional fun trips like this?

Because of the last mile problem.

US population density is typically low, even in many cities.

This means that any reasonable spending on buses and train routes ends up with relatively infrequent service to places not too close to you.

This is self-reinforcing, too. Everyone taking cars for all trips means you need lots of space for parking and roadways, which spreads things out and makes walking and transit less practical.

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

#646

Post by dmitriid »

SamBam wrote: post #379
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…

You're inventing hypotheticals to say why they're going to charge you more, without evidence. Pay-per-minute autonomous driving is far more like old pay-per-minute phone plans than it is mystery-AWS-data-charges. You know when it's driving and when it's not. There's no unforeseeable per-lambda charges about it.

> You're inventing hypotheticals to say why they're going to charge you more, without evidence.

Ah yes. There's no evidence. Except the countless instances of dark patterns everywhere on the web tricking into you paying money. Countless instances where you can't cancel a subscription, and have to go through multiple hoops to do it. Countless instances when there's a runaway billing in a SaaS that leaves people with huge bills.

But sure. These are all just "hypotheticals", and not the reality how the absolute vast majority of subscription business works.

> You know when it's driving and when it's not. There's no unforeseeable per-lambda charges about it.

Ah yes. Because of course it will be as simple as "when it's on, it will be charged", and not "when an obscure setting is on, you will be charged, regardless of whether it will be self-driving or not".

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

#647

Post by onethought »

slfnflctd wrote: post #358
bsder wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't understand why the "autonomous driving" people aren't concentrating on freeway driving--possibly with special roadway markings--over local driving. I don't really mind driving the 10 minutes to the store. I mind driving 90 minutes between San Diego and LA. I mind driving 90 minutes between San Jose and San Francisco. I mind driving 7 hours between LA and SF. I mind driving driving 24 hours (two 12 hour…

> special roadway markings I continue to expect something of this nature to be necessary before we get self-driving tech anywhere close to where we want it to be. Cameras simply don't work in all conditions, and even with LIDAR mistakes can be made. There needs to be an external reference point.

But currently eyes do. So theoretically cameras should right?

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

#648

Post by snypher »

moftz wrote: post #584
mikehollinger wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This possibly sensationalist article [1] on Vice discusses a motorcycle airbag vest that requires a subscription to work. [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/93yyyd/this-motorcycle-airba...

Last I checked, airbags are not required by any government nor are they a standard option on motorcycles. If you wish to wear one, either spend the $400 upfront or pay for the subscription for the months you do ride. The monthly subscription sounds just right for someone who can't afford $400 but can afford $12 to wear an airbag vest on their daily commute on a motorcycle. It's much cheaper than ending up in the ICU.…

It's $400 upfront plus either another $400 or $12 per month subscription.

I don't see this company lasting long after the first crash where someone thought they were protected but were not due to payment error/ddos/whatever.

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

#649

Post by ridethebike »

gambiting wrote: post #124
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…

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…

>> 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?

So what exactly is the problem here?

Isn't having the choice between several options a good thing from consumer point of view? Isn't extracting more money a whole point of company to exist?

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

#650

Post by hexo »

CharlesW wrote: post #609
Jemm wrote: post #582

Never in a million years am I going to pay a subscription to use my own vehicle. Sad thing is that people will and it will become mainstream leaving those like me driving our old clunkers. Already kind of happening now, most people happy to buy cars with no dip stick for the oil, no spare tire and mostly unrepairable except by the dealer. The rest of us are out in our old Toyotas and Hondas that we are keeping alive…

> Never in a million years am I going to pay a subscription to use my own vehicle. People pay a subscription (data, if not apps) to use their phone. Most people pay at least one subscription in association with the TV they own. I'm wondering if part of this may be the "shock of the new" talking.

Yes, and all those subscriptions suck. Specifically they suck up money that could be spent much better. For example on food.
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