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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

#651
post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reluctantly he coughed up the $8.50. The car then said, "I'm sorry Dave, Seatbelt yearly subscription is also expired. Please pay VW $200 to re-enable, or press the cancel button to drive without a seatbelt. Dave pressed the cancel button with furious determination. The VW Bug sped off from his modest suburban house. It's high G wheels speeding up and zooming past Burb beaters and Bimbo wagons. Unbeknownst to him a c…

After fiddling with a few wires to override the seatbelt check the car announced - "Congratulations a new version of iOS has been released that will improve your car's performance 20% - unfortunately this version of iOS is incompatible with your quite old car and our car software, for security reasons, requires the latest version of the operating system to execute. Please purchase a new car, now available in Rose Gol…

He was shocked. He checked the contract again and didn't see any sign of the car being connected to Apple. He was sure it was running Android. He tapped on the link on the screen to open the Apple Store. Something didn't look right: the copy was a bit off and the url was www.appleshop.com. That's when he knew his car had been infected by ransomware.

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

#652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If cars driving themselves will asymptotically approach say 90%, 95% or 99% or situations it can handle, then the car that also handles the last few situations will be very attractive. That's the car that can drive me home from the bar, or that a blind person can own. The 90-99% cars are still for able bodied people with licenses. At some price point, it will always be a lot cheaper to add humans than it is to make t…

There's a large and perhaps unsolvable problem of the state of the art solutions that doesn't get nearly as much attention as it should - even if the car can safely handle 99% or 99.9% of the situations, the algorithms are not really able to detect if they're in the last 0.1%. The car will slam into stationary trucks, suddenly brake for no reason, consider the tollbooth to be a bus - all with utmost confidence it's d…

There are some models that provide the confidence that they have in the area of data being explored. I forget the name, but I think it's Bayesian Deep Learning. Something like: if it's something they've never seen, they would know they can't take a choice with confidence.

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

#653
post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>AWS isn't a scam on companies too poor to buy servers. Do the math and see how using AWS just doesn't make sense at the scale most companies operate.

>AWS just doesn't make sense at the scale most companies operate You are delusional if you think "most companies" operate at a scale at which they can support their own datacentres

I am not delusional and colocation is a thing.

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

#654

Subscription services for cars seems like a great reason for me to stick to my existing collection of 90's/00's sports cars.

You have to pay per mile now, so what’s the problem?

Not specifically talking about this particular self-driving service - moreso the recent uptick in proposals around subscription features in cars like heated seats, premium audio, etc etc. And besides, with a subscription service as proposed by VW, you're still going to be paying for the fuel/grid electricity on top.

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

#655
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would there be no consequences? The person would have a driver contract, have passed driving tests, etc. Not sure what you mean with Bangladeshi click farmers

This is how a lot of ideas get nonsensical holes put in them. There would be licenses, regulations, threat of lawsuit, qualifications and all sorts of other mandatory requirements. If someone wants to be cynical then, yes, a lot of these safeguards would not be put in place until after a certain number of deaths had been exceeded. eg seat belts, air bags, traffic lights, speed limits, road rules in general. The idea…

> There would be licenses, regulations, threat of lawsuit, qualifications and all sorts of other mandatory requirements

These already exist in Taxis, and have you ever been in a Taxi? Their drivers aren't exactly the pinnacle of driving excellence.

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

#656

I am just waiting untill I need to go to the hospital and a warning pops up: "this destination is not included in basic plan, do you want to upgrade to premium for $999" and then have it reject my card or crash or glitch out and leave me high and dry. Or untill I get banned from VW for self-driving offensively, or having sex in the car. Or untill all this data leaks or the car pushes ads on me. Capitialism is eating…

> I am just waiting untill I need to go to the hospital and a warning pops up: "this destination is not included in basic plan, do you want to upgrade to premium for $999" and then have it reject my card or crash or glitch out and leave me high and dry.

If you are unable to drive due to an emergency medical condition, shouldn't you call an ambulance instead? Otherwise, if can't afford the self-driving service, can't you just drive the car yourself?

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

#657
post #656

I am just waiting untill I need to go to the hospital and a warning pops up: "this destination is not included in basic plan, do you want to upgrade to premium for $999" and then have it reject my card or crash or glitch out and leave me high and dry. Or untill I get banned from VW for self-driving offensively, or having sex in the car. Or untill all this data leaks or the car pushes ads on me. Capitialism is eating…

> I am just waiting untill I need to go to the hospital and a warning pops up: "this destination is not included in basic plan, do you want to upgrade to premium for $999" and then have it reject my card or crash or glitch out and leave me high and dry. If you are unable to drive due to an emergency medical condition, shouldn't you call an ambulance instead? Otherwise, if can't afford the self-driving service, can't…

"If you are unable to drive due to an emergency medical condition, shouldn't you call an ambulance instead?"

Maybe I broke my hand, that' doesn't require an ambulance - my life is not in danger. What's the point of self-driving if you can't rely on it when I need it most?

It's not about money, it's about reliability. I recently tried to get a rental bike with an app, their app crashed, refused to accept a code they sent me, then blocked me for requesting too many codes (2), leaving me stranded.

Then I went to rent 'official' London bikes, you have to accept 42 page rental agreement. And if the machine is out of paper, it will take your money but won't give you a code to get the bike. Their app will happily charge you for 2 bikes, and will give you 2 codes, but only one of them will work because you are only allowed 1 bike per person.

So I got sick of this BS and bought my own bike. It's less work than jumping through all the hoops these idiot companies make me deal with.

but this bullshit is invading every most private aspect of our lives and soon we will loose our rights to ownership.

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

#658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea so you just go do those things. I'm not sure what this has to do with driving or commuting to a job on the highway?

How do you do those things without driving? Are you assuming everyone has access to effective and efficient public transportation?

> How do you do those things without driving?

I typically walk. I take buses or trains if I need to go further than walking distance, which is fairly rare.

> Are you assuming everyone has access to effective and efficient public transportation?

That's usually what you'd build to get rid of cars, yes.

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

#659
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.

I can see that view point. I don't share it, as custom ECM tunes that increase performance (with the same "hardware") have been around for a very long time. Also things like OnStar, and SirisXM Along a similar vein--Nvidia artificially limiting hashrates on some of it's consumer GPU's.

I'm not too upset about locking upgrades behind software fences. I am upset if that means I cannot install my own version of that software (both 3rd party ECM tunes and NVidia drivers are available.) And OnStar and SirisXM are both subscriptions with continuing costs for the company that supply them

I am far more upset with: A) Subscription fees for software in general. B) Tesla's autopilot code reseting when the Tesla is sold. Both directions, the new purchaser has to buy it again, the old owner has to buy it again on a new Tesla. C) Tesla conning people into paying 10,000 for cruise control plus, because people think it is Level 5 even though it falls far short of that. And any version hitting close to Level 5 is almost certainly going to require sensors that your car didn't have, so buy it again on a new car.

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

#660

The car refused to drive autonomously. It said, “$8.50, please.” He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the car. Again he tried the self-driving knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.” “I think otherwise,” the car said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this VW…

Reminds me of "Unauthorized Bread" by Cory Doctorow https://craphound.com/unauthorized-bread/

That was also my first thought.
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