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

• qwertox 5y ago
  I can envision a scenario where you will pay a lot of money for specifically buying a "ready 4 autonomous drive"-car, only to have this feature unavailable for months because some other person had a crash which involved this system.
• tempestn 5y ago
  Having finally had a chance to test-"drive" an advanced autopilot Tesla last weekend, I can confidently say at the current level of that tech I would pay less than nothing. At best (cruising down a well-marked highway) it was only slightly worse than useless, taking a different line in the lane than I considered optimal, leaving me feeling a background level of apprehension. From there it ranged through frustrating, as it took forever to do anything, to jarring, as it would for example suddenly slam on the brakes because it just noticed it was passing a parked car. If I had a regular commute and self-driving was considerably beyond human competence I'd love to have it, but I don't see either one happening any time soon!
  • mlyle 5y ago
    Tesla's status on this is really controversial. Some people think that Tesla's sheer data advantage will put them way ahead soon and that it's imminent. On the other hand, Waymo is doing pretty well on most trips (admittedly within a small geofenced zone that has friendly weather -- you can watch oodles of video from jjricks on real trips here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61AfxOMu3wY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61AfxOMu3wY )
    • tempestn 5y ago
      I actually have watched a number of his videos, and while it is considerably better than the Tesla self driving, it's not something I'd currently pay to experience vs driving myself (or vs an Uber at a similar price point). The driving style is still too awkward and, to me, discomfiting.
      • mlyle 5y ago
        Ah, to me it looks pretty good. And there's reason to believe it'd be better on freeways. I'd definitely pay a few bucks per hour for my car to drive me to Southern California while I read a book.
        • gitanovic 5y ago
          What I don't understand is: why don't you take a train instead? I have never been to US, but whenever I hear about self driving cars I think: why don't people just use public transport if they don't want to drive?
          • gnicholas 5y ago
            Strangely, there are no direct trains from northern CA to southern CA. There is a line from Sacramento down into Santa Clara, and a line from San Luis Obispo down to San Diego. But there's no direct way to get from SF/SJ to LA/OC via train. There are buses, but they are considerably less enjoyable than the Pacific Surfliner line!
          • blhack 5y ago
            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 dog, and my drone with me, and call my friend on the way out of town to see if he’s up for a spontaneous trip to San Diego to see what fun we could get up to there for the weekend. That’s not really possible on a train/airplane. It’s just a totally different experience than arriving to a train station with some limited set of your things, possibly being late, then arriving somewhere else again without a car, and having to return again by doing all of this in reverse. It also means spending time forced to socialize with people you don’t know, and almost definitely in a seat that is less comfortable than the one in your $100k luxury car.
    • tails4e 5y ago
      I did think it was imminent at one point, but the fact the delivery date keeps pushing out shows its far from complete, and is only usable in controlled circumstances. I use it in traffic jams, or motorway driving, and that's it, anywhere else and it's just asking for trouble. It's useful in those limited cases, but it's a shame how many false promises have been issued, I've a lot of respect for what Elon has done, but he's really oversold this
    • malozite 5y ago
      I think the data advantage is limited. I used to work in high-frequency equity trading. We would run simulations against tick-by-tick data from real markets. The simulations were of very questionable value. As soon as you trade once in your simulation, from that point onwards the whole run is contaminated. Your trade, if it had actually happened, would have been seen by other participants, who would have changed their strategy, often in complex and unpredictable ways, and the timelines would have diverged rapidly and irreversibly from that point. Data recorded from driving situations is useful for one thing - testing out split-second decision making - stop or accelerate? Steer left or right? This is a limited use case. Most situations don't have critical decisions like this. The ones that do, it's often hard to judge what would have been the right answer. Even accidents - where the post facto desired outcome is "don't have an accident", unfold over several seconds, involving several stages of actors responding to each others' actions. No one can be sure how the driver should have approached the very first interaction - the only one for which the data is meaningful. Actual road testing, and meaningful simulation which isn't just replaying what actually happened is much more useful.
    • lm28469 5y ago
      > Waymo Even they admitted fully autonomous vehicles most likely won't be a thing any time soon (maybe ever if we keep our current infrastructure) https://www.cnet.com/news/alphabet-google-waymo-ceo-john-krafcik-autonomous-cars-wont-ever-be-able-to-drive-in-all-conditions/ https://www.cnet.com/news/alphabet-google-waymo-ceo-john-kra...
      • mlyle 5y ago
        I feel like this was misread. The statement appears to say that he doesn't think they will completely displace manual driving of cars for considerable time. And that SAE level 5 arguably expects more than we expect from human drivers (many of us would not be safe driving in whiteout conditions on a windy mountain road).
  • hughrr 5y ago
    So much this. I hope I don't stand on too many toes here. Actually I don't care. My father has a self driving enabled Tesla Model S which he paid a hell of a lot of money for that he doesn't have as he's in his 70s, living entirely off the remains of the house he just sold. He's convinced it'll be any day now that he gets full self driving and that it'll change the world. He tells me he loves the car and phones me daily to tell me about it. But at the end of the day there are a bunch of complaints hiding in his words. This covers everything from poor fitting, paint issues, weird bugs, massive safety and computer issues, lots of hidden costs and general battery life issues. He's hiding the true picture which is not the real experience. Between Tesla marketing and the echo chamber Tesla forums, he's traded his entire cash pile and attention for what I can only describe as a prototype that is a ball and chain which limps between bouts of charging CPR and he can't tell anyone because it might damage his conspicuous virtuous electric car identity. But Tesla will be introducing self driving any day now he tells me. All the time. For the last 3 years... I'm not really a proponent or opponent of electric cars. I don't really care about the things as they don't factor into my life past the utility of a screwdriver. I myself drive a third-hand Citroen with a tuk tuk engine in it which was cheap to buy and run and takes me to the shops and for the odd weekend out. But from my vantage point, I can't see the return of investment that such complex technology can add to a simple problem. All it does is make it more complicated, less safe and less reliable while milking people for cash for promises which may never materialise. If there's anything I've worked out over the last couple of decades in the software industry is that this model really doesn't work - it's the marketing and development model that Microsoft uses. Edit: he literally just phoned me to tell me how wonderful it is again. But it cost him 5% of the battery capacity to cool it down enough that it’s not going to burn his ass off (has sunroof) which means his next journey is going to have to end with a 10 mile detour to sit in a supercharger bay (which where he lives will be busy and he’ll have to wait) and thus probably cost a coffee at the same time.
    • ec109685 5y ago
      Obviously you know your father best, but it at least seems from your words it makes him happy. As someone with similar car, you get to know it’s quirks and use it when it adds value.
  • Rygian 5y ago
    What did you test-drive? Regular Tesla auto-pilot, or the limited-access FSD Beta? They are radically different experiences.
    • mft_ 5y ago
      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 mostly open roads, it does very well indeed. I recently did a three+ hour drive and the car drove for probably 80% of that time, and without any issues at all. Once you get used to its foibles and therefore understand when you can trust it, it really is a relaxing experience.
      • Dah00n 5y ago
        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.
        • ketamine__ 5y ago
          The accidents are going to increase when FSD is released to the public with subscriptions.
    • tempestn 5y ago
      I'm not certain since it was just a test drive, and there was no Tesla rep with me - it did say "Beta" on the autopilot screen, and seemed happy to engage on any kind of street, but I don't know if that means it was the full FSD Beta. (I'd be kind of surprised if they just handed people the (virtual) keys to that with no warnings, but Tesla does tend to do surprising things.)
  • berkes 5y ago
    I'm no expert on any of the selfdriving features (I still self-drive my 1984 Volkswagen with tlc) but from what I hear and see, Tesla is amongst the worst when it comes to selfdriving and e.g. Volvo or Volkwagen is way ahead. Their marketing, however, is top notch, so whenever Tesla fails to deliver, people conclude that 'all selfdriving must be crap'. Is there something called 'Law of inhibiting leadership'? In which an underperforming leader of a segment holds back the entire segment?
    • terryf 5y ago
      As an owner of a Volvo V90 that has pilot assist or whatever they call it - it's great for highway driving! It has it's quirks but they are easy to get used to and after a few years, I know pretty much exactly where it is extremely reliable and where it will get it wrong. The behaviour is extremely boringly reliable - which is exactly what it should be and doing a few hundrer km on a good highway is now much much more relaxing than before.
  • lm28469 5y ago
    Don't worry Musk said it'll be delivered in two years tops, in 2012 or something. Anyone still believing in fully autonomous cars as they are presented by Musk &co today (the real thing, not a cruise control that only works on California's highways on a sunny day) is 101% delusional. We'll talk about it in 15 years as the "previous AI hype cycle".
  • lvl100 5y ago
    Tesla scammed people into believing in FSD. I actually believed it for a second too. Yet here we are with Elon Musk as one of the richest con of all time.
• deleted 5y ago
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• perryizgr8 5y ago
  I would pay zero per hour/day/month/year. I would be open to paying a flat upfront price though. Like we have always done for car features. If this subscription trend continues, cars will become like iphones. For an Iphone you pay $800, get only 64GB SSD with about 50GB usable which will run out in a matter of months. Then you pay Apple $3 every month until eternity just to be able to use your phone, otherwise it will fill up and even non-apple services will fail to backup (eg, Whatsapp). For future cars you will pay $30k for the car, which does not have radio, drive assist, etc. And you pay $2 every month to unlock the radio, $2 to unlock the Bluetooth, $2 to unlock the voice control, $2 for climate control, $10 for drive assists, and so on. Keep paying otherwise these basic features will become locked and the hardware you paid for will become less useful.
  • sofixa 5y ago
    We're talking about a new type of car feature, one that needs constant work and updates. It's not unreasonable to have to pay-per-use for it.
    • perryizgr8 5y ago
      > We're talking about a new type of car feature, one that needs constant work and updates. Why would it need constant updates? They should release and sell the feature when it is done.
      • sofixa 5y ago
        Because we're talking about an extremely complex algorithm that will need tweaking with time.
        • perryizgr8 5y ago
          Sure, tweak all you want. Sell when it is ready.
• baybal2 5y ago
  It will be instantly warezed, if it will ever work in the first place.
• hyperhopper 5y ago
  > 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 a larger period of time. The average person in the northeast spends 31 minutes commuting per day [2], for simplicity that's 0.5 hours,* 2 commutes a day, * 5 days a week, * 50 weeks a year (assuming 2 weeks vacation), is 250 hours commuting a week. At ~9 dollars including tax per hour, that means in just 4.4 years[3] it's already more expensive to rent this feature if the surcharge is initially 10k as VW claims. This is true even if the car is used ONLY for commuting, which is likely a non-major portion of use time. This is 100% a way to extract more money from consumers, especially non financially stable consumers, while lying to all of our faces. [1] https://moneywise.com/managing-money/budgeting/boots-theory-of-socioeconomic-unfairness https://moneywise.com/managing-money/budgeting/boots-theory-... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/798393/us-workers-average-commuting-time-region/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/798393/us-workers-averag... [3] https://www.caranddriver.com/research/a33235649/ownership-costs-of-cars/ https://www.caranddriver.com/research/a33235649/ownership-co...
  • chewz 5y ago
    I agree with you. But this system is called capitalism for a reason. If you do not have capital you loose...
    • nix23 5y ago
      But it's called Volkswagen for a reason too ;)
      • chewz 5y ago
        The name is from the other era ;-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen#1932%E2%80%931938:_People's_Car_project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen#1932%E2%80%931938:_...
• yumraj 5y ago
  OK, but what all will it include? Will it include my auto insurance, since if I'm not driving why am I paying for insurance? If there is an accident will it cover my deductible? If the car get stolen, will it drop the thieves at the police station and come back to me? and others.. If it's just driving me from point A to B, no thanks, I can do that myself.
• RealityVoid 5y ago
  This won't happen an VW hopes. Once self driving is achieved, it will eventually be a commodity, you will just pay 200$ on a box on your car and you will have self driving. This isn't my idea, came from listening some geohot interview but I think he is spot on.
  • throwawayzRUU6f 5y ago
    This. 5-year-old state of the art is today's incubator open source, and a commodity 2 years from now. There's no reason to think autonomous driving will be an exception.
• cable2600 5y ago
  That is still a lot. If you do a lot of driving.
• aussieguy1234 5y ago
  If you don't have to also buy the car, this might be reasonable
  • wetpaws 5y ago
    Oh my sweet summer child
  • holoduke 5y ago
    I despise the whole sharing economy. I prefer the good old days where i own everything i use.
    • sabjut 5y ago
      Maybe that's just not the resource efficient way going forward. Maybe in the future people will laugh at the idea of buying 2 tons of steel to sit around doing nothing for 95% of it's lifetime.
      • echelon 5y ago
        I already hate not being able to repair my phone, own my music/movies, etc. I own my home so that I can do what I want with it, and I own my car so that I can take it off road, leave my stuff in it, and work on it. Rental services are bland as fuck. I can organize my music and movies way better than Spotify and Netflix so that it meets my exact preferences. No. I don't want to live in the rental economy future, and I find it hard to relate to those that do.
        • Mashimo 5y ago
          I own my home, it's an economic logical choice. Just like you I also have my music and movies as "real files" and not in the cloud. But renting a car that would show up at my door and can drive it self back? Man, that would be cool. Would just need it a few time per year.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
• xmly 5y ago
  If I can watch videos or sleep behind the wheel, 8.5 sounds reasonable to me.
  • sneak 5y ago
    How about to use the internet? Or to use the smartphone you already paid for? Attempts at renting your own hardware back to you should be rejected on sight.
    • xmly 5y ago
      I would compare it with the apps on my iPhone like Netflix.
      • ineedasername 5y ago
        Netflix isn't on your phone. The app is a portal to their servers & content. If all of the hardware & software is already in the car, which you bought, then they are renting your car back to you. There is no marginal increase increase in their own costs. You already "own" everything needed to make it work. This is more like having an iPhone with a bunch of videos you already purchased downloaded on to it and then having to pay a fee to watch them.
        • sofixa 5y ago
          > If all of the hardware & software is already in the car, which you bought, then they are renting your car back to you. The hardware will be, buy the software will probably need constant improvements and updates. It's more like having purchased an iPhone and having to pay a subscription to have access to real time map data.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    • bob_theslob646 5y ago
      They're going to charge you for connectivity as well.
• darzu 5y ago
  An hour can move you 60 miles on the highway, which is likely at least 2 gallons of gas. So gas would be $6-8. $8.50 seems like a great deal.
  • 8ytecoder 5y ago
    Uhm, it says "access the features". I presume you own the car, have insurance, pay for gas and then also pay for the software "driver".
    • watt 5y ago
      When leasing the car, you own nothing, right?
  • timc3 5y ago
    It sounds like this would be on top of other costs.
• King-Aaron 5y ago
  Subscription services for cars seems like a great reason for me to stick to my existing collection of 90's/00's sports cars.
  • midasuni 5y ago
    You have to pay per mile now, so what’s the problem?
    • King-Aaron 5y ago
      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.
• speedgoose 5y ago
  I would rather pay someone to hack my car so I don't have to pay per hour.
  • ampdepolymerase 5y ago
    Market price is about $2200 https://comma.ai https://comma.ai
    • Black101 5y ago
      The comma two is $1299 including the harness... it would pay itself off in no time (153 hours).
    • another_kel 5y ago
      It's 1100 (plus 200 for connector). Yesterday's price was a joke 'double the price sale'.
  • forgot_old_user 5y ago
    What if it crashes into someone, wouldn't you be responsible then?
    • testesttest 5y ago
      I am pretty sure you are regardless of the hack. If your Tesla hits someone your at fault not Tesla. Laws would have to change a lot for that not to be the case. In that world, do I even need car insurance or is volkswagen liable? If you're talking ethically, you have a point.
    • speedgoose 5y ago
      Actually if the $8.5 per hour subscription shifts the responsibility in accidents from the driver to Volkswagen, it becomes worth it. But I doubt it will do. I think you will still be responsible to take over very quickly despite not being focused on driving.
    • _carbyau_ 5y ago
• flyGuyOnTheSly 5y ago
  This would be ideal for myself. I spend $1500/year on insurance and about $1000 in gas on a car I barely ever drive. I am slow to get ready and leave the house as well. If this thing could just show up at my doorstep and drive me to the grocery store and back every couple of weeks for a few dollars that would be incredible! Plus I don't have to make smalltalk with a driver, bonus! Not to mention the space I would save in my garage.
  • hyperhopper 5y ago
    How is the gas price relevant? If you're paying $1000 worth of gas a year, surely you're using $1000 of gas?
  • choward 5y ago
    > $1000 in gas on a car I barely ever drive I wouldn't call $20 a week in gas "barely driving".
    • midasuni 5y ago
      It’s a little below average “ The average US resident drives 13,476 miles per year and spends about $1,262 on gasoline.” But that’s immaterial. If that’s 10,000 miles a year at an average of 20mph that’s 500 hours driving and 8,200 not driving - over 90% of the time the car is idle. I.e “hardly being used”
  • badestrand 5y ago
    The costs are just to enable the feature on the fly in the car you already own, so you will still need to buy gas and insurance.
    • yazaddaruvala 5y ago
      If the passenger still needs insurance, then the self-driving is not worth paying for. Would you pay for or use Uber if you also needed car insurance to be a passenger?
  • adrianN 5y ago
• ryndbfsrw 5y ago
  You will own nothing and love it
  • smnrchrds 5y ago
    Link for the uninitiated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25068820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25068820
    • ilovefood 5y ago
      I try to follow the url in that thread but it gives me a "Sorry, but we can’t find the page you were looking for", is it just me? Here's an archive link https://web.archive.org/web/20201113005029/https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/shopping-i-can-t-really-remember-what-that-is/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201113005029/https://www.wefor... It was an interesting ready but a bad way to start the day.
  • choward 5y ago
    But you will pay to "own" it.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • globular-toast 5y ago
    Ownership is overrated. It's not a universally good thing. In many cases it's a huge liability. The things you own end up owning you. Would you want to own the stretch of road outside your house? What benefit would you get from it? You'd now be responsible for maintaining it and presumably you'd take out an insurance policy in case of freak events damaging it. You'd pray for a mild winter and hope your neighbours don't buy heavy vehicles that will start tearing it up. Much better to let the government own it, I think. What benefit do you get from car ownership? Do you modify your car? Do you enjoy doing your own maintenance? For many people, the answer to both is a resounding no. For almost everyone, doing maintenance and repairs is totally impractical even if they were inclined to do so. Do you really own something if you are forced to take to the dealers regularly for maintenance and when things go wrong? So what does the ownership get you? The sole responsibility if something goes wrong. The sole responsibility of keeping it maintained and roadworthy or disposing of it if you decide to write it off. And remember you can't really just write it off because you need it to get to work every day, plus it's a huge asset that you can't afford to replace outright. For a very large number of people, "car ownership" really means the car owns them. Ownership is great for many things, but each thing needs to be considered on its own merits. For most people, car ownership really doesn't make much sense.
• a254613e 5y ago
  Considering software like that will always need further development, I'm not objecting to have it as an optional subscription and the price sounds reasonable to me. I would use it. Not for every small trip to the store, but for longer trips definitely. That being said I think this would lead to more hardware, not just software, being locked behind subscriptions - as the article already mentions battery range/performance subscription. Simply because the companies are greedy. That's something that I would refuse to pay for via subscription.
• rejectedandsad 5y ago
  Sounds like a steal for perfect Level 5 autonomy. That’s about the price of hiring someone to drive you for close to minimum wage. But for advanced cruise control? Pass.
  • jillesvangurp 5y ago
    I heard a great characterization of autonomy levels that it is much less about technical capability and much more about legal liability. People obsess about the technology. The real challenge is going to be liability and insurance. That will flip around in a hurry when it becomes clear that human driving is a root cause for most remaining incidents and insurance cost. You'll be allowed to drive but you'll pay for the privilege through your insurance. The difference between a level 2-3 and a level 5 car is the presence of a steering wheel and the legal requirement to have your hands on it. As incidents with Tesla show that need is both real but actually not that urgent given the fact that people get away with and are really creative in finding ways to not have their hands on the wheel. The occasional incidents because of that mean this is a problem but the lack of lots of incidents indicate that actually it's not completely horrible at what it does. Tesla is taking an incremental approach here and every incident makes the whole system a little safer. Their predictions as to when they will do level 5 and eventually 6 are of course wildly optimistic but the general approach is not without merit. They get lots of data and the improvements are basically data driven. The middle ground here is level 4 where it becomes safe and legal to remove your hands from the wheel under some circumstances (like a road with special lanes, a well mapped and understood area, cars staying below certain speed limits, etc). Level 4 is basically what Waymo does in a very limited set of regions. Unlike Tesla, they actually have driver less cars though. Level 5 would be when they can do it anywhere. From 3 to 6 is basically a path of aggressively cutting down on the possibility for any kind of incident.
  • csunbird 5y ago
    You also have to buy the car as well.
• yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
  I just wish we would bring back car trains. I like driving. I want to drive. There are some incredible roads in the places I go to, and I want to drive on them. However, I don’t care much for the long motorway drives through Europe that I need to do to take me to the interesting places. I want to drive my car on to a train in Kraków, hang out in the restaurant for several hours, and then drive off the train in Gdańsk. Surely this is cheaper and safer than autonomous driving anyway?
  • abraae 5y ago
    I guess you're talking about a physical, actual train, but it would be cool to tack onto the back of a conga line of cars, and let some AI take over maintaining the gap and alignment with the vehicle in front, while grabbing a nap.
    • yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
      I am indeed talking about an actual physical train. Many trains have restaurants, bedrooms, and bathrooms, and passengers can stretch their legs and walk around during their journey. That of course is not feasible with a car.
    • kwhitefoot 5y ago
      It's called platooning I think. Mercedes have done a lot of work on it for long distance trucking.
  • tuukkah 5y ago
    In Finland, it's popular to take your car in a train from Helsinki or Turku in the south to Rovaniemi in the north overnight. There are also cargo trains that carry trucks from the coastal harbours to inland railway stations.
    • jacquesm 5y ago
      In Switzerland there are areas that are pretty much inaccessible unless you use the car-trains. Very convenient.
• ako 5y ago
  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.
  • imposterr 5y ago
    Ah yes, artificial artificial intelligence.
    • hyperhopper 5y ago
      Ask yes, exploited human intelligence. Though also, at the same time the liability questions would quickly become... Complicated.... With that model
      • m_mueller 5y ago
        In the same way that basically the entire modern global economy is exploiting humans? Well it does, but it also gives something back: living together in a civilization that kinda works (so far). I think for a lot of people doing some mechanical turk style driving could actually be quite a satisfying job, more so than e.g. data entry tasks.
        • 1-6 5y ago
          Amazon's MTurk still exists!
      • munk-a 5y ago
        "Beetle - why did you just ram us into a wall?" 'I'm sorry! Hit a lag spike, blame Telus.'
  • tempestn 5y ago
    Would probably do a considerably better job than actual autonomous driving for the foreseeable future too.
• mattlondon 5y ago
  I can certainly see the value for those long boring trips we do just one/two/three times a year. Those long 4-6 hour drives we do only a few times a year for vacations or whatever. Totally worth it IMHO if it is 100% hands-off. I usually prefer to own my stuff than rent, but I don't think paying 10k upfront for something I only use sporadically is worthwhile so this seems great to me.
  • malozite 5y ago
    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 instantly transported to my holiday destination, but almost nothing to get there in the same time with someone else driving me.
    • futevolei 5y ago
      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.
      • malozite 5y ago
        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.
        • 5y ago
• mlang23 5y ago
  This is sci-fi. AVs are not there yet. And they will not be there for some time to come. Since Google started their damn AV-car-project back around 2014 (or was it even earlier) mainstream media is full of sci-fi. I had to explain to many people that what media is waiving infront of their noses is not something they will be able to consume in the next years. I really wonder why media is so sci-fi-heavy recently. Maybe because reporting about reality has become so grim?
  • Animats 5y ago
    In the more advanced cities, self-driving taxis are here.[1] Shenzhen, where else? Watch it make an unprotected left turn through an intersection cluttered with motorcycles, tuk-tuks, cars, and a mobile crane. WeRide has many videos of their self-driving cars. The production ones have no driver and are used on major roads. The experimental ones have a safety driver and struggle through urban villages with people, bikes, and cars all over the street. [1] https://youtu.be/O69YEWpSacU https://youtu.be/O69YEWpSacU
    • qayxc 5y ago
      Nice demo - no traffic at all (the parked car in the beginning even looks staged), the car is running a stop sign, the left turn blocks the pedestrian crossing (not sure about the traffic law in China, but in my country this is illegal), 4 empty lanes yet 40ish km/h speed, etc. These cars are packed full of additional sensors, are monitored remotely and only drive on fixed, selected routes. It's state-run propaganda.
    • mlang23 5y ago
      To answer the headline: I'd actually pay extra for a human driver. This stuff is giving me the creeps. Not even as a passenger, must more as a blind pedestrian.
• dlsa 5y ago
  VW has an interesting prior track record with economics, truth around numbers and diesel emissions in particular. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-09/vw-charged-with-deceit-over-diesel-as-france-chases-carmakers https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-09/vw-charge... https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a15339250/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-vw-diesel-emissions-scandal/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a15339250/everything-you-n... Based on that history I'm not convinced that $8.50 per hour is even remotely reasonable and they already know it. Autonomous driving is a lot cheaper. This doesn't mean that people won't pay it. Plenty will. But its more expensive than it should be.
  • kwdc 5y ago
    Trust notwithstanding, it all depends on what your time is worth. What's an equivalent uber going to cost when autonomous driving is a real thing?
• xaduha 5y ago
  Always felt like autonomous driving without smart roads isn't going to happen on a large scale, just computer vision isn't enough. What would a smart road be? Either some infrastructure that is designed for this or a digital overlay attached to it that every car nearby continuously updates in real time. Or maybe both. That would mean an open standard and shared access to such an overlay, plus technology for that would have to be mandatory for new cars regardless of whether they plan to be autonomous or not. Right now it's just a capitalist rat race that no one is winning.
• piceas 5y ago
  The linked welt.de article's headline is 7€/h. Minimum wage in Germany this year is 9.50€. Median wage in 2018 was about 16.50€. https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2020/10/PE20_416_623.html https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2020/10/PE20_416_623.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_minimum_wage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_minimum_w...
• zx2391 5y ago
  VW ships 3M cars per year, let's say a car is used 1h per day. Given all cars are used in this subscription model, we look at $765M MRR, or almost $10B per year, which is already about 10% of their current revenue. Given that autonomous vehicles do not suck time out of the user's budget, they might even be used more. At 3h/day, we already at $30B yearly revenue - almost half of what they made in 2020. And software has marginal costs, so once you got over the investment (they recruit developers extremely heavily in Germany right now), you are looking at a more than comfortable income stream. Not sure about you, but I literally see the level of dopamine floating on the VW management floors right now. That said, I hope I never need a personal car in my life.
  • Mashimo 5y ago
    > let's say a car is used 1h per day. Just because the car is used, does not mean everybody unlocks the self driving mode. I would not be surprised if you could unlock it unlimited fir a one time price.
  • tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    VW ships 3M cars per year It's a lot more than that: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272050/worldwide-vehicle-production-of-volkswagen-since-2006/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/272050/worldwide-vehicle...
  • _fizz_buzz_ 5y ago
    This must be just the Volkswagen brand, the whole companz delivered a lot more: "The Volkswagen Group delivered 9.3 million vehicles to customers worldwide in fiscal year 2020 (2019: 11.0 million)." https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/group/portrait-and-production-plants.html# https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/group/portrait-and-productio...
  • intricatedetail 5y ago
    I wonder why developers won't organise and demand royalty payments for their code? It's crazy that company pays once for the software and makes money off of it forever but don't share those profits with developers.
• bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  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 Bug.” In his glove compartment he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his car for taxiing him about while he listened to his morning HN podcast constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip. “You discover I’m right,” the car said. It sounded smug.
  • jacquesm 5y ago
    If this is familiar to you then you're right, it's a riff on Philip K Dick's 'Ubik'. Brilliant book. Thank you.
    • __s 5y ago
      http://sickmyduck.narod.ru/dick25-0.html http://sickmyduck.narod.ru/dick25-0.html search for "doorhandle" Also amusing is the normalization: "Free!" He stared at her. "That's not economically feasible. How can it operate on that basis? For more than a month?"
  • mothsonasloth 5y ago
    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 catastrophic situation was looming...
    • mikehollinger 5y ago
      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-airbag-vest-will-stop-working-if-you-miss-a-payment https://www.vice.com/en/article/93yyyd/this-motorcycle-airba...
• dna_polymerase 5y ago
  The idea that Volkswagen will ever get autonomous driving out of the door is laughable at best. We shouldn't even listen to them. Autonomous driving will happen in U.S. companies, and they will dictate what it will look like for the consumer.
• kwdc 5y ago
  $8.50 eh? When autonomous driving is a thing, uber etc will get really interesting. Maybe even cheaper but I'm not hopeful by much. Personally I'd suggest that autonomous vans will really shake things up. Especially the combination of EV and autonomous.
• toto444 5y ago
  > This is 100% a way to extract more money from consumers, especially non financially stable consumers, while lying to all of our faces. Nothing prevents them from buying a non autonomous car and renting one when they need, say, when have drunk more than they should.
• fxtentacle 5y ago
  For companies and business travelers, this is perfect. Let me elaborate: If you purchase an asset, that is seen as a store of value so you need to spread out the tax reductions over the useful life of the product. But like this, self-driving is taxed as a service, not as an asset. That means all expenses are immediately fully deductible. Also, that means you can buy an affordable used car, gain full tax benefits (because the previous owner waited through much of the useful tax life already) and then upgrade to self driving and get full tax benefits again. For me personally, that means this feature would be effectively free because the tax savings cancel out the price.
  • tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    I'm willing to bet most companies lease the whole vehicle anyway.
• squarefoot 5y ago
  What I would pay for autonomous driving? Zero. Actually I would even pay not to have it. People shouldn't be given incentives to waste more time into their cars other than the strict necessary, and autonomous driving would make things easier, so that a 5 hours trip becomes two movies and a nap. And workers will accept more and more telecommuting at outrageous distances. No thanks, I'll rather keep hating driving. Disclaimer: after last year accident I had to say adios to motorcycles probably forever, so driving for me would suck no matter the vehicle; it just has too many wheels. When one enjoys driving, the better Tesla/whatever model just can't be on par even with the crappiest motorcycle. Car lovers can't understand.
  • flemhans 5y ago
    I'm looking forward to a self-driving RV, and waking up in a new city every morning.
    • bagacrap 5y ago
      Not to rag on your dream, but this is exactly what GP was worried about, and concerns me as well. With a self driving RV you are going to spend even more time driving around, because why not? Many other people will also be willing to commute 2 hours each way to work in Santa Monica and live in Fontana. But that comes with a large cost to the environment and makes traffic worse for everyone.
• dncornholio 5y ago
  With the current roads, I don't want to drive autonomous. I have not enough trust in computers identifying the surroundings. I think roads and signs need some sort of sensors and all vehicles should be able to communicate. This is when I would consider autonomous driving safe enough atm.
• jacquesm 5y ago
  That's cheaper than parking in Amsterdam. They're on to something here but the side-effects will likely not be what you expect. Suddenly the roads are going to be parking space as well. It also - funny - is higher than the minimum wage in many places.
  • swongel 5y ago
    They'd probably make it illegal for cars to drive without passenger in cities like Amsterdam without a taxi license to prevent traffic jams of cars driving around to avoid parking costs.
    • jacquesm 5y ago
      But the whole point is to be able to send junior to school while dad or mom goes the other way.
• rho4 5y ago
  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 wet, windy or freezing weather conditions. Hello to custom schedules (also during the night), sleep, reading time, focus, freedom! Seriously, cant' wait.
  • Mashimo 5y ago
    You still have to buy the car. So you have to factor that into the $8.50/h. (Unless you also got a car now)
    • rho4 5y ago
      Yes, only interesting if this is for an Uber like service without ownership. Didn't read that part.
      • Mashimo 5y ago
        Would love that too. Rent a car the few times per year I need one. And it waits for you in front of your house.
      • drdec 5y ago
        I think that is the future for cities.
  • eplanit 5y ago
    That's a great list of public transportation experiences.
  • smnrchrds 5y ago
    > 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.jsp https://www.ttc.ca/Fares_and_passes/PRESTO/Monthly_Pass_FAQ.... https://www.gotransit.com/en/trip-planning/presto/fare-discounts-with-presto https://www.gotransit.com/en/trip-planning/presto/fare-disco...
• phreeza 5y ago
  This seems a bit short sighted to me at least for the foreseeable future, because the data aquired while self driving will also be valuable. So it would make sense to encourage drivers to use the feature as much as possible, in order to improve accuracy and stay ahead of tightened regulations that will surely come over time. (E.g. disengagements per km).
• grammers 5y ago
  Interesting move. But what if you like driving? Being in control and all is just part of it - at least if you're not commuting every day...
  • qayxc 5y ago
    If you like driving you save $8.5/h. If you just use the car for the daily commute, there should be better ways to commute (I know there often aren't, it's just a hypothetical).
• LatteLazy 5y ago
  The market for a $20k+ new car with pay-to-play autonomous seems small when you can pay $24k for the same vehicle and have it drive autonomously as much as you like...
• yawaworht1978 5y ago
  That's a shit rate even if the car comes for free.
• nmeofthestate 5y ago
  One could implement similar pricing for other time-saving utilities - household appliances for example. Do you value the time you save by washing your clothes in a washing machine, compared to handwashing? Then maybe you'll be happy to pay £8 per hour for the time your washing machine is running? The washing machine can provide a touch tablet for surfing the web as you (don't) wash.
• debarshri 5y ago
  At that price, you can get a real driver who could drive you around in India. It might be cheaper to get a Human-in-the-loop than paying $8.50 per hour. You could have the driver remotely located driving you around over internet.
• choonway 5y ago
  In china, they could probably could lower it down to free. you give up your location privacy and get blasted with ads.
• giantg2 5y ago
  No thanks. I'm cheap. I guess it would be good for people who can't drive due to medical conditions and such (once allowed to be fully driverless).
• smarx007 5y ago
  I think it is a great idea for bringing autonomous cars to the market. Think about it: take a VW that costs $25k today. Now, fast forward 10 years and you can buy roughly the same car for roughly the same price but with autonomy-as-a-service. First and foremost, it's still a car worth $25k. And if it's your first autonomous car, you will naturally be sceptical if it's worth it. Getting you to pay $10k extra may be a hard sell. Selling you autonomous driving at €7/h is a great way to convince you it works. If you are convinced, you'll buy that $40k autonomous car in the future. Otherwise, you'll just go back to manual mode and won't regret paying $10k for a worthless feature. But I totally get the subscription fatigue we are all under that prompted so much negativity in the responses.
  • prennert 5y ago
    I agree. This allows you to switch on autonomous driving when driving to unfamiliar places, long distance, and for cases where you would make more than $8.50/hour by working while the car drives. Or just because you had a drink and want to be driven home in your own car. I am sure many people would opt to not use it most of the time, but having the option is great. As long as not using the option does not make the car a worse car than an non-automomuous one. I feel most negative comments are coming from the dark-pattern aspect of it. How transparent is the charge going to be, are people going to be trapped in bills (yearly subscription outlasting their actual car-ownership) they wont be able to afford? I also think that if few people use the feature regularly, but all cars need to have the hardware to support the autonomous driving, everybody is going to essentially overpay for features they are not using. Because one way or another VW needs to break even on the hardware at least. Therefore, I think it could be an amazing business model if the promises of SaaS are fulfilled, a product that constantly improves and that you only pay for when you use it. In this case the incentives of customers and VW are aligned. I think what people are afraid of, are dark patterns, subscription bundles and general in-transparency make the car a lot more expensive than people bought into.
    • TheCondor 5y ago
      I agree that it seems like an interesting approach to bringing it to market. Imagine living in rural somewhere where they don’t have the same quality of data that they have for Silicon Valley, you don’t have to pay for the service that doesn’t work as well. Also, I expect there will be a service component whereby mapping a models are updated regularly so some fee for that makes sense. Then what if insurance was covered in that fee?
• heisenbit 5y ago
  I don‘t think autonomous driving can be bought today and in the near future. This is a moving target where there is continuous development happening. You may buy sensors, processors and actuators but software and other content is the more important. Also the backend server infrastructure is a continuous expenditure. If competition works the price and cost structure can‘t be much divorced and that would indicate a fixed price plus a regular service fee. To further adoption it makes sense to drop the former and carry the investment risk by the side that best can afford it.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• surfingdino 5y ago
  $0. I don't trust VW after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
• Grustaf 5y ago
  To me the most meaningful way to use self-driving is to be able to summon a car, avoiding inner city parking, making car-pooling super convenient etc. In that case it's worth much more than 8.50. And if you plan to work while driving, it will also be worth much more.
• a_imho 5y ago
  I would play extra for a dumb car.
• clivend 5y ago
  for $8.50 per hour is is clear that someone id driving for you from a remote location
• ReptileMan 5y ago
  We seriously need legislation to curb this bullshit.
• mensetmanusman 5y ago
  If we had a robust 5G network in place using 30 GHz Ultra Wideband signals, I wonder if in that alternative timeline companies would just have remote drivers that would pilot vehicles like drones.
• loup-vaillant 5y ago
  Great. Now my car does not even belong to me (same as my phone, damn you Steve Jobs). A subscription fee to update the map I could understand. A subscription fee to be notified of real time event (and have the car automatically chose the fastest route) I can also understand. But for driving itself? No way. That thing has to be done locally for latency reasons, subscription is just dishonest for this one.
• mensetmanusman 5y ago
  In terms of the heated seat argument, I imagine a future where they take it to the extreme and charge by the Joule for heating. That would mean those with a lot of thermal mass when they are sitting would have to pay more to get more electrons traveling through the tungsten heating elements. BMW would argue that this is a way to combat obesity.
• marc__1 5y ago
  This pricing strategy is as common for the auto industry as in any other: [1] "If one company bundles products, its competitors are always better off not bundling; the thing to avoid is a head-to-head competition wherein the only way to get an edge is by cutting prices" If/when VW unbundles their pricing, another auto player will come up with a alternative version of that, and it is to consumers/gov. To decide if this is fair and advantageous. [1] https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/bundling/ https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/bundling/
• Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  My initial reaction to the headline was something along the lines of “ugh, this is awful, I can never own anything anymore.” Then I thought about it some more. I would be 100% okay with this if Volkswagon is taking responsibility for damage caused by accidents. It makes sense that way, because every additional hour on the road adds additional risk for VW. Whereas if I owned the self-driving software (as part of the car), I would probably expect to still be culpable in an accident. It wasn’t my fault, sure, but it was my equipment. Whether the real world will sort itself out so logically is another matter.
  • monkeybutton 5y ago
    Autonomous driving is a safety feature and we've noticed you have enabled manual control. Please hold while we notify your insurance provider so your premiums can be adjusted.
• dboreham 5y ago
  Cheap for a capability that doesn't exist and can't be achieved in for foreseeable future.
• Liambp 5y ago
  Wait a sec. I can rent a whole car for less than €8.50 per hour. I sure as heck am not going to pay an extra €8.50 an hour for a car I already bought and paid for.
• intricatedetail 5y ago
  "You'll own nothing and be happy" Rent seeking is a loophole to modern slavery. It's particularly sickening that a German company with questionable history takes a shot at that. But that's just my opinion.
• whoomp12342 5y ago
  Sure! as long as our transportation is run by the DOT, maybe they can set the price... hey where did you go?
• hexo 5y ago
  Would pay zero for that. Actually I'd like to be payed to use that because I love driving myself.
• unnouinceput 5y ago
  I pay, in my country from Eastern Europe mind you, around $15 for a taxi to drive me around the town doing my chores (groceries, take a prescription, maybe a little detour to check something new in other side of the town), in an hour (checked multiple times). I would be willing to pay $8.5/h right now. This would kill both Uber/ride share and taxi industry, if it comes true, as we know it. Probably those industries will evolve to something else, as is always the case with tech. I cannot wait to see the future.
• PaulHoule 5y ago
  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 that claims it needs the First class section to subsidize coach. Historically, they also put in complex rules that make you pay two or three times as much for coach ticket if you don't overstay the weekend. The counterexample is that the most successful and consistently profitable airlines, like Southwest, don't play those games. On Delta or American you might wait 20 minutes for them to explain the 9 levels of boarding priority and which credit card entitles you to which priority and which status level on which partner airlines, etc. On Southwest they would have the flight mostly boarded by the time the legacy airline had explained the boarding procedure. They wouldn't have to pay all the attendants to sit around, pay for the expensive jet stairs to be occupied, pay for the pilots to sit around, etc. They might even get another flight in. "Price discrimination" frequently is "cutting off your nose to spite your face".
  • ghaff 5y ago
    Southwest also historically flew a bunch of fairly short haul routes where even business travelers didn't care much about seating. Whereas most of the flights I do, I absolutely care about boarding priority, seat assignments, and the occasional upgrade. Once upon a time, I actually flew Southwest a lot on short-haul flights to Houston. These days, at least pre-pandemic, I care a lot about status on a given carrier.
    • growt 5y ago
      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.
      • ghaff 5y ago
        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.
• FriendlyNormie 5y ago
  Nope, fuck you, eat shit. The only drivers that should be allowed on the road are those that fear death if they fuck up, i.e. other humans. Plus any cars with a self-driving capability can and will eventually be hijacked or hacked and remotely driven into a tree at 90 mph, perhaps a time-activated worm thar spreads from car to car via bluetooth and then suddenly kills millions of people all at once one day, or if we’re “lucky” then it will just be used sparingly for targeted assassinations. The manufacturer might even add this backdoor on purpose or be required to by the government so they can remotely kill who they want when they want and make it look like an accident. All self-driving cars should be run off the road until manufacturers get the message. People like you should be killed before your stupidity harms us all.
• PaulHoule 5y ago
  I see two angles on this. 1. A self-driving car will need lots of experience to get good. The way to get this experience is to get it to drive as many miles as possible, thus you want to make the marginal cost zero. 2. A self-driving car needs software maintenance and possibly remote control. It needs a recurring revenue stream to pay for the first and should pay-as-you-go for the second. Technical factors apply. At least in the US I think any kind of cellular-based V2X communication is a pipe dream. Carriers love the idea that you'd have another expensive subscription for your car, but they aren't interested in the investment to get sufficient network coverage. (E.g. how much more has Verizon spent touting the millimeter waver 'hotspots' that have in a few cities than on actually building them out?) Carmakers could probably afford to front you $2000 worth of hardware (video-based self-driving system) but it's unimaginable that they could afford to put a LIDAR in (costs as much the engine) and expect to get paid for it in dribs and drabs.
• auiya 5y ago
  Fees for what should be a standard feature in a few years? That sets an anti-consumer precedent. Hard pass
• Communitivity 5y ago
  What galls me the most I think is that minimum wage in 20 states within the U.S. is still at $7.25/Hour. Driving does not require a huge amount of skill, and it's something many us already know. Why not hire a person to do this? Well, perhaps an argument can be made for safety, reliability. Then again, perhaps the same argument can be made that a good human hire is safer than the machine, which can be hacked (any machine can be hacked, given enough time and resources thrown at it). Volkswagen and Tesla are at the forefront of a 'Great Reset' in cars: turning car owners into car renters. Sure the base car is owned, but all the extra services needed to get the most out of your car become rented, it might as well be rented.
  • _fat_santa 5y ago
    I recently purchased an old 4Runner from the mid 2000's, I though I would hate it, but it's become my favorite car (that I've owned) of all time. The biggest reason is seeing articles like these, more and more cars are closed off, requiring you to "subscribe" to get all the features of the vehicle. My car doesn't play those games, it's a simple car, no infotainment system, no self driving or autopilot features, no subscription features. Everything works exactly as expected, something breaks and it's easy to fix. Even thought its super basic and doesn't have any modern features, its my favorite car I've ever owned.
    • gimmeThaBeet 5y ago
      A bit off topic, and pardon my asking, I'm genuinely a bit fascinated to know how you came to buy what seems to be quite a specific vehicle, with the expectation that you would hate it? If it was just cost and utility (i.e. "yeah it sucks, but I can do x,y,z.. with it") I suppose that makes sense, and I'm glad it turns out you enjoy it. It just seems like 4Runners specifically have quite an enthusiastic following, I'm quite interested to know why someone would seek out an old one who specifically was not stoked about it.
      • moftz 5y ago
        Not everyone buys an old 4x4 to go up and down muddy hills. Some people just want to be able to get to work in inclement weather but don't want to buy new or need to spend a lot on parts. If an old 4runner was the only thing in my price range for a 4x4 daily driver, I'd probably be a little disappointed too.
• ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  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 personal liberty.
  • danans 5y ago
    > 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?
    • ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      "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.
      • danans 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• forgingahead 5y ago
  This is a hilarious decision not only because of the bozo pricing attempt, but also because as someone who has to drive a WV every so often, my opinion of their existing software capabilities is that it's just bad. Start stop is poorly implemented, and can actively be dangerous in city driving. Many other aspects of the car that is software controlled is just crap. They can't even write code well enough for us to drive the car normally, now they want to drive the car for us, automatically?. Hard pass.
• napolux 5y ago
  Fine, as long as I don't pay for the car :D
• _6fmb 5y ago
  Nah I'll take the cheaper Chinese alternative, this is exploitation.
• dingoegret 5y ago
  "Car, please take me to locke's cafe to meet friends" "Payment processed, welcome. Please scan your vaccination passport" "It looks like your records have not been updated for the gamma-omega-second-230 strain." "Sit back and enjoy the ride while I taxi you to the nearest vaccination clinic."
• magwa101 5y ago
  This is where open source / third party addons come in and where "right to modify" is critical.
• 734129837261 5y ago
  Yeah, nonsense like a monthly fee to have my car perform a feature like that makes me want a car that comes with none of the self-driving tech necessities installed. Because I won't be using any of it. Having said that, I don't see myself migrating to a "modern" car any time soon. They are full of touch screens that are a notoriously awful user experience (an outstretched human arm in a moving vehicle is NOT a good nor comfortable pointer device). My current car is a Volkswagen from 2016. The last of its kind with knobs all over the place and the touch screen being entirely optional. It's an ICE car but comes with lane assist, adaptive cruise control, is fully automatic, accelerates from 0 to 100 km/h in about 6.5 seconds, has an amazing sound system, and takes me about 850 kilometers before needing to refuel. In particular the ID.3 and such range of fully electric vehicles from Volkswagen are ridiculous. They are slow, have low range, are full of touch screens instead of tactile buttons, look like they are a design-by-boomer-committee result, and honestly they look like VW have been cutting corners everywhere to make the production costs as low as possible. Autonomous driving is not going to be good for many years to come. I'll be very happy in my old-fashioned ICE car that I can refuel in 5 minutes flat, while the hip people are sitting in their E-cars recharging for 30 minutes to get home. If they can find a spot, that is.
• wdb 5y ago
  I would be happy to pay money to be able to use a car without needing a drivers license but own my own car
• airhead969 5y ago
  Rent-seeking corporate vampires. Make something so expensive or restricted that it compels people to pay much more for it "on-demand." My mom's modest new car came with adaptive cruise control that includes lane following, land changing, automatic speed matching (0 to 90 mph).. all included. It's part of an after-sales monetization strategy like planned-obsolescence and planned-breakage by switching to cheaper, unrepairable materials like plastic and selling parts only as large, expensive assemblies. One future extension of this is to load a car with so many features that the price then goes up far beyond what any mortal can afford, and then rent rides to replace individual vehicle ownership and taxis/Uber/ Lyft. In this event, such vehicles would be engineered for minimizing TCO for the corporation.
• rkk3 5y ago
  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.
• midhhhthrow 5y ago
  Why is everyone so upset about this. You don’t have to buy it. And if you do pay hourly , just use it rarely
• sunstone 5y ago
  Might be worth it for those who can't drive for one reason or another. Otherwise, no.
• lnanek2 5y ago
  Seems like a valid approach. The cheapest way to do self driving is to just have a drone pilot from a call center driver your car remotely through a video feed. An hourly fee enables that. As long as they take fault as the driver in accidents, seems superior to computer control as well.
• timwaagh 5y ago
  I highly doubt they will sell any at that price. It's more than some people make in an hour, working. It's not quite sane and shows a backwards mindset. why would an autonomous car even need a steering wheel?
• asiachick 5y ago
  I can hardly wait for the Apple Car where they went 30% from every retailer and restaurant their car drives you to
• slownews45 5y ago
  Uh - Tesla has long considered something like this and has not ruled out doing an hourly fee - I think some beta / debug code paths exist for this. How can VW block Tesla from offering an hourly option?
• derryrover 5y ago
  Am I too conservative if I still believe that self driving cars will not be a thing? Which insurance company will pay for a crash caused by a self driving car? And now they also want an hourly fee for this?
• 48snickers 5y ago
  > In studies of willingness to pay for autonomous driving, the range tends to be $1,000–$7,000, which would buy you between 120–820 hours on Volkswagen’s plan. In 2018, commuters drove an average of 225 hours per year. Drivers typically value their time at 20–40 percent of their wages, and given that the average American wage is around $52,000 per year, or about $26 per hour, Volkswagen isn’t necessarily being unreasonable with its pricing. The price may or may not be correct, but it doesn't appear to be fabricated out of pure intuition. It seems good to see an alternative pricing option on the table to Tesla's current single, up-front purchase price. As more players enter the market, some amount of economics should finally start to take hold such that the right price and model emerges. As they say, you have to start somewhere. All of that said, at some level it feels like cars are headed to a place where autonomous driving is no longer an option, but an inseparable feature to the concept of owning a car. At that point, are you subscribing to the car or are you subscribing to the autonomous driving system?
• tibbydudeza 5y ago
  They are nuts - this guy must have sniffed some diesel. What next - 10 Euro's to start the car.
• chrisBob 5y ago
  I love to drive, but I would absolutely use this occasionally. I think that in most cases I am a better driver than most autonomous cars, but sometimes I am a situation where I need to get home from the airport at 1am, the long drive takes much longer than expected and extends into the night, or I have a migraine come on while I am out. In those cases I would LOVE to have an hourly service that can help get me and my car home. My rare use probably means that I am not the ideal target market for something like this, but I am not opposed to the idea.
• pbuzbee 5y ago
  As a cheapskate, an hourly charge is exactly what would prevent me from using this for extended periods of time. Dense stop-and-go traffic is probably where I want autonomous driving the most. It's one of the most frustrating driving experiences for me. But it will be hard for me to switch on autonomous driving: Not only am I going to waste my time in traffic and my gas from idling, now I'm going to waste money per minute to let the car inch forward. I suppose there are situations where I would enable autonomous driving, like in an unfamiliar city or if I had been drinking at all (assuming it's safe and legal). This would probably add up to something like 10 hours per year, which seems like a huge waste of a big technological advancement.
• HellDunkel 5y ago
  Sigh, greedy OEMs are dreaming of subscription models without having anything close to autonomy.
• account-5 5y ago
  This seems like something else I won't pay for. Like smart TVs, meters, or any other rubbish like that. I'm not renting stuff I should actually own.
• ericmay 5y ago
  I'll never understand why we're hell-bent on making sure people are driving around in cars. Instead of solving the problem of commuting by not having cars and by building better, we're just making commuting better and more optimized. It's so stupid. We should be making it so that you don't have to commute, not that you can do more work while you commute or w/e.
  • doggosphere 5y ago
    People enjoy going to concerts, restaurants, seeing their family, etc.
    • ericmay 5y ago
      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?
      • doggosphere 5y ago
        How do you do those things without driving? Are you assuming everyone has access to effective and efficient public transportation?
        • ericmay 5y ago
          > Are you assuming everyone has access to effective and efficient public transportation? No.... I'm assuming we build that and design cities to be walkable and bike-able instead of just optimizing for car traffic. We can just build effective and efficient public transportation, maintain some of our current roads (so you can still have a car) and build cities and towns to be walkable and bike-able. > How do you do those things without driving? Idk. How do people all over the world do it today?
        • sellyme 5y ago
          > 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.
• Jemm 5y ago
  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 as long as possible.
  • CharlesW 5y ago
    > 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.
    • hexo 5y ago
      Yes, and all those subscriptions suck. Specifically they suck up money that could be spent much better. For example on food.
  • dillondoyle 5y ago
    If I bought it flat out F no. I could see some ideas around a newer type of lease though for those who truly don't drive a lot. Leases already have built in mile caps, maybe doing a micro-level like this proposed hour could be reasonable to some. So long as it's a transparent choice.
  • BluePen8 5y ago
    The missing spare tire was really just a gimmick to game some EPA mileage metric. Many cars missing them still have the spot for them, and it can even be purchased from the dealership (marked up as usual). Thankfully the oil sensor was one of the few things that didn't fail on my BMW, but ironically my Lexus is the car that actually burns oil so I'm standing out there once every 1000 miles with paper towel wiping my dipstick. Wish we could have both. I also agree I'd never pay for this subscription (unless I'm drunk and it's legally allowed to drive itself), but I'm probably just going to avoid subscription based vehicles like I already do (like BMWs with their annual CarPlay subscription).
• mullingitover 5y ago
  Reading the headline: I could summon a car and have it take me anywhere for only $8.50 an hour? That's a freaking steal and Uber is in serious-as-a-heart-attack trouble. Reading the article: Oh this is charging me to use a feature in a car I already own, okay great, I will continue never owning a Volkswagen.
• domador 5y ago
  What a bummer when every product turns into subscription service and a thing you don't actually own. Products-as-subscriptions are nice options at times, but even then I'd prefer for them to always be options, along with the option of owning outright.