It's more nuanced to me then "the hardware is there". Because by that reasoning you should be able to take any empty airline seat for $ 5 since the flight is al

It's more nuanced to me then "the hardware is there". Because by that reasoning you should be able to take any empty airline seat for $ 5 since the flight is already going and will only use 0.00something extra fuel with you in the seat. And yet airline pricing is a big data science project at each of them. If VW spends 700 million on making self driving they want to get more then that back. They can do so by charging everyone 10k more for the car, but it would make the car expensive and decrease sales volume requiring an even higher price. Or they can come up with some other model where users with less budget pay less while those that can afford it pay more. In that case you need to make it so that those that pay more get more benefits, and their idea for that is charging by hours of usage. I'm not sure I'm happy with that as a customer, but the model isn't crazy.