15 ms·

Tesla charges $10k for not really self driving, with the promise that it will improve, and you should buy it now, because the price will increase in the future.

by GuB-42 5y ago

Tesla charges $10k for not really self driving, with the promise that it will improve, and you should buy it now, because the price will increase in the future. I.e. they make you pay for something you don't have, with no guarantee that you will have it later. If it isn't a money grab, I don't know what is. And of course you can take a loan on that, so it isn't an upfront cost either. At least, with VW system, you pay when you use it. Doesn't work in your area, you don't pay. And if you realize that you can't pay, you can simply drive, your car won't turn into a brick. And of course it is to extract more money from consumers, that's the goal of every company. But personally I find VW approach more honest than Tesla's. The best would be to offer working self driving out of the box, with no promises and no recurring fees, but the reality is that we don't have the tech yet. Note that I don't have anything against the $10k package from Tesla except for the way it is advertised. If they just sold you an advanced supercruise, there would be no problem. But they also sell you the idea that your car will fully drive itself in the future and that you are making an investment. Kind of like a Kickstarter, except it is a trillion dollar company, not a bunch of people in a basement.

dmitriid 5y ago
> 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 more than 10k upfront (because they expect to extract this payment every time, all the time, for the entire lifetime of the car).
- iso1210 5y ago
  That's the same argument against software-as-a-service Maybe I'm not bothered about self driving for 90% of my journeys, but on occasion I'm going somewhere unusual or want to travel overnight or after drinking or whatever I'll just pay for a few hours. Imagine a world where there was just a set fee of $x per hour and $x per mile to travel. Would allow a far easier choice between different modes of transport, as the marginal cost becomes the actual cost. (Of course self driving is years away so this is all just spin)
  - bluGill 5y ago
    It won't be long after self driving arrives and you won't get that option. Humans are terrible drivers, even in the best cases. Once self driving is better survival than humans it won't be legal to drive on public roads.
    - g00gler 5y ago
      A future where humans are no longer able to drive will have to be a decade or more after self driving arrives. It’s impossible for everyone to replace their non self driving cars immediately. The used car market is a $150bn industry. A quick spot check found that a 2010 Honda Civic still costs between $5k and $10k depending on mileage, etc. By the time that self driving is required by the NHSA or whatever body requires backup cameras and the like in new cars self driving will be standard. A $20k Subaru will come with it out of the box, no add ons, just like a backup camera today.
      - jewel 5y ago
        It might be possible to add self-driving features as an aftermarket upgrade. My 2013 model car already has drive-by-wire features (for automatic parallel parking), so it just needs more cameras and a replacement CPU. Heck, as a last resort you could put a robot in the driver's seat, physically operating the steering wheel and pedals.
      - twiddling 5y ago
        <A future where humans are no longer able to drive will have to be a decade or more after self driving arrives. The National Driver's Association will arise with bumper stickers: "You can pry the steering wheel from my cold, dead hands"
        iso1210 5y ago
        ...38,000 times a year As self driving becomes common, people won't bother with getting a driving license. States that do can actually put in decent levels of restrictions and competency to get one rather than letting an 16 year old with 5 minutes driving round a car park out on the road. As fewer people get new licesnse, the demand for self-driving goes down as people who can drive the legacy way die off.
- SamBam 5y ago
  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.
  - lp0_on_fire 5y ago
    I think it's reasonable to worry that WV or another company might start charging a variable rate for different "types" of autonomous driving. Pay-per-minute phone plans could be just as mysterious when you factored in long distance and peak usage hours. It's not a huge logical leap to think that a subscription based service like this could lead to things such as: You want to travel between point A and B several miles apart in rural Kansas on a straight road with a road density of 2 vehicles per mile? "Sure, that's 8.50 an hour." Oh, you want to travel between Newark and Manhattan in the middle of a snowstorm? "That will be 15 an hour because we have to cover the costs for the real-time feed of data from our weather and control center" Oh, you have a camper, too? "That's an additional 2 bucks an hour for our towing package" Oh, you're traveling across state lines and the state over imposes an additional tax on autonomous driving. "we need to charge you 8.75 to cover the tax and our costs but only in that state."
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > 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".
- Larrikin 5y ago
  There is very little reason to believe Tesla will be best let alone first when it comes to self driving technology. I personally feel they are backing the wrong technology and will ultimately be unsuccessful without LIDAR sensors like Waymo and other startups and the beta testers with current model Teslas are going to ultimately end up disappointed. I don't own a car currently (nor any Tesla stock) so I'm happy to wait and see if I'm wrong or right.
  - vardump 5y ago
    Tesla can already generate a pretty good "lidar point cloud" out of just camera input. But we'll see.
    - jsight 5y ago
      One issue with Tesla's approach is that they do not have enough cameras to do this at every angle. Its going to be especially tough in parking lots, as they have very poor coverage of the road directly beneath them. Mobileye's camera based point cloud approach appears to be much more robust.
      - vardump 5y ago
        Why would the car need to see the road directly beneath while parking? Because of positional error (drift) or what? It should know the painted markings from earlier frames. Good point though. I'd like Tesla to add more cameras.
agloeregrets 5y ago
This is a great argument. Plus VW has an incredible incentive to make it great.
cactus2093 5y ago
As someone with a non Tesla car with some smart cruise control features, I think you’re being too harsh on Tesla. I have a 2020 Hyundai, and there has been no major refresh in the 2021 or 2022 models of the same car. But the software features have each gotten slightly better. The cruise control will only slow down and stop you on my model, but on the newer model, it will stop and then start going again. My model will sometimes correct the steering at the last minute if I start veering outside the lane, the newer model will more gradually keep you centered in the lane so you don’t even start to veer out. Pretty minor stuff like that. There’s no way the hardware on my car is the limiting factor, but I will never get any of these improvements. Tesla is still the only car maker to decide that car software can be treated like almost any other software people use, and actually updated independently of the hardware. Even if the 10k self driving charge is a little too ambitious, in my opinion Tesla are still miles ahead of all the other major brands in user-friendly practices. It’s always interesting that people get so used to the status quo even if it’s actually inefficient or wasteful or arbitrarily worse than it easily could be. But if a company does something ambitious and new, but it has some downsides like a higher cost in the beginning, those downsides get judged so much more harshly than the downsides of the status quo.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  > There’s no way the hardware on my car is the limiting factor I'm not sure why you'd make that assumption. The newer models that can do more may very well have more/better sensors, faster processor(s), more RAM, etc. Just because the interior and exterior look the same doesn't mean that everything else is the same too.
  - kbos87 5y ago
    I think the point stands that there is probably a ton most manufacturers could do in terms of over the air updates with existing hardware that they just don’t.
    - jaywalk 5y ago
      I see that as a separate and larger point, but it is true. The reasons for it are also more complex than "they just don't" though they aren't technological reasons.
squiggleblaz 5y ago
> And of course it is to extract more money from consumers, that's the goal of every company. No it isn't. We don't have companies so that they can extract money from consumers. We have companies to help efficiently distribute wealth through the community to maximise the probability of social needs being filled. If the goal was to extract money from consumers and give it to those with spare capital, there are vastly more efficient ways to do that. Why would they even bother producing valuable goods?
- nico_h 5y ago
  It's the only legal way. Have you had a look at the healthcare industry in the US vs healthcare in the rest of the world?
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  "Why would they even bother producing valuable goods?" Like opium by the East India company or drugs by mexican cartels? Getting people to buy something is a lot easier than chasing them with a gun, just look at how bad we are at colecting taxes. "We have companies to help efficiently distribute wealth" There is no economic theory, from marxist to neoliberal, that claims conpanies are there to distribute wealth. They organise capital and labour, and maybe they fullfill needs, unless they are doing HFT or something similarly murky.
  - skeeter2020 5y ago
    I guess they "distribute wealth" in the sense that they first extract it, then concentrate it and finally distribute it to a very limited audience. It's not usually the primary or emphasized act though...
  - squiggleblaz 5y ago
    Perhaps I should have said "organise capital" instead of "distribute wealth". I mean they cause it to be available to certain people.
- aqme28 5y ago
  Not to be curt, but this is one of the most naive things I've read on this website. 90% of the time, people start companies to make money, not to "efficiently distribute wealth through the community."
jsight 5y ago
> At least, with VW system, you pay when you use it. Doesn't work in your area, you don't pay. And if you realize that you can't pay, you can simply drive, your car won't turn into a brick. I think this is a very optimistic take. We are already seeing the industry push out subscriptions for features like Ford's Blues Cruise. The costs are low now, but obviously they can go up. I'd be really surprised if VW doesn't start pushing something similar well before they have anything approaching L5 autonomy. It isn't too crazy either, as these advanced features are already useful.
pnt12 5y ago
Tesla auto pilot is like vaporware: selling software that may never be released, as requires a break through in Aai capabilities.

by GuB-42 5y ago

dmitriid 5y ago

> 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 more than 10k upfront (because they expect to extract this payment every time, all the time, for the entire lifetime of the car).

iso1210 5y ago
That's the same argument against software-as-a-service Maybe I'm not bothered about self driving for 90% of my journeys, but on occasion I'm going somewhere unusual or want to travel overnight or after drinking or whatever I'll just pay for a few hours. Imagine a world where there was just a set fee of $x per hour and $x per mile to travel. Would allow a far easier choice between different modes of transport, as the marginal cost becomes the actual cost. (Of course self driving is years away so this is all just spin)
- bluGill 5y ago
  It won't be long after self driving arrives and you won't get that option. Humans are terrible drivers, even in the best cases. Once self driving is better survival than humans it won't be legal to drive on public roads.
  - g00gler 5y ago
    A future where humans are no longer able to drive will have to be a decade or more after self driving arrives. It’s impossible for everyone to replace their non self driving cars immediately. The used car market is a $150bn industry. A quick spot check found that a 2010 Honda Civic still costs between $5k and $10k depending on mileage, etc. By the time that self driving is required by the NHSA or whatever body requires backup cameras and the like in new cars self driving will be standard. A $20k Subaru will come with it out of the box, no add ons, just like a backup camera today.
    - jewel 5y ago
      It might be possible to add self-driving features as an aftermarket upgrade. My 2013 model car already has drive-by-wire features (for automatic parallel parking), so it just needs more cameras and a replacement CPU. Heck, as a last resort you could put a robot in the driver's seat, physically operating the steering wheel and pedals.
    - twiddling 5y ago
      <A future where humans are no longer able to drive will have to be a decade or more after self driving arrives. The National Driver's Association will arise with bumper stickers: "You can pry the steering wheel from my cold, dead hands"
      - iso1210 5y ago
        ...38,000 times a year As self driving becomes common, people won't bother with getting a driving license. States that do can actually put in decent levels of restrictions and competency to get one rather than letting an 16 year old with 5 minutes driving round a car park out on the road. As fewer people get new licesnse, the demand for self-driving goes down as people who can drive the legacy way die off.
SamBam 5y ago
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.
- lp0_on_fire 5y ago
  I think it's reasonable to worry that WV or another company might start charging a variable rate for different "types" of autonomous driving. Pay-per-minute phone plans could be just as mysterious when you factored in long distance and peak usage hours. It's not a huge logical leap to think that a subscription based service like this could lead to things such as: You want to travel between point A and B several miles apart in rural Kansas on a straight road with a road density of 2 vehicles per mile? "Sure, that's 8.50 an hour." Oh, you want to travel between Newark and Manhattan in the middle of a snowstorm? "That will be 15 an hour because we have to cover the costs for the real-time feed of data from our weather and control center" Oh, you have a camper, too? "That's an additional 2 bucks an hour for our towing package" Oh, you're traveling across state lines and the state over imposes an additional tax on autonomous driving. "we need to charge you 8.75 to cover the tax and our costs but only in that state."
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > 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".
Larrikin 5y ago
There is very little reason to believe Tesla will be best let alone first when it comes to self driving technology. I personally feel they are backing the wrong technology and will ultimately be unsuccessful without LIDAR sensors like Waymo and other startups and the beta testers with current model Teslas are going to ultimately end up disappointed. I don't own a car currently (nor any Tesla stock) so I'm happy to wait and see if I'm wrong or right.
- vardump 5y ago
  Tesla can already generate a pretty good "lidar point cloud" out of just camera input. But we'll see.
  - jsight 5y ago
    One issue with Tesla's approach is that they do not have enough cameras to do this at every angle. Its going to be especially tough in parking lots, as they have very poor coverage of the road directly beneath them. Mobileye's camera based point cloud approach appears to be much more robust.
    - vardump 5y ago
      Why would the car need to see the road directly beneath while parking? Because of positional error (drift) or what? It should know the painted markings from earlier frames. Good point though. I'd like Tesla to add more cameras.

agloeregrets 5y ago

This is a great argument. Plus VW has an incredible incentive to make it great.

cactus2093 5y ago

As someone with a non Tesla car with some smart cruise control features, I think you’re being too harsh on Tesla. I have a 2020 Hyundai, and there has been no major refresh in the 2021 or 2022 models of the same car. But the software features have each gotten slightly better. The cruise control will only slow down and stop you on my model, but on the newer model, it will stop and then start going again. My model will sometimes correct the steering at the last minute if I start veering outside the lane, the newer model will more gradually keep you centered in the lane so you don’t even start to veer out. Pretty minor stuff like that. There’s no way the hardware on my car is the limiting factor, but I will never get any of these improvements. Tesla is still the only car maker to decide that car software can be treated like almost any other software people use, and actually updated independently of the hardware. Even if the 10k self driving charge is a little too ambitious, in my opinion Tesla are still miles ahead of all the other major brands in user-friendly practices. It’s always interesting that people get so used to the status quo even if it’s actually inefficient or wasteful or arbitrarily worse than it easily could be. But if a company does something ambitious and new, but it has some downsides like a higher cost in the beginning, those downsides get judged so much more harshly than the downsides of the status quo.

jaywalk 5y ago
> There’s no way the hardware on my car is the limiting factor I'm not sure why you'd make that assumption. The newer models that can do more may very well have more/better sensors, faster processor(s), more RAM, etc. Just because the interior and exterior look the same doesn't mean that everything else is the same too.
- kbos87 5y ago
  I think the point stands that there is probably a ton most manufacturers could do in terms of over the air updates with existing hardware that they just don’t.
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    I see that as a separate and larger point, but it is true. The reasons for it are also more complex than "they just don't" though they aren't technological reasons.

squiggleblaz 5y ago

> And of course it is to extract more money from consumers, that's the goal of every company. No it isn't. We don't have companies so that they can extract money from consumers. We have companies to help efficiently distribute wealth through the community to maximise the probability of social needs being filled. If the goal was to extract money from consumers and give it to those with spare capital, there are vastly more efficient ways to do that. Why would they even bother producing valuable goods?

nico_h 5y ago
It's the only legal way. Have you had a look at the healthcare industry in the US vs healthcare in the rest of the world?
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"Why would they even bother producing valuable goods?" Like opium by the East India company or drugs by mexican cartels? Getting people to buy something is a lot easier than chasing them with a gun, just look at how bad we are at colecting taxes. "We have companies to help efficiently distribute wealth" There is no economic theory, from marxist to neoliberal, that claims conpanies are there to distribute wealth. They organise capital and labour, and maybe they fullfill needs, unless they are doing HFT or something similarly murky.
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  I guess they "distribute wealth" in the sense that they first extract it, then concentrate it and finally distribute it to a very limited audience. It's not usually the primary or emphasized act though...
- squiggleblaz 5y ago
  Perhaps I should have said "organise capital" instead of "distribute wealth". I mean they cause it to be available to certain people.
aqme28 5y ago
Not to be curt, but this is one of the most naive things I've read on this website. 90% of the time, people start companies to make money, not to "efficiently distribute wealth through the community."

jsight 5y ago

> At least, with VW system, you pay when you use it. Doesn't work in your area, you don't pay. And if you realize that you can't pay, you can simply drive, your car won't turn into a brick. I think this is a very optimistic take. We are already seeing the industry push out subscriptions for features like Ford's Blues Cruise. The costs are low now, but obviously they can go up. I'd be really surprised if VW doesn't start pushing something similar well before they have anything approaching L5 autonomy. It isn't too crazy either, as these advanced features are already useful.

pnt12 5y ago

Tesla auto pilot is like vaporware: selling software that may never be released, as requires a break through in Aai capabilities.