Honestly I think they're both fairytales at this point. Tesla is WAY further away from fully autonomous driving than they're letting on to their customers, pro

Honestly I think they're both fairytales at this point. Tesla is WAY further away from fully autonomous driving than they're letting on to their customers, probably because a lot of people would demand refunds on their FSD charges if they knew there was a good chance it wouldn't arrive before the car's end of life in the best case. Volkswagen's plan here is just as ridiculous. Autonomous driving is economically impossible to make work on a pay-as-you-go model. Who's going to front the cost for all the tech required in the car to allow for automated driving? Volkswagen? the customer? What if the customer doesn't want automated driving - they're not going to just give you an extra few tens of thousands of dollars for a feature they don't want and would still need to pay extra for anyway. If VW eats the cost then they'll go out of business making crazy expensive cars that people won't pay to reimburse. (Are you going to pay $8 for every small run in the car anytime you need to go to the shop for something?) Just copy Waymo and Uber in terms of model (i.e. robotaxi) if you're going to do automated driving. At least that way the cars are consistently in use and generating revenue to cover their eye-watering BOM cost.