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Autonomy subscriptions are how things are going to go, I called this a long time ago. It makes too much sense in terms of continuous development and operations/

Autonomy subscriptions are how things are going to go, I called this a long time ago. It makes too much sense in terms of continuous development and operations/support to not have a subscription -- and subscriptions will likely double as insurance at some point in the future (once the car is driving itself 100% of the time, and liability is always with the self driving stack anyway). Of course, people won't like this, I'm not exactly enthused either, but the alternative would be a corporation constantly providing -- for free -- updates and even support if your car gets into an accident or stuck. That doesn't really make sense from a business perspective.

margalabargala 11mo ago
> the alternative would be a corporation constantly providing -- for free -- updates and even support if your car gets into an accident or stuck. That's one alternative. Another alternative would be that you get what you get at purchase time, and you have to buy a new car to get the newest update. "Continuous development" isn't always a selling point when it's something with your life in its hands. A great example is Tesla. There are plenty of people who are thrilled with the continuous updates and changes to everything, and there are plenty of people that mock Tesla for it. Both groups are large markets that will have companies cater to them.
- nradov 11mo ago
  The consumers who mock Tesla (and other auto manufacturers) that deliver continuous updates are rapidly dying off or moving into assisted living facilities. They're not going to be buying many new cars in coming years. Pursuing that market segment seems like literally a "dead" end.
  - hateselfdriving 11mo ago
    Funny, I have another 30-40 years before I'm "dying off or moving to assisted living". Yet, because I work in software engineering and cybersecurity, you'll have to rip my human-driven cars out of my dead hands before I ever use or own a self-driving vehicle. Don't get me wrong, as another commenter brought up, I hate traffic too, and the annual fatalities from vehicles are obviously a tragedy. Neither of them motivate me to sign away my rights and autonomy to auto manufacturers. What happens when these companies decide they suddenly don't like you, cancel your subscription, and suddenly you're not allowed to drive, or I suppose rather use, the vehicle you "own"? It will become the same "subscription to life" dystopian nightmare everything else is becoming. Or how about how these subscriptions will never be what the consumer actually wants? You'll be forced to pay for useless extra features, ever increasing prices, and planned obsolescence until they've squeezed maximum value out of every single person. I mean imagine trying to work with Comcast to get your "car subscription" sorted. You know else reduces traffic and fatalities? Allowing workers to actually work from home. Driving during COVID was a dream come true. Let's let the commercial real estate market fail as it was primed to.
    - bluGill 10mo ago
      Have you ever looked at how humans drive? Not the drunks, but the average person - they are terrible. You are not better. Self driving doesn't have to be very good to be better than humans.
      - hateselfdriving 10mo ago
        The _average_ person drives just fine. It's specifically the idiots who either should never have been allowed to pass a driver's test in the first place (i.e. lack the motor skills and/ or mental capacity) and the idiots who are so addicted to their phones they can't go 2 minutes without looking at it. I have a very hard time believing those are the majority or even average based on all my time driving. Which, these issues can be reduced if we stop giving people small slaps on the wrist for driving in ways that greatly endanger others. Hefty fines, temporary/ permanent driving bans, etc. Make people actually pause to consider their actions for once in their lives. Wow, an improvement we can start doing _today_, that doesn't involve forking over billions of dollars to tech companies to pump out half-baked "self-driving" capabilities. These companies' mission isn't to save lives, in case that's not obvious, it's to _make money_. They are not and have never been interested in potentially simpler/ better solutions if they don't lead to sucking the consumer dry of their money.
  - margalabargala 11mo ago
    That's definitely the attitude I hear from the Tesla-can-do-no-wrong crowd, but in reality most of the people I meet in the Tesla-mocking crowd are under 40- younger on average than the other group. The non-Tesla manufacturers have noticed this and positioned products accordingly. Tesla does Musk-driven-development so only caters to the one group.
  - dzhiurgis 10mo ago
    That's my impression too. You'd need to be 80 years old to be excited by a toyota.
    - hateselfdriving 10mo ago
      I'm 31 and I'm very excited by the '86 Chevy truck I just got. You know why? It's _not_ "smart". The smartest thing on it is the old-school AM/FM radio. There's no software updates, there's nothing (built-in) tracking my every move. It's just a simple, repairable truck, for, you know, _driving_. People have this strange obsession with over-complicating everything they possibly can.
      - dzhiurgis 10mo ago
        Car and house are usually most expensive persons purchases. It is absurd to not make them smart.
        hateselfdriving 10mo ago
        Have you ever stopped to think _why_ cars specifically are so expensive? The manufacturers need to put on a fake show to the market and consumers and pretend they are innovating with new "features" every year. But in reality they stuff so many expensive, fragile, and difficult/ impossible to replace electronics and gadgets into cars because 1) every single piece in that car is marked up from the price they paid. The more (ideally expensive) components, the more they get to mark up as the middleman, the more they get to gouge the customer. 2) The more challenging it is to repair the car, the more likely you _must_ come back to the manufacturer (i.e. dealer) and pay them exorbitant fees to fix problems only they know how and have the parts to fix.
        mbg721 10mo ago
        I thought it was safety and environmental regulations, primarily. You have to have airbags, and now antilock brakes, and now rearview cameras, etc. If you were allowed to buy a new car built to the standard of the 1970s, it would be cheap.
  - thfuran 10mo ago
    I know a lot of people who work on medical device software and think Teslas approach to updates is insane. A safety critical system simply should not have routine updates that affect UX or major performance characteristics.
  - jerlam 10mo ago
    Tesla owners aren't that young. This site claims the average age of Tesla owners is 48 (updated for 2025): https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2018/11/tesla-owner-demographics/ https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2018/11/tesla-owner-demograph... Which should not be that surprising. Teslas were priced as premium vehicles initially, and then dropped as competitors appeared and to take advantage of tax credits. Teslas also benefit dramatically from owning a garage and adding a charger to it, which mostly homeowners can do. A homeowner buying an expensive car is very likely older and richer. Teslas aren't cool anymore, they are what your parents and your Uber driver has.
    - LightBug1 10mo ago
      >>Teslas aren't cool anymore, they are what your parents and your Uber driver has. Exactly.
- LeoPanthera 11mo ago
  > Another alternative would be that you get what you get at purchase time, and you have to buy a new car to get the newest update. The Mercedes-Benz model.
- SecretDreams 11mo ago
  > Another alternative would be that you get what you get at purchase time, and you have to buy a new car to get the newest update. We can always choose. The subscriptions aren't mandatory? And there's an alternative to the subscription where they offer it to you for a one time cost.
  - malfist 11mo ago
    If the choice is offered. But with the way the markets are today, I wouldn't be surprised if we both paid at time of purchase, and then had to pay a subscription fee still. After all, heated seats are still installed and baked in to the MSRP, even if you're not subscribing to make them work.
- whimsicalism 11mo ago
  > Another alternative would be that you get what you get at purchase time, and you have to buy a new car to get the newest update. Doubt that is a politically tenable model. "You're telling me my son Bobby died in a crash that could have been prevented with finished software but they only roll it out to people who have the money for a new car despite no technical limitation?" -- yeah, good luck
  - margalabargala 11mo ago
    I mean that's basically how every car with half-assed barely-functional auto lane keeping sold in the last 7 years has worked.
    - whimsicalism 10mo ago
      i think self-driving changes the calculus
      - margalabargala 10mo ago
        Relying on crappy lane keeping and crappy self driving are equally dangerous. If poor software drives you off the road, why does it matter what the feature was named?
        whimsicalism 10mo ago
        I don't disagree on the practical level, but I think that optically it is significantly different.
        ehsankia 10mo ago
        Anything before L4 is "driver assist", which means at the end of the day, the buck stops at the driver. Anything beyond L4, the car itself drives without requiring supervision, which makes a big difference. It's your responsibility to use lane assist in a reasonable way, it's not your responsibility to control how an L4 drives anymore. That's the point of self-driving, the "self" is responsible.
- jdminhbg 10mo ago
  > Both groups are large markets that will have companies cater to them. More likely, one group is a large market that companies will cater to and the other group is a small market that will be very loud about their displeasure on the internet.
  - true_religion 10mo ago
    It's not as if every subscription works out for the company. Remember the heated seats subscriptions?
    - embedding-shape 10mo ago
      Like with Bethesda and paid-for game mods, the issue wasn't the functionality or the feature, but when it was introduced. Next time they do it, probably it'll blow over fast enough for them to just continue, rather than go back.
- joquarky 10mo ago
  I'm getting up there in age and I'm getting a bit tired of designers moving things around. It's taking longer to update my muscle memory each time. I still get pissed off at the Play Store app regularly for moving the search bar AND not focusing keyboard input on it when I click the search icon.
stavros 11mo ago
Why would I own a car when I can Waymo one?
- mulderc 11mo ago
  I’m with you but there are plenty of places where public transit is superior to driving and people still drive.
- nradov 11mo ago
  My cars are more than just transportation. They're mobile storage lockers where I can keep my stuff reasonably secure. They're a place to sit warm and dry while I wait for something else. They're (semi) private changing rooms where I can put on my cycling kit. Regardless of who does the driving I'll never give up owning (or at least leasing) my own private cars.
- Rebelgecko 11mo ago
  I don't know you or your situation, but many people (including the idealized version of Rivian's target market) like going places that Waymo currently doesn't. There's also tradeoffs with cost, wait time, # of passengers, cargo, etc. Some people may also want to automate "boring" driving while still having the option to do "fun" driving
- paxys 11mo ago
  Why do people own cars when they can just Uber?
  - testing22321 11mo ago
    Because it’s not convenient enough, and too expensive. Fix those two and personal car ownership will plummet in many places. Many people don’t want to own a car, pay for insurance, gas, tires, oil changes, parking, washing etc. Car ownership sucks horribly for most people, it’s just currently the best option. That will change.
    - paxys 11mo ago
behnamoh 11mo ago
Imagine having a vehicle with +680 hp (or 1000 hp in case of Rivian quad) and then drive it autonomously... sigh where's the fun in that?
- filoleg 11mo ago
  There is nothing fun about sitting in traffic on your commute to/from work, and neither there is much fun in doing long-distance driving in a straight line on highway for hours on end (regardless of the horsepower). That's what autonomous driving is for imo. There is a lot of fun in driving a high-hp car on track or offroad or in some not-much-populated area or in plenty of other scenarios. That's where using autonomous driving mode would feel preposterous to me.
  - octorian 10mo ago
    > There is nothing fun about sitting in traffic on your commute to/from work, and neither there is much fun in doing long-distance driving in a straight line on highway for hours on end And I wish this would be more broadly recognized. Every time there's a story about someone important freaking out about something related to autonomous driving, I'm at least somewhat afraid they'll use it as justification to deny me access to it for those specific use cases. And honestly, those are the only use cases I really care about or feel comfortable with right now. Of course my car is also too old to support much more than that.
    - duskdozer 10mo ago
      Miserable commutes were already solved with remote work for all who can and want. Fewer drivers makes for a better commute for those remaining
      - filoleg 10mo ago
        First, no, it wasn't solved. In fact, many tech companies that previously allowed remote work went back on it. Technically yes, I can "solve my commute" by taking a very significant pay cut (more than 50%), in addition to limiting my career prospects overall (or get lucky to get hired by the few competitively-paying top tech companies that still stand by remote work, which would still significantly limit my career just to those few companies). That's a proposal/trade-off that a lot of people would reasonably consider unacceptable. Second, do you realize that remote work isn't an option for a significant majority of types of jobs? In fact, even if we lived in some magical world where every single software dev suddenly switched to remote work, it would barely make a dent. Janitors, doctors/nurses, school teachers, etc., those jobs just by nature don't allow for remote work.
bryanlarsen 11mo ago
Agreed, it seems inevitable that autonomy and insurance are going to be bundled. 1. Courts are finding Tesla partially liable for collisions, so they've already got some of the downsides of insurance (aka the payout) without the upside (the premium). 2. Waymo data shows a significant injury reduction rate. If it's true and not manipulated data, it's natural for the car companies to want to capture some of this upside. 3. It just seems like a much easier sell. I wouldn't pay $100/month for self-driving, but $150 a month for self-driving + insurance? That's more than I currently pay for insurance, but not a lot more. And I've got relatively cheap insurance: charging $250/month for insurance + self-driving will be cheaper than what some people pay for just insurance alone. I don't think we need to hit 100% self-driving for the bundled insurance to be viable. 90% self-driving should still have a substantially lower accident rate if the Waymo data is accurate and extends.
- apercu 11mo ago
  Curious where you live? The only place I ever paid insurance premiums that high (and not quite that high) was in Ontario. I pay $70.
  - bryanlarsen 11mo ago
    The average car insurance premium in the US is over $2000/year, and over $2500/year for full coverage. I imagine that has an outlier effect and the median is lower, but I'd be surprised if the median was under $100/month. I'm paying just under $1000/year (and yes, in Ontario).
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
    - cyberax 11mo ago
      The liability-only insurance is around $70 a month.
      - devmor 10mo ago
anthem2025 11mo ago
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jayd16 11mo ago
> a corporation constantly providing -- for free -- updates and even support Corporations could decide to only advertise shipped features, not beta tests.
JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
> Autonomy subscriptions are how things are going to go In America, maybe. Chinese manufacturers are already treating self driving as table stakes. If I have a choice between a subscription car and one that just works, I’m buying the latter. > continuous development and operations/support ICE vehicles require continuous servicing and manufacturer support.
- rootusrootus 10mo ago
  > In America, maybe. Chinese manufacturers Let's revisit this conversation after China's cutthroat automotive competition is resolved. That era passed a long time ago in the US.
whatever1 11mo ago
Uber charges like $100 per hour the customers. I feel once we reach autonomy this will be the baseline.
- kakacik 10mo ago
  Unrealistic for 99% of the world, billions live where they earn such sum for more than a week. Not all of those have cars, but many do. This is just some little SV + maybe NY bubble thinking. Also EU would show a big fat finger to such predatory pricing.
  - dzhiurgis 10mo ago
    You assume it will be priced same elsewhere. It's definitely going to be priced by region (Tesla's FSD already is).
general1465 11mo ago
Let's be real. A staggering amount of drivers are incapable to switch on Automatic Cruise Control or trigger automatic parking. They know how to start the car, how to switch lights and wipers on/off and that's about it. Paying subscription for something what they are never going to use is going to be a hard sell.
- rootusrootus 10mo ago
  And to be even more real, a staggering amount of drivers won't be able to afford an autonomous driving subscription even if they wanted to. Or a car new enough or in good enough condition to have functional self driving.
  - LightBug1 10mo ago
    This is the real truth. For all of the Musky wank chat about the future, with FSD, robots, and popping over to Australia on a Starship ... a vanishingly small amount of people will actually be able to afford it once they "get the pricing right". We're talking about some impressive technology ... doused in snake oil from the top.
- seanmcdirmid 10mo ago
  I have auto parking and never use it, it came with the advanced parking sensors that I do use heavily. I forget how to use auto cruise because I drive outside of the city so rarely, it takes me awhile to “trust it” again when I do some highway driving.
- stackedinserter 10mo ago
  Probably a big chunk of these tried ACC a few times, found that ACC sucks unless you're on perfectly clean empty highway, and said "screw it I'll drive it myself".
  - ghaff 10mo ago
    I've played with it a little bit. Seems useful in principle. But a lot of roads I tend to be on--even highways--have a fair bit of traffic and speed limits that change on a pretty regular basis. Hasn't been as useful as I expected it to be.
setgree 10mo ago
The other possible future is you rent the car for exactly when you need it and don’t pay a monthly bill— or your monthly bill pays for a certain number of rides/minutes/miles per month. In which case the subscription costs are managed by the provider, who might be the manufacturer and might not. At least in cities, a fully-functioning, on-demand autonomous fleet would probably be superior to car ownership in just about every way except as a status symbol.
- 1shooner 10mo ago
  The monopolist providing this service would be de-incentivized from ever equipping for all the demand, and the last 10% of capacity being bid on by the last 20% of demand would make this a constant stress and struggle. Meanwhile it's an excuse for another century of more car lanes and less mass transit infrastructure.
- tadfisher 10mo ago
  There used to be a service like this, called Car2Go. Not autonomous, but more like how scooter/bike rentals work. It was fantastic, and in no way profitable.
  - addandsubtract 10mo ago
    There are still services like that. Miles, for example, or Bolt I think have cars, too.
- tonyhart7 10mo ago
  Yeah, its called taxi we already have those
wat10000 10mo ago
Subscriptions are how things are going to go in general. This is just one example of the larger trend. Companies find it very annoying that they have to keep coming up with ways to provide new value in order to keep getting money from people. Some car companies are already trying out subscriptions for stuff that requires zero ongoing support, like seat heaters. Outside of cars, so much software is switching to subscriptions, whether or not it makes sense. The software for my security cameras has become completely infested by ads, but you can pay for a subscription to make them go away. I own the cameras outright, but not really, since the software needed to use them is basically rented, either with cash or with my eyeballs. Most paid apps I come across these days want a monthly fee to keep using it, they're not content to just sell me a copy.
delfinom 10mo ago
Eh they are offering a one time payment for autonomy for $2500 which is equal to 4.1 years of paying $50/mo. It's not a unreasonable cost for development but also maintenance of the self driving system.
beeflet 10mo ago
yeah but what if comma.ai or something cannibalizes this with open source tech?
danielheath 10mo ago
Why would I own my own car in this scenario (vs paying one of the autonomous driving companies to send a car my way when I need one)?
- bluGill 10mo ago
  Because if you own your car you leave your golf clubs in there just in case you get invited for a round. If you are the type who is willing to be seen in a used car you can save a lot of money since the rental car needs to be newer cars just in case someone who wouldn't be seen in a used car wants one - and this adds a lot of cost.
rahulstein 10mo ago
Apple products are good counter examples to your point. The cost of the basic software and OS w/ updates is included in the hardware
- citizenpaul 10mo ago
  Counter counter point. Apple's most expensive offering is something like $1000-$1500 and they basically rely on people upgrading every year or two. Almost like a ........subscription. Rather than a car which a person may keep for 20 years at a one time huge purchase. Its not really reasonable to expect a company to support something longer than even lifer employees will be there to work on it. I do really really hate the idea of automotive subscription services though.
  - nomel 10mo ago
    > Apple's most expensive offering is something like $1000-$1500 Same with Samsung, S25 Ultra ($1100 to $1460) [1], with the fold starting at $2k [2]. [1] S25 Ultra https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/galaxy-s25-ultra/buy/galaxy-s25-ultra-256gb-unlocked-sku-sm-s938uzdaxaa https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/galaxy-s25-ultra/buy/... [2] Z fold, $2000 to $2500 https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/galaxy-z-fold7/buy/galaxy-z-fold7-1tb-unlocked-sku-sm-f966udbfxaa/ https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/galaxy-z-fold7/buy/ga...
jillesvangurp 10mo ago
Agreed, autonomy is a service and not a feature of the car. It has to be. There is inherent cost as you use it and associated liabilities, legal requirements for auditing, technical need for maintenance and dealing with updates in a timely fashion. You could make the point that owning the car is a lot less important if you don't drive it yourself. If Uber didn't have to pay drivers, they could expand their area of operation to basically everywhere. Drivers need to be paid so having them drive long distance is relatively expensive. That constrains the area of operation. But otherwise, cost per mile is very low. So, orchestrating pickups in the country side becomes possible. It's going to enable night time travel as well. Nap/sleep while traveling. Wake up at your destination. That's going to revolutionize commutes as well and enable people to live much further away from work. A four hour commute is much less of a problem if you can spend the time working or napping. That in turn is going to do wonders for real estate prices. Because there are a lot of nice places to live that are currently far away from cities and therefore still relatively affordable. We got a preview of that during the lock downs when people figured out that remote working is a thing.
deleted 10mo ago
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tonyhart7 10mo ago
if we talking about future, its where self driving AI is actually better than 99.9% of the human and human driving manually would void insurance
ineedasername 10mo ago
If that’s the way things go, subscription, there aught to be insurance coverage built into that. It’s required anyway and the extent to which a driver relies on SD, and has to pay a sub, then it’s the SD responsible for accidents, not in full but part, and insurance can reflect that as well. But if the two are inextricable as a requirement anyway, there should be baked in standardized procedures for “things have gone wrong, which was a known inevitability, and this is the framework for handling it.”
_yb2s 10mo ago
> Of course, people won't like this I love it because I have exactly zero interest in using this and wouldn’t want to pay for it anyways- and I’d rather more of the drivers around me were actually driving as well.
- HPsquared 10mo ago
  I'd rather the other cars around me are attentive, polite and robotic. It's better than people looking at their phones.
  - _yb2s 10mo ago
    Maybe if the tech gets better, but right now these systems do not handle unusual or unexpected events well and are basically just a glorified cruise control, yet are marketed as autonomy and encourage people to stop paying attention.
    - HPsquared 10mo ago
      I mean Waymo et al.
      - _yb2s 10mo ago
        Having driven in SF very recently, the current state of Waymo is an obstacle to the smooth flow of traffic. They drive like a hesitant confused person that is worried they just passed their destination but isn't quite sure. However, that is during 100% normal expected conditions on specific stretches of road they're heavily pre-trained on. My concern was more about their ability to adapt to the unexpectedly dangerous and unanticipated situation.
jklinger410 10mo ago
And therefore opens up other features to subscription models as well. We've already seen it in some cars, tested in others, etc.
Breza 10mo ago
I agree with you. Subscription revenue has explicitly been part of Tesla's strategy for years. I'm not sure when this statement first appeared in their SEC findings, but this is from their 2021 10-K: "As our vehicles are capable of being updated remotely over-the-air, our customers may purchase additional paid options and features through the Tesla app or through the in-vehicle user interface. We expect that this functionality will also allow us to offer certain options and features on a subscription basis in the future."
prepend 10mo ago
Or isn’t the alternative a local AI that runs autonomously? We’d may for updates and new models, but no need for a subscription. Of course the manufacturer makes more money with a subscription and this is the reason they want it.

margalabargala 11mo ago

> the alternative would be a corporation constantly providing -- for free -- updates and even support if your car gets into an accident or stuck. That's one alternative. Another alternative would be that you get what you get at purchase time, and you have to buy a new car to get the newest update. "Continuous development" isn't always a selling point when it's something with your life in its hands. A great example is Tesla. There are plenty of people who are thrilled with the continuous updates and changes to everything, and there are plenty of people that mock Tesla for it. Both groups are large markets that will have companies cater to them.

nradov 11mo ago
The consumers who mock Tesla (and other auto manufacturers) that deliver continuous updates are rapidly dying off or moving into assisted living facilities. They're not going to be buying many new cars in coming years. Pursuing that market segment seems like literally a "dead" end.
- hateselfdriving 11mo ago
  Funny, I have another 30-40 years before I'm "dying off or moving to assisted living". Yet, because I work in software engineering and cybersecurity, you'll have to rip my human-driven cars out of my dead hands before I ever use or own a self-driving vehicle. Don't get me wrong, as another commenter brought up, I hate traffic too, and the annual fatalities from vehicles are obviously a tragedy. Neither of them motivate me to sign away my rights and autonomy to auto manufacturers. What happens when these companies decide they suddenly don't like you, cancel your subscription, and suddenly you're not allowed to drive, or I suppose rather use, the vehicle you "own"? It will become the same "subscription to life" dystopian nightmare everything else is becoming. Or how about how these subscriptions will never be what the consumer actually wants? You'll be forced to pay for useless extra features, ever increasing prices, and planned obsolescence until they've squeezed maximum value out of every single person. I mean imagine trying to work with Comcast to get your "car subscription" sorted. You know else reduces traffic and fatalities? Allowing workers to actually work from home. Driving during COVID was a dream come true. Let's let the commercial real estate market fail as it was primed to.
  - bluGill 10mo ago
    Have you ever looked at how humans drive? Not the drunks, but the average person - they are terrible. You are not better. Self driving doesn't have to be very good to be better than humans.
    - hateselfdriving 10mo ago
      The _average_ person drives just fine. It's specifically the idiots who either should never have been allowed to pass a driver's test in the first place (i.e. lack the motor skills and/ or mental capacity) and the idiots who are so addicted to their phones they can't go 2 minutes without looking at it. I have a very hard time believing those are the majority or even average based on all my time driving. Which, these issues can be reduced if we stop giving people small slaps on the wrist for driving in ways that greatly endanger others. Hefty fines, temporary/ permanent driving bans, etc. Make people actually pause to consider their actions for once in their lives. Wow, an improvement we can start doing _today_, that doesn't involve forking over billions of dollars to tech companies to pump out half-baked "self-driving" capabilities. These companies' mission isn't to save lives, in case that's not obvious, it's to _make money_. They are not and have never been interested in potentially simpler/ better solutions if they don't lead to sucking the consumer dry of their money.
- margalabargala 11mo ago
  That's definitely the attitude I hear from the Tesla-can-do-no-wrong crowd, but in reality most of the people I meet in the Tesla-mocking crowd are under 40- younger on average than the other group. The non-Tesla manufacturers have noticed this and positioned products accordingly. Tesla does Musk-driven-development so only caters to the one group.
- dzhiurgis 10mo ago
  That's my impression too. You'd need to be 80 years old to be excited by a toyota.
  - hateselfdriving 10mo ago
    I'm 31 and I'm very excited by the '86 Chevy truck I just got. You know why? It's _not_ "smart". The smartest thing on it is the old-school AM/FM radio. There's no software updates, there's nothing (built-in) tracking my every move. It's just a simple, repairable truck, for, you know, _driving_. People have this strange obsession with over-complicating everything they possibly can.
    - dzhiurgis 10mo ago
      Car and house are usually most expensive persons purchases. It is absurd to not make them smart.
      - hateselfdriving 10mo ago
        Have you ever stopped to think _why_ cars specifically are so expensive? The manufacturers need to put on a fake show to the market and consumers and pretend they are innovating with new "features" every year. But in reality they stuff so many expensive, fragile, and difficult/ impossible to replace electronics and gadgets into cars because 1) every single piece in that car is marked up from the price they paid. The more (ideally expensive) components, the more they get to mark up as the middleman, the more they get to gouge the customer. 2) The more challenging it is to repair the car, the more likely you _must_ come back to the manufacturer (i.e. dealer) and pay them exorbitant fees to fix problems only they know how and have the parts to fix.
        mbg721 10mo ago
        I thought it was safety and environmental regulations, primarily. You have to have airbags, and now antilock brakes, and now rearview cameras, etc. If you were allowed to buy a new car built to the standard of the 1970s, it would be cheap.
- thfuran 10mo ago
  I know a lot of people who work on medical device software and think Teslas approach to updates is insane. A safety critical system simply should not have routine updates that affect UX or major performance characteristics.
- jerlam 10mo ago
  Tesla owners aren't that young. This site claims the average age of Tesla owners is 48 (updated for 2025): https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2018/11/tesla-owner-demographics/ https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2018/11/tesla-owner-demograph... Which should not be that surprising. Teslas were priced as premium vehicles initially, and then dropped as competitors appeared and to take advantage of tax credits. Teslas also benefit dramatically from owning a garage and adding a charger to it, which mostly homeowners can do. A homeowner buying an expensive car is very likely older and richer. Teslas aren't cool anymore, they are what your parents and your Uber driver has.
  - LightBug1 10mo ago
    >>Teslas aren't cool anymore, they are what your parents and your Uber driver has. Exactly.
LeoPanthera 11mo ago
> Another alternative would be that you get what you get at purchase time, and you have to buy a new car to get the newest update. The Mercedes-Benz model.
SecretDreams 11mo ago
> Another alternative would be that you get what you get at purchase time, and you have to buy a new car to get the newest update. We can always choose. The subscriptions aren't mandatory? And there's an alternative to the subscription where they offer it to you for a one time cost.
- malfist 11mo ago
  If the choice is offered. But with the way the markets are today, I wouldn't be surprised if we both paid at time of purchase, and then had to pay a subscription fee still. After all, heated seats are still installed and baked in to the MSRP, even if you're not subscribing to make them work.
whimsicalism 11mo ago
> Another alternative would be that you get what you get at purchase time, and you have to buy a new car to get the newest update. Doubt that is a politically tenable model. "You're telling me my son Bobby died in a crash that could have been prevented with finished software but they only roll it out to people who have the money for a new car despite no technical limitation?" -- yeah, good luck
- margalabargala 11mo ago
  I mean that's basically how every car with half-assed barely-functional auto lane keeping sold in the last 7 years has worked.
  - whimsicalism 10mo ago
    i think self-driving changes the calculus
    - margalabargala 10mo ago
      Relying on crappy lane keeping and crappy self driving are equally dangerous. If poor software drives you off the road, why does it matter what the feature was named?
      - whimsicalism 10mo ago
        I don't disagree on the practical level, but I think that optically it is significantly different.
      - ehsankia 10mo ago
        Anything before L4 is "driver assist", which means at the end of the day, the buck stops at the driver. Anything beyond L4, the car itself drives without requiring supervision, which makes a big difference. It's your responsibility to use lane assist in a reasonable way, it's not your responsibility to control how an L4 drives anymore. That's the point of self-driving, the "self" is responsible.
jdminhbg 10mo ago
> Both groups are large markets that will have companies cater to them. More likely, one group is a large market that companies will cater to and the other group is a small market that will be very loud about their displeasure on the internet.
- true_religion 10mo ago
  It's not as if every subscription works out for the company. Remember the heated seats subscriptions?
  - embedding-shape 10mo ago
    Like with Bethesda and paid-for game mods, the issue wasn't the functionality or the feature, but when it was introduced. Next time they do it, probably it'll blow over fast enough for them to just continue, rather than go back.
joquarky 10mo ago
I'm getting up there in age and I'm getting a bit tired of designers moving things around. It's taking longer to update my muscle memory each time. I still get pissed off at the Play Store app regularly for moving the search bar AND not focusing keyboard input on it when I click the search icon.

stavros 11mo ago

Why would I own a car when I can Waymo one?

mulderc 11mo ago
I’m with you but there are plenty of places where public transit is superior to driving and people still drive.
nradov 11mo ago
My cars are more than just transportation. They're mobile storage lockers where I can keep my stuff reasonably secure. They're a place to sit warm and dry while I wait for something else. They're (semi) private changing rooms where I can put on my cycling kit. Regardless of who does the driving I'll never give up owning (or at least leasing) my own private cars.
Rebelgecko 11mo ago
I don't know you or your situation, but many people (including the idealized version of Rivian's target market) like going places that Waymo currently doesn't. There's also tradeoffs with cost, wait time, # of passengers, cargo, etc. Some people may also want to automate "boring" driving while still having the option to do "fun" driving
paxys 11mo ago
Why do people own cars when they can just Uber?
- testing22321 11mo ago
  Because it’s not convenient enough, and too expensive. Fix those two and personal car ownership will plummet in many places. Many people don’t want to own a car, pay for insurance, gas, tires, oil changes, parking, washing etc. Car ownership sucks horribly for most people, it’s just currently the best option. That will change.
  - paxys 11mo ago

behnamoh 11mo ago

Imagine having a vehicle with +680 hp (or 1000 hp in case of Rivian quad) and then drive it autonomously... sigh where's the fun in that?

filoleg 11mo ago
There is nothing fun about sitting in traffic on your commute to/from work, and neither there is much fun in doing long-distance driving in a straight line on highway for hours on end (regardless of the horsepower). That's what autonomous driving is for imo. There is a lot of fun in driving a high-hp car on track or offroad or in some not-much-populated area or in plenty of other scenarios. That's where using autonomous driving mode would feel preposterous to me.
- octorian 10mo ago
  > There is nothing fun about sitting in traffic on your commute to/from work, and neither there is much fun in doing long-distance driving in a straight line on highway for hours on end And I wish this would be more broadly recognized. Every time there's a story about someone important freaking out about something related to autonomous driving, I'm at least somewhat afraid they'll use it as justification to deny me access to it for those specific use cases. And honestly, those are the only use cases I really care about or feel comfortable with right now. Of course my car is also too old to support much more than that.
  - duskdozer 10mo ago
    Miserable commutes were already solved with remote work for all who can and want. Fewer drivers makes for a better commute for those remaining
    - filoleg 10mo ago
      First, no, it wasn't solved. In fact, many tech companies that previously allowed remote work went back on it. Technically yes, I can "solve my commute" by taking a very significant pay cut (more than 50%), in addition to limiting my career prospects overall (or get lucky to get hired by the few competitively-paying top tech companies that still stand by remote work, which would still significantly limit my career just to those few companies). That's a proposal/trade-off that a lot of people would reasonably consider unacceptable. Second, do you realize that remote work isn't an option for a significant majority of types of jobs? In fact, even if we lived in some magical world where every single software dev suddenly switched to remote work, it would barely make a dent. Janitors, doctors/nurses, school teachers, etc., those jobs just by nature don't allow for remote work.

bryanlarsen 11mo ago

Agreed, it seems inevitable that autonomy and insurance are going to be bundled. 1. Courts are finding Tesla partially liable for collisions, so they've already got some of the downsides of insurance (aka the payout) without the upside (the premium). 2. Waymo data shows a significant injury reduction rate. If it's true and not manipulated data, it's natural for the car companies to want to capture some of this upside. 3. It just seems like a much easier sell. I wouldn't pay $100/month for self-driving, but $150 a month for self-driving + insurance? That's more than I currently pay for insurance, but not a lot more. And I've got relatively cheap insurance: charging $250/month for insurance + self-driving will be cheaper than what some people pay for just insurance alone. I don't think we need to hit 100% self-driving for the bundled insurance to be viable. 90% self-driving should still have a substantially lower accident rate if the Waymo data is accurate and extends.

apercu 11mo ago
Curious where you live? The only place I ever paid insurance premiums that high (and not quite that high) was in Ontario. I pay $70.
- bryanlarsen 11mo ago
  The average car insurance premium in the US is over $2000/year, and over $2500/year for full coverage. I imagine that has an outlier effect and the median is lower, but I'd be surprised if the median was under $100/month. I'm paying just under $1000/year (and yes, in Ontario).
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - cyberax 11mo ago
    The liability-only insurance is around $70 a month.
    - devmor 10mo ago

anthem2025 11mo ago

[dead]

jayd16 11mo ago

> a corporation constantly providing -- for free -- updates and even support Corporations could decide to only advertise shipped features, not beta tests.

JumpCrisscross 11mo ago

> Autonomy subscriptions are how things are going to go In America, maybe. Chinese manufacturers are already treating self driving as table stakes. If I have a choice between a subscription car and one that just works, I’m buying the latter. > continuous development and operations/support ICE vehicles require continuous servicing and manufacturer support.

rootusrootus 10mo ago
> In America, maybe. Chinese manufacturers Let's revisit this conversation after China's cutthroat automotive competition is resolved. That era passed a long time ago in the US.

whatever1 11mo ago

Uber charges like $100 per hour the customers. I feel once we reach autonomy this will be the baseline.

kakacik 10mo ago
Unrealistic for 99% of the world, billions live where they earn such sum for more than a week. Not all of those have cars, but many do. This is just some little SV + maybe NY bubble thinking. Also EU would show a big fat finger to such predatory pricing.
- dzhiurgis 10mo ago
  You assume it will be priced same elsewhere. It's definitely going to be priced by region (Tesla's FSD already is).

general1465 11mo ago

Let's be real. A staggering amount of drivers are incapable to switch on Automatic Cruise Control or trigger automatic parking. They know how to start the car, how to switch lights and wipers on/off and that's about it. Paying subscription for something what they are never going to use is going to be a hard sell.

rootusrootus 10mo ago
And to be even more real, a staggering amount of drivers won't be able to afford an autonomous driving subscription even if they wanted to. Or a car new enough or in good enough condition to have functional self driving.
- LightBug1 10mo ago
  This is the real truth. For all of the Musky wank chat about the future, with FSD, robots, and popping over to Australia on a Starship ... a vanishingly small amount of people will actually be able to afford it once they "get the pricing right". We're talking about some impressive technology ... doused in snake oil from the top.
seanmcdirmid 10mo ago
I have auto parking and never use it, it came with the advanced parking sensors that I do use heavily. I forget how to use auto cruise because I drive outside of the city so rarely, it takes me awhile to “trust it” again when I do some highway driving.
stackedinserter 10mo ago
Probably a big chunk of these tried ACC a few times, found that ACC sucks unless you're on perfectly clean empty highway, and said "screw it I'll drive it myself".
- ghaff 10mo ago
  I've played with it a little bit. Seems useful in principle. But a lot of roads I tend to be on--even highways--have a fair bit of traffic and speed limits that change on a pretty regular basis. Hasn't been as useful as I expected it to be.

setgree 10mo ago

The other possible future is you rent the car for exactly when you need it and don’t pay a monthly bill— or your monthly bill pays for a certain number of rides/minutes/miles per month. In which case the subscription costs are managed by the provider, who might be the manufacturer and might not. At least in cities, a fully-functioning, on-demand autonomous fleet would probably be superior to car ownership in just about every way except as a status symbol.

1shooner 10mo ago
The monopolist providing this service would be de-incentivized from ever equipping for all the demand, and the last 10% of capacity being bid on by the last 20% of demand would make this a constant stress and struggle. Meanwhile it's an excuse for another century of more car lanes and less mass transit infrastructure.
tadfisher 10mo ago
There used to be a service like this, called Car2Go. Not autonomous, but more like how scooter/bike rentals work. It was fantastic, and in no way profitable.
- addandsubtract 10mo ago
  There are still services like that. Miles, for example, or Bolt I think have cars, too.
tonyhart7 10mo ago
Yeah, its called taxi we already have those

wat10000 10mo ago

Subscriptions are how things are going to go in general. This is just one example of the larger trend. Companies find it very annoying that they have to keep coming up with ways to provide new value in order to keep getting money from people. Some car companies are already trying out subscriptions for stuff that requires zero ongoing support, like seat heaters. Outside of cars, so much software is switching to subscriptions, whether or not it makes sense. The software for my security cameras has become completely infested by ads, but you can pay for a subscription to make them go away. I own the cameras outright, but not really, since the software needed to use them is basically rented, either with cash or with my eyeballs. Most paid apps I come across these days want a monthly fee to keep using it, they're not content to just sell me a copy.

delfinom 10mo ago

Eh they are offering a one time payment for autonomy for $2500 which is equal to 4.1 years of paying $50/mo. It's not a unreasonable cost for development but also maintenance of the self driving system.

beeflet 10mo ago

yeah but what if comma.ai or something cannibalizes this with open source tech?

danielheath 10mo ago

Why would I own my own car in this scenario (vs paying one of the autonomous driving companies to send a car my way when I need one)?

bluGill 10mo ago
Because if you own your car you leave your golf clubs in there just in case you get invited for a round. If you are the type who is willing to be seen in a used car you can save a lot of money since the rental car needs to be newer cars just in case someone who wouldn't be seen in a used car wants one - and this adds a lot of cost.

rahulstein 10mo ago

Apple products are good counter examples to your point. The cost of the basic software and OS w/ updates is included in the hardware

citizenpaul 10mo ago
Counter counter point. Apple's most expensive offering is something like $1000-$1500 and they basically rely on people upgrading every year or two. Almost like a ........subscription. Rather than a car which a person may keep for 20 years at a one time huge purchase. Its not really reasonable to expect a company to support something longer than even lifer employees will be there to work on it. I do really really hate the idea of automotive subscription services though.
- nomel 10mo ago
  > Apple's most expensive offering is something like $1000-$1500 Same with Samsung, S25 Ultra ($1100 to $1460) [1], with the fold starting at $2k [2]. [1] S25 Ultra https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/galaxy-s25-ultra/buy/galaxy-s25-ultra-256gb-unlocked-sku-sm-s938uzdaxaa https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/galaxy-s25-ultra/buy/... [2] Z fold, $2000 to $2500 https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/galaxy-z-fold7/buy/galaxy-z-fold7-1tb-unlocked-sku-sm-f966udbfxaa/ https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/galaxy-z-fold7/buy/ga...

jillesvangurp 10mo ago

Agreed, autonomy is a service and not a feature of the car. It has to be. There is inherent cost as you use it and associated liabilities, legal requirements for auditing, technical need for maintenance and dealing with updates in a timely fashion. You could make the point that owning the car is a lot less important if you don't drive it yourself. If Uber didn't have to pay drivers, they could expand their area of operation to basically everywhere. Drivers need to be paid so having them drive long distance is relatively expensive. That constrains the area of operation. But otherwise, cost per mile is very low. So, orchestrating pickups in the country side becomes possible. It's going to enable night time travel as well. Nap/sleep while traveling. Wake up at your destination. That's going to revolutionize commutes as well and enable people to live much further away from work. A four hour commute is much less of a problem if you can spend the time working or napping. That in turn is going to do wonders for real estate prices. Because there are a lot of nice places to live that are currently far away from cities and therefore still relatively affordable. We got a preview of that during the lock downs when people figured out that remote working is a thing.

deleted 10mo ago

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tonyhart7 10mo ago

if we talking about future, its where self driving AI is actually better than 99.9% of the human and human driving manually would void insurance

ineedasername 10mo ago

If that’s the way things go, subscription, there aught to be insurance coverage built into that. It’s required anyway and the extent to which a driver relies on SD, and has to pay a sub, then it’s the SD responsible for accidents, not in full but part, and insurance can reflect that as well. But if the two are inextricable as a requirement anyway, there should be baked in standardized procedures for “things have gone wrong, which was a known inevitability, and this is the framework for handling it.”

_yb2s 10mo ago

> Of course, people won't like this I love it because I have exactly zero interest in using this and wouldn’t want to pay for it anyways- and I’d rather more of the drivers around me were actually driving as well.

HPsquared 10mo ago
I'd rather the other cars around me are attentive, polite and robotic. It's better than people looking at their phones.
- _yb2s 10mo ago
  Maybe if the tech gets better, but right now these systems do not handle unusual or unexpected events well and are basically just a glorified cruise control, yet are marketed as autonomy and encourage people to stop paying attention.
  - HPsquared 10mo ago
    I mean Waymo et al.
    - _yb2s 10mo ago
      Having driven in SF very recently, the current state of Waymo is an obstacle to the smooth flow of traffic. They drive like a hesitant confused person that is worried they just passed their destination but isn't quite sure. However, that is during 100% normal expected conditions on specific stretches of road they're heavily pre-trained on. My concern was more about their ability to adapt to the unexpectedly dangerous and unanticipated situation.

jklinger410 10mo ago

And therefore opens up other features to subscription models as well. We've already seen it in some cars, tested in others, etc.

Breza 10mo ago

I agree with you. Subscription revenue has explicitly been part of Tesla's strategy for years. I'm not sure when this statement first appeared in their SEC findings, but this is from their 2021 10-K: "As our vehicles are capable of being updated remotely over-the-air, our customers may purchase additional paid options and features through the Tesla app or through the in-vehicle user interface. We expect that this functionality will also allow us to offer certain options and features on a subscription basis in the future."

prepend 10mo ago

Or isn’t the alternative a local AI that runs autonomously? We’d may for updates and new models, but no need for a subscription. Of course the manufacturer makes more money with a subscription and this is the reason they want it.