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There are less questionable things they can do with all that data: I'm sure it's really useful to figure out how electrical and mechanical faults correlate with

by dguest 12d ago

There are less questionable things they can do with all that data: I'm sure it's really useful to figure out how electrical and mechanical faults correlate with driving conditions / weather / region etc. The result from this is just a better car in the next iteration. Then someone offers them $1 each for a fleet of 1M cars, who is going to turn down $1M for a few TB of data?

Slow_Hand 12d ago
To your first point, fair enough. To your second point, surely they’ve considered the hit to their relationship with their customers before selling for $1/car. Surely the trust between them and their buyers is worth far, far more than that. Even assuming maximum greed, is every car manufacturer really so short-sighted as to break that trust for so small of a return?
- dguest 11d ago
  I oversimplified this, and actually it's a lot closer to what happens with any digital service. Rather than saying "give us 1$ and we'll sell you a customer's data" it was more like "provide the navigation software and we'll let you keep the data". It probably seems like an elegant solution: as long as the driver needs navigation they "pay" for it with their data. It's really no different from how gmail or facebook works.
- citizenpaul 9d ago
  We need to start thinking more like the average evil C-suite. We live in the golden age of fraud. Not my words. There's probably some sort of circular deal where the people that enacted this data sharing personally benefit in some massive financial way. The low financial benefit from the parent company side is probably to avoid regulatory eyeballs. something around 50% of Uber's profits now come from their "private" owned insurance Company. That, of course, does not have to disclose how they are making money. Even though Uber is their only customer. There is probably some sort of similar deal happening here.

by dguest 12d ago

Slow_Hand 12d ago

To your first point, fair enough. To your second point, surely they’ve considered the hit to their relationship with their customers before selling for $1/car. Surely the trust between them and their buyers is worth far, far more than that. Even assuming maximum greed, is every car manufacturer really so short-sighted as to break that trust for so small of a return?

dguest 11d ago
I oversimplified this, and actually it's a lot closer to what happens with any digital service. Rather than saying "give us 1$ and we'll sell you a customer's data" it was more like "provide the navigation software and we'll let you keep the data". It probably seems like an elegant solution: as long as the driver needs navigation they "pay" for it with their data. It's really no different from how gmail or facebook works.
citizenpaul 9d ago
We need to start thinking more like the average evil C-suite. We live in the golden age of fraud. Not my words. There's probably some sort of circular deal where the people that enacted this data sharing personally benefit in some massive financial way. The low financial benefit from the parent company side is probably to avoid regulatory eyeballs. something around 50% of Uber's profits now come from their "private" owned insurance Company. That, of course, does not have to disclose how they are making money. Even though Uber is their only customer. There is probably some sort of similar deal happening here.