VW Will Sell You Self-Driving for $8.50/Hour Someday. Too High or Too Low?
forbes.com
forbes.com
- $8/hr in gas for compact gasoline cars (30 MPG, $4/gallon)
- $2.25/hr in electricity for electric cars (0.25 kWh/mile, $0.15/kWh)
- $12/hr in depreciation ($40k car lasting 200k miles)
- $32/hr is the IRS-approved reimbursement rate, supposed to cover fuel, maintenance, depreciation
It seems a grandmother will spend 20 hours knitting a scarf and not care that they can make a much better product for a few $ more in materials.
In other case synthetic materials be might really better, but for knitted scarfs, sweaters, and such it no contest. One material will protect you from fire by forming a char (wool) and the other will melt and transport heat right to your skin and make sure you get burned.
Listen to music, yes, for most of the vehicles I've owned, though the most recent purchase has no radio (it predates radios in cars being a thing).
Have a conversation, I mean... yes? This is where my wife and I get a lot of discussions in, rolling down the road. If I want to talk to someone remotely, I can just pair my phone and have a conversation that way.
Work? Not directly, but I'm certainly free to have a complex problem rolling around in my head, pondering it from various angles, as I navigate down the road. At least for the stuff I do, this is the hard part, not the actual typing of code.
Sleep? No, but I work with technology for a living. There's no way in hell I would trust self driving nearly enough to close my eyes, much less actually sleep. Maybe in a few decades, but... if I drove in some areas like the current self driving tech, I'd be pulled over for driving while plastered.
I've no problem with driver assist technologies, but with where self driving is, we may as well be discussing antimater powered starships. "What would you pay for a ride on the Enterprise?"
The major difference is of course not listening to music or having a phone call. The major difference is work and sleep. I can do both in the train, I cannot do it in a car at the driving seat :)
I would sleep on a train, if any came within a few hundred miles of me, but I've seen nothing so far that would make me trust a self driving car enough to sleep in it.
And now I have CCR's "Someday Never Comes" running in my head. Fortunately it is a great song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwNuQulK6N0
"We must extract as much value from every minute of a person's life, in recurring fees!" is the sort of thinking that means I won't "engage with a product." Even if I end up using an objectively worse solution that isn't trying to put a timer on everything in my life and bill for it.
This, and every other modern way of trying to charge for features like this, continues down the path of "Sure, you might hold the title to the equipment, but it's still the manufacturers, and you will use it at their pleasure or not at all." It's more and more true in cars, it's exceedingly true in new farm equipment, and it's nonsense, in all forms.
Sell me a feature I can use as I choose, or don't bother. I don't want an always-on cellular OTA VPN link to the mothership to validate my credit card before engaging cloud-learning-based 5G self driving. I'd like a car I can use to get around, on my terms, with the tracking I choose (I choose none).
Practically speaking, though, since self driving doesn't exist outside some very limited cases, probably won't exist in a generally useful form for a decade or longer, and probably won't handle things I do on a regular basis (passing a tractor on a rural two lane), it's like asking me what I'd be willing to pay for fusion power. Make it work first, then ask.
It really worries me that the next generation of automobiles seems anti-decentralization by design.
Given the trajectory of society this only makes having an independent vehicle more attractive.
I get why subscriptions are a thing for access to a continuously maintained and improved software product. I just hate that they are trying to pin it on incremental use instead of access.
To me this feels too much like if Netflix tried to charge per hour consumed. I don't rent movies anymore because I like having access to a library. I feel the same way about my car. I bought a proper 4x4 because I need the ability to access high clearance low traction areas, and I paid for that upfront in the cost of the vehicle. I don't want to pay an extra $8/hr to use those features after already paying for them.
Edit: just realized what a crazy world I live in when I unthinkingly categorize health coverage as something other than a necessity.
If I don't have to own the car and could just call it like an Uber, this would be a great price.
* Car payment * Insurance payment * Maintenance costs * Parking costs * Possible tolls * Repairs * Possibly roadside assistance * Property tax (in some jurisdictions)
These are all costs of ownership. For people who own very cheap cars, or who can afford to pay cash for cars, it may be costly, but for many others, it may, in fact, streamline quite a few costs that they're already absorbing and managing.
I fear the world is already going this way. As a person approaching 30, most of my peers who did not stumble into lucrative tech careers are not doing well. Student debts still not paid off, working crappy paid jobs full time to rent cheap apartments, savings barely appearing let alone down payments for nice housing.
It doesn't surprise me to see the corporations lean into "services" and subscriptions; they are a great resource extractor
This is literally the "dream" of many - see the World Economic Forum's predictions about the future. It's a great dream for those doing the renting of stuff, and a nightmare for everyone else.
Don’t like it‽ Take the publicly funded option: the bus!
EDIT: clarified starting position
Today, if I want point-to-point, custom flexible timing and start/destination locations, with reasonable privacy and comfort, it'll cost me a lot more than either $2 or $8.5.
For example, a taxi from my home to airport is ~45min and typically costs me $75-$90CAD.
In Ottawa, a taxi trip from hotel to work is ~5-8min and is $11CAD.
So $8.5 for an hour is literally an order of magnitude less than what I'm currently paying.
But after going through the article I still don't 100% get what's the actual model - $8.50 total ad-hoc cost (essentially renting a service)? Or, as it appears, some implicit baseline hardware cost / traditional purcahse (buy a $xx,xxx.99 vehicle), in which case a subscription-based additional hourly cost would only serve to peeve me off?
That’s key. It’s their cars and they want to charge them seven bucks an hour?
Yes, some people will be happy to sit back and sleep and pay that, but not Joe and Jill Six-Pack.
/s
Running errands, no need to it. But I drive to clients and other longer trips, this is game changing if I could go full hands off and work during that time.
Uber runs about $100/hr I think - so if I could use my own car and not have to take uber (I often take uber precisely so I can work) then it's perfect. If price is 1/10th of the the marginal cost even better.
The former seems absurd for many of the reasons found in the comments here. The latter would be appealing to me.
I would love that! Now to the crucial part as a family:
- Is the car coming with the two seats for my kids?
- How to load/unload all the stuff we have? Stroller, Kickboard etc?
Tesla charges $10k for their software upgrade to ~level 2 driving. So roughly 3 years to the break-even point, if the service is the same.
You buy a car, you get air conditioning, self driving and windshield wipers. A subscription for this feels toxic.
I'd definitely pay more to use someone else's self-driving car (and insurance liability, more importantly).
If you fully financed a Tesla FSD option for 6 years it would run ~$150/mo or $5/day.
How do you justify spending money on a product that doesn't change?
but $8.50/hr to unlock a feature of a car you purchased and have to pay maintenance and fuel costs on seems like a pretty terrible deal.
In India, on the other hand in a metro city you can cover between 20KM-30KM in an hour for which Uber charges around $7 (i.e., ~ INR 500).