I was going to say, $8.50/hour autonomous Uber sounds amazing. $50 to get from the bay area to Mt. Shasta.
But if you have to own the car, fuck that. If you own it you should own access to all features that the hardware is capable of.
But if you have to own the car, fuck that. If you own it you should own access to all features that the hardware is capable of.
To me, an upfront $10,000 surcharge seems less scammy than what VW is offering, despite it likely being cheaper over the lifetime of the vehicle.
TBH it is hard to believe that it is required to have 8 $/h to have autonomous vehicle. Once we have the technology Google will build efficient data center with custom chips and the price will go down to X $/month. On top of it - I think the model will have to run locally, so it would make sense to pay upfront for extra hardware they put in your car and not that much for maintenance.
We are just not there yet, we don't have autonomous driving - we have better driver assistants.
I'm not such an alcoholic that I would pay $8.50/hr to drink beer on my way to work. And, realistically, we're decades away from being able to drink while AI drives.
I don't share it, as custom ECM tunes that increase performance (with the same "hardware") have been around for a very long time.
Also things like OnStar, and SirisXM
Along a similar vein--Nvidia artificially limiting hashrates on some of it's consumer GPU's.
I am far more upset with: A) Subscription fees for software in general. B) Tesla's autopilot code reseting when the Tesla is sold. Both directions, the new purchaser has to buy it again, the old owner has to buy it again on a new Tesla. C) Tesla conning people into paying 10,000 for cruise control plus, because people think it is Level 5 even though it falls far short of that. And any version hitting close to Level 5 is almost certainly going to require sensors that your car didn't have, so buy it again on a new car.
Even though VW's solution may be cheaper for many, the way it's being portrayed feels more scammy.