What would you pay for autonomous driving? Volkswagen hopes $8.50 per hour
&gt; In a swipe at Tesla, he said that by charging hourly fees, VW would make autonomous driving more accessible than “a car with a five-digit surcharge.”<p>This is completely disingenuous at best, and malicious at worst. This is a perfect example of the boots theory of socioeconomic unfairness [1]. This is just taking advantage of the poor-middle class&#x27; inability to pay a larger upfront cost, to extort them for more over a larger period of time.<p>The average person in the northeast spends 31 minutes commuting per day [2], for simplicity that&#x27;s 0.5 hours,* 2 commutes a day, * 5 days a week, * 50 weeks a year (assuming 2 weeks vacation), is 250 hours commuting a week. At ~9 dollars including tax per hour, that means in just 4.4 years[3] it&#x27;s already more expensive to rent this feature if the surcharge is initially 10k as VW claims. This is true even if the car is used ONLY for commuting, which is likely a non-major portion of use time.<p>This is 100% a way to extract more money from consumers, especially non financially stable consumers, while lying to all of our faces.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;moneywise.com&#x2F;managing-money&#x2F;budgeting&#x2F;boots-theory-of-socioeconomic-unfairness" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;moneywise.com&#x2F;managing-money&#x2F;budgeting&#x2F;boots-theory-...</a><p>[2]  <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.statista.com&#x2F;statistics&#x2F;798393&#x2F;us-workers-average-commuting-time-region&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.statista.com&#x2F;statistics&#x2F;798393&#x2F;us-workers-averag...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.caranddriver.com&#x2F;research&#x2F;a33235649&#x2F;ownership-costs-of-cars&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.caranddriver.com&#x2F;research&#x2F;a33235649&#x2F;ownership-co...</a>