https://www.carscoops.com/2021/05/vw...-driving-tech/

GM charges a subscription for their Super Cruise semi-autonomous driving system and it appears Volkswagen will follow suit.

In an interview with Top Gear, Volkswagen’s sales and marketing boss suggested the future could see the automaker fully equipping vehicles and then charging owners to activate and use certain features. In effect, it’s similar to how BMW offers over-the-air features such as high-beam assist.

More interestingly, Klaus Zellmer suggested the company could charge €7 ($8.41 / £6.04) an hour to use Level 4 autonomous driving technology. He said the company’s cost modeling has shown this would be a “profitable business case” and would be much cheaper for consumers than taking a train.

Unbelievable that this could be the future.

oh i'm sure of it. everything is becoming subscription based.
however, there's a potential upside. by making it subscription-based, they may well be able to offer the car for very little... like Gillette and razors vs blades or HP inkjet printers (almost free) and ink!

as we found out when they tried to offer subscriptions for vehicles, they will do it as long as they make more money. And customers will not pay more money. Hence all vehicle subscription schemes failing.

Maybe you are on to something here.

(X)AaS is corporate cancer. You don’t own anything anymore.

Owning/driving a EV is likely going to be very expensive in the future. If some of the legislation gets passed that is being talked about it is going to be very expensive just to own/drive any kind of personal vehicle and the companies will have so much control over you and what you do, we are going to lose many freedoms we enjoyed in the name of "progress". I would not be surprised if you also have to watch a ad/commercial before you can even drive each time in the future too. A select few will get very rich/very powerful from it though.

So lets say you buy one of those and set it for a long drive during the time while your renewal is due. It tries to renew but your card declines - does it deactivate the self drive and sends the car crashing while you are sleeping in the back seat?

unless you have a well and pump, you don't own the water going to your home/office either. and most don't own their electricity supply. this is nothing new.

as society is growing more complex (and that complexity is accelerating) we will absolutely become more interdependent (like it or not) unless you're very very rich.

hypothetical but i'd doubt it... it will just go to collections later if you don't update your card info.