#CES: Study Shows Consumers Aren't Willing To Pay More Than $500 For Self Driving Technology

A real issue for the industry considering the enormous ongoing upfront investment being made. In the name (disguise) of safety the industry will likely petition governments to ban the sale of self driven new cars at some point.

Guess that $500. is what they value their lives at.

"#CES: Study Shows Consumers Aren't Willing To Pay More Than $500 For Self Driving Technology" ...except for the average Tesla-craving douchenozzle, they will pay out the nose for it.

And 15 years ago consumers weren't willing to spend more than $200 for a cell phone. Once people see the value, they will pay.

How much time do most spend driving? 200 hours a year? 250 hours? What would it be worth to get that time back to do whatever you want. I imagine for most, it would be a lot... several thousands a year. However, the real ROI is for those that are willing to rent out their car when not in use... that will dramatically drive up the value of self-driving. I think this functionality will easily cost over $10k per car and people will pay it. If you can make $20-30k a year renting out a car, $10k is nothing.

Maybe so but $10K is a lot of money for most folks when the average new car loan is now 69.5 months and average new car price is $36,000. $10K per car would be a 28% increase in average cost and extend the average new car loan to 88 months. Renting out your car to overcome financial pressure sounds good in theory but may not be easy or practical in real life for lots of folks. I agree with you that self driving cars are coming, that they will increase cost, and that how people buy, use and think about cars will change drastically. I suspect the transition will not be smooth but painful for manufacture and consumers alike.

The transition will be interesting, especially the overlap years where cars could either be autonomous or driven regularly. Costs will eventually be driven way down, for everyone. Uber/Lyft in an affordable EV with no driver could be profitable at less than 50 cents per mile. In dedicated guideways where only AVs are allowed, the amount could be even less (delete safety equipment and reduce weight).

Asinine: "...willing to rent out their car when not in use..."

Translation: "Hey, borrow my car and trash it."

I'd pay $500 for fat-boy Elon to shut the hell up for a month.

It's being done right now with sites like Turo, but is very expensive.

I'd pay $500 as a "delete" option.