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    Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

    (riviantrackr.com)
    319 points doctoboggan | 20 comments | 11 Dec 25 18:17 UTC | HN request time: 0.975s | source | bottom
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    TulliusCicero ◴[11 Dec 25 18:50 UTC] No.46235375[source]▶
    Autonomy subscriptions are how things are going to go, I called this a long time ago. It makes too much sense in terms of continuous development and operations/support to not have a subscription -- and subscriptions will likely double as insurance at some point in the future (once the car is driving itself 100% of the time, and liability is always with the self driving stack anyway).

    Of course, people won't like this, I'm not exactly enthused either, but the alternative would be a corporation constantly providing -- for free -- updates and even support if your car gets into an accident or stuck. That doesn't really make sense from a business perspective.

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    bryanlarsen ◴[11 Dec 25 19:30 UTC] No.46236024[source]▶
    Agreed, it seems inevitable that autonomy and insurance are going to be bundled.

    1. Courts are finding Tesla partially liable for collisions, so they've already got some of the downsides of insurance (aka the payout) without the upside (the premium).

    2. Waymo data shows a significant injury reduction rate. If it's true and not manipulated data, it's natural for the car companies to want to capture some of this upside.

    3. It just seems like a much easier sell. I wouldn't pay $100/month for self-driving, but $150 a month for self-driving + insurance? That's more than I currently pay for insurance, but not a lot more. And I've got relatively cheap insurance: charging $250/month for insurance + self-driving will be cheaper than what some people pay for just insurance alone.

    I don't think we need to hit 100% self-driving for the bundled insurance to be viable. 90% self-driving should still have a substantially lower accident rate if the Waymo data is accurate and extends.

    replies(9): >>46236098 #>>46236522 #>>46236731 #>>46237640 #>>46238483 #>>46239662 #>>46240208 #>>46241770 #>>46243195 #
    1. harikb ◴[11 Dec 25 22:55 UTC] No.46238483[source]▶
    History suggests it won't be that clean.

    1. High-severity accidents might drop, but the industry bleeds money on high-frequency, low-speed incidents (parking lots, neighborhood scrapes). Autonomy has diminishing returns here; it doesn't magically prevent the chaos of mixed-use environments.

    2. Insurance is a capital management game. We’ll likely see a tech company try this, fail to cover a catastrophic liability due to lack of reserves, and trigger a massive backlash.

    It reminds me of early internet optimism: we thought connectivity would make truth impossible to hide. Instead, we got the opposite. Tech rarely solves complex markets linearly.

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    2. Karrot_Kream ◴[11 Dec 25 23:47 UTC] No.46239001[source]▶
    I doubt autonomous car makers will offer this themselves. They'll either partner with existing insurers or try to build a separate insurance provider of their own which does this.

    My guess, if this actually plays out, is that existing insurers will create a special autonomy product that will modify rates to reflect differences in risk from standard driving, and autonomy subscriptions will offer those in a bundle.

    replies(1): >>46241663 #
    3. lotsofpulp ◴[11 Dec 25 23:57 UTC] No.46239092[source]▶
    > High-severity accidents might drop, but the industry bleeds money on high-frequency, low-speed incidents (parking lots, neighborhood scrapes). Autonomy has diminishing returns here; it doesn't magically prevent the chaos of mixed-use environments.

    This seems like it can be solved with a deductible.

    4. michaelt ◴[12 Dec 25 01:00 UTC] No.46239640[source]▶
    > Insurance is a capital management game. We’ll likely see a tech company try this, fail to cover a catastrophic liability due to lack of reserves, and trigger a massive backlash.

    Google, AFAIK the only company with cars that are actually autonomous, has US$98 Billion in cash.

    It'd have to be a hell of an accident to put a dent in that.

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    5. WillPostForFood ◴[12 Dec 25 01:08 UTC] No.46239687[source]▶
    Auto insurers don't face a "catastrophic liability" bankrupting scenario like home insurers might in the case of a natural disaster or fire.
    replies(4): >>46239745 #>>46240324 #>>46242428 #>>46242601 #
    6. SoftTalker ◴[12 Dec 25 01:19 UTC] No.46239745[source]▶
    A bad hail storm comes close. Hail damage can total a car.
    replies(3): >>46240189 #>>46240907 #>>46243130 #
    7. hardolaf ◴[12 Dec 25 02:23 UTC] No.46240189{3}[source]▶
    Cars are the cheap part of auto insurance claims.
    8. johnebgd ◴[12 Dec 25 02:36 UTC] No.46240264[source]▶
    They know it’s cheaper to buy/lobby congress to limit their liability and will do so long before they payout real money.
    9. jacquesm ◴[12 Dec 25 02:48 UTC] No.46240324[source]▶
    I can easily imagine auto insurers facing exactly that kind of liability if a self-driving car release is bad enough.
    10. bsder ◴[12 Dec 25 03:09 UTC] No.46240456[source]▶
    > Autonomy has diminishing returns here; it doesn't magically prevent the chaos of mixed-use environments.

    It doesn't prevent chaos, but it does provide ubiquitous cameras. That will be used against people.

    I'm ambivalent about that and mostly in a negative direction. On the one hand, I'd very much love to see people who cause accidents have their insurance go through the roof.

    On the other hand, the insurance companies will force self-driving on everybody through massive insurance rate increases for manual driving. Given that we do not have protections against companies that can make you a Digital Non-Person with a click of a mouse, I have significant problems with that.

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    11. rasz ◴[12 Dec 25 04:35 UTC] No.46240907{3}[source]▶
    Euro importers love hail damaged Copart cars, very cheap to fix here.
    12. chihuahua ◴[12 Dec 25 05:24 UTC] No.46241132[source]▶
    Yes, imagine you bought a Google self-driving car for $70,000, and one day their algorithm gets mad at you due to a glitch, and your Google account is locked, your car can no longer be unlocked, can't be sold, and your appeals are instantly rejected and you have no recourse. Just a typical day in Google's world.
    13. vineyardmike ◴[12 Dec 25 07:05 UTC] No.46241597[source]▶
    > I'd very much love to see people who cause accidents have their insurance go through the roof.

    Life is hard and people make mistakes. Let the actuaries do their job, but causing an accident is not a moral failure, except in cases like drunk driving, where we have actual criminal liability already.

    > the insurance companies will force self-driving on everybody through massive insurance rate increases for manual driving.

    Why would manual driving be more expensive to insure in the future? The same risks exist today, at today's rates, but with the benefit that over time the other cars will get harder to hit, reducing the rate of accidents even for humans (kinda like herd immunity).

    > Given that we do not have protections against companies that can make you a Digital Non-Person with a click of a mouse, I have significant problems with that.

    I absolutely think this is going to be one of the greater social issues of the next generation.

    14. bobthepanda ◴[12 Dec 25 07:17 UTC] No.46241663[source]▶
    Bundling a real product with a financial institution is a time tested strategy.

    Airlines with their credit cards are basically banks that happen to fly planes. Starbucks' mobile app is a bank that happens to sell coffee. Auto companies have long had financing arms; if anything, providing insurance on top of a lease is the natural extension of that.

    replies(1): >>46241963 #
    15. SideburnsOfDoom ◴[12 Dec 25 08:13 UTC] No.46241963{3}[source]▶
    > Auto companies have long had financing arms

    I have in fact heard it said that VW group is a financing company with a automobile arm. From some points of view, that seems correct.

    16. jjav ◴[12 Dec 25 09:34 UTC] No.46242428[source]▶
    > Auto insurers don't face a "catastrophic liability" bankrupting scenario like home insurers might in the case of a natural disaster or fire.

    This changes with self-driving. Push a buggy update and potentially all the same model cars could crash on the same day.

    This is not a threat model regular car insurers need to deal with since it'll never happen that all of their customers decide to drive drunk the same day, but that's effectively what a buggy software update would be like.

    17. gorgoiler ◴[12 Dec 25 10:05 UTC] No.46242601[source]▶
    I think you’re right, but this thread did bring to mind the LA Northridge quake (1994):

    https://scpr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/a553905/2147483...

    18. BillinghamJ ◴[12 Dec 25 10:28 UTC] No.46242728[source]▶
    They'd still at least buy reinsurance etc anyway.

    All unlimited liability insurance companies (e.g. motor insurers in the UK) have reinsurance to take the hit on claims over a certain level - e.g. 100k, 1m etc.

    For extreme black swan risks, this is how you prevent the insurance company just going bankrupt.

    Reinsurers themselves then also have their own reinsurance, and so on. The interesting thing is that you then have to keep track of the chain of reinsurers to make sure they don't turn out to be insuring themselves in a big loop. A "retrocession spiral" could take out many of the companies involved at the same time, e.g. the LMX spiral.

    19. KeplerBoy ◴[12 Dec 25 10:33 UTC] No.46242770[source]▶
    The provider of the insurance can always insure itself for that catastrophic case. It's called Reinsurance.
    20. duskdozer ◴[12 Dec 25 11:34 UTC] No.46243130{3}[source]▶
    Would auto insurers have enough insured cars within the area of a hailstorm to matter though?