In competition with Tesla, VW relies on Over the Air (OTA) updates and autonomous driving.
Autonomous driving should become the automaker’s core business Volkswagen and the company’s own software company Cariad should implement that. In this way, the costs for the software developments can be recovered. However, you go your own way, which makes the rounds as pay-as-you-go autonomy.
This is a usage-based concept of autonomous driving, which, in addition to the subscription or offered under the function-on-demand model. But that will only happen when you reach level 4 possible. This should enable people to use the time in the car for work or entertainment. VW wants to make this platform its core product.
Before the end of this year, VW wants to make its autonomous driving concept called “Ride Pilot” available as an additional subscription. The price of the offer is still being planned. The product is said to be mature, so there will not be an update every week. This statement is a bit higher than the competitor Tesla.
However, this is mainly software and Cariad, the 2020 out car.software emerged, already caused some software problems as with ID3 or the Macan from Porsche. In the background of the group there were power struggles and wrangling over competences.
The software is to be standardized despite the wide range of different models. This is even harder than that for Data protection and data safety needs to be taken care of. And the OTA updates present another challenge.