10 ms·

"if you've ever driven a German car, you'll realize that the car was built for engineers and not for end users " cracks me up. I once leased a BMW for 3 years

by pcurve 7mo ago

"if you've ever driven a German car, you'll realize that the car was built for engineers and not for end users " cracks me up. I once leased a BMW for 3 years. By the time I returned the car, I still didn't what all the cryptic buttons for HVAC and other controls. They just refused to follow established automotive ergonomic conventions. Anyway, my father used to do business with Germans for a long time. He had many interesting stories to share, but one that has always stayed with me is, his disdain for how cheap / penny pinching his German companies and their employees were when doing deals. This was in the 90s, so definitely passed the West Germany glory days. My take is, in the era of global competition, Germans didn't know how to strike the right balance and effective allocate resources. Where to compromise, and where not to. I don't know if it's sheer stubbornness or they're just wired differently.

joe_mamba 7mo ago
>how cheap / penny pinching his German companies and their employees were when doing deals I think most people(Americans mostly) don't have the faintest idea how true that is right now. Here's a comment of mine from a few weeks ago giving such a present-day example that will blow your brains of how cheap german companies are. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47018023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47018023 I feel like German companies know they lost the innovation race (I mean companies that aren't Zeiss), they lost the cheap manufacturing race "thanks" to Russian gas dependence and ideological denuclearisation before enough renewables were built, so all that's left for them now to stay afloat is reducing labor and operating costs by offshoring and pinching all the pennies they can find, but even that it not enough since from where I stand there's weekly corporate bankruptcies and layoffs and that's including the fact that the government has been speeding like crazy the last 3+ years to make sure the private sector industry doesn't completely collapse.
- twoodfin 7mo ago
  I’m told that Germans in general are “cheap” and that this is an expected consequence of their economic policies designed to reinforce their industrial base. I wish I could find the reference I’m thinking of, but the idea was that Germans buying absurdly cheap wine and their constantly underfunded trains were part of a pattern of deliberate domestic under-investment to keep exports competitive. Someone ITT surely knows more.
  - logicchains 7mo ago
    Surely not as cheap as the Dutch, who'll apparently send you a bill for a couple dollars worth of snacks you ate at their house.
    - joe_mamba 7mo ago
      Dutch may be cheap at hospitality but they're savvy at running business, while Germans are cheap at running business and the economy in general, hence why austerity is their favorite word in the vocabulary, they're penny wise and pound foolish. And unfortunately the focus on austerity post-2008 spearheaded by Germany only held the EU economy back compared to the US.
- RGamma 7mo ago
  ~46M employed (of which ~16M part time, usually related to child or elder care), ~84M total population, ~22M pensioners, avg age ~47, lots of SMEs, little natural resources. It's part of necessary consolidation. Considering all that, we're doing quite well...
  - slaw 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    - AlexeyBelov 7mo ago
      That's some Nazi nonsense. If I live in Germany for a long period of time I am German.
      - slaw 7mo ago
        [flagged]
        AlexeyBelov 6mo ago
        Such analogies are so imprecise as to be useless.
    - RGamma 7mo ago
      They're part of the reason we're doing so well. Source: Know some.
- specialist 7mo ago
  > blow your brains of how cheap Yes and: ossified, top-heavy, ever more bureaucratic, MBA/consultant brain rot. From your linked comment: > willing to bet my entire salary that the costs of all the new extra bureaucratic overhead Yup.
- petre 7mo ago
  If they're planning to reduce labour with this BMW robot, I have interesting news for them: the Chinese showcased kung fu dancing robots that runs circles around their lame German humanoid robot who can't even pour a beer, let alone assemble cars.
0x000xca0xfe 7mo ago
I don't know if it's sheer stubbornness or they're just wired differently. As a German I believe it's more about demographics nowadays. The country and all large companies are run by older people who only saw rising prosperity their entire life. They all have settled in a comfortable place and do not seriously care about the future anymore. They just want to keep the system running until retirement. There is no long-term strategic thinking anymore, only feel-good policies and short-term cash burning for their respective clientele. As a young person it infuriates me but there is nothing we can do.
- OKRainbowKid 7mo ago
  That's my impression as well. The future is being sold for the present.
  - joe_mamba 7mo ago
    >The future is being sold for the present. That's where the famous high European pensions come from. In France now the average pension is higher than the average salary.
- shafyy 7mo ago
  You are right about the issue, but wrong about the action. There are things you can do. Vote for candidates and parties that genuinely want a different future. Become politically active yourself. Run for office. Work with your local community. Every bit of action helps.
  - ivan_gammel 7mo ago
    There is no party in German political landscape interested, capable of solving or even understanding the problems that needed to be solved. We have lost political center to groups of special interests and medieval guides. The state sponsored tool for informing about political programs (Wahl-O-Mat) is biased towards political issues of the mainstream. E.g. nobody is talking about the suffocating monopoly of notaries or increasing the property ownership by any significant margin. Running for office is an interesting idea, but in party-dominated politics to achieve anything is a decades-long adventure.
Gravityloss 7mo ago
I have long experience of multiple German car brands. The interface spectrum goes like this: driving and seats etc are close to perfect for me. As long as it's about buttons, they are really good. But once it goes to screens, it starts getting worse. And then, with mobile app, it's basically barely functioning at all.
- petre 7mo ago
  I like how the VW controls are laid out on older models but not the seats. They're too hard and not confortable. Even my Suzuki has better, more confy seats. The seats in the A1 I had were a diaster, especially the back seats, totally useless unless you put 10 year old kids in them.The fronts seats were hard, your butt would hurt after 3 hours. The engine was rattling new and the car is a pita to repair, something broke all the time. But it stuck to the road and was so much fun to drive that I skidded in a roundabout and nearly hit the lane separator. A Civic is probably better in every regard though. Newer Audi diesel models automotive eat up oil, adblue. You basically need to fill up at least 3 or 4 fluids all of the time, including screenwash. Just another extra reason to avoid diesels.
- neuralRiot 7mo ago
  I work on German cars on a daily basis, the “online diagnostic” of one of the top brands runs on a sort of remote desktop fashion complete with windows boot screen, I don’t need to tell you that speed is not one of its main features.
stephencanon 7mo ago
Our (~2015) 3-series controls are just about perfect. Where they differ from Honda/Toyota's controls that I am also very familiar with, they're noticeably better now that I'm familiar with them. Everything is really well thought-out. Of course, now they (and almost every other manufacturer) have followed Tesla off the cliff and made everything a screen, so the current generation cars have abysmal controls.
expedition32 7mo ago
There was always global competition but Mercedes and BMW had the brand power. At least Volkswagen is still building relatively cheap and reliable cars for the masses- they can compete with Kia and Skoda.
- brummm 7mo ago
  Skoda is owned by VW
  - Bombthecat 7mo ago
    For me, it feels like Skoda is the old VW...

by pcurve 7mo ago

joe_mamba 7mo ago

>how cheap / penny pinching his German companies and their employees were when doing deals I think most people(Americans mostly) don't have the faintest idea how true that is right now. Here's a comment of mine from a few weeks ago giving such a present-day example that will blow your brains of how cheap german companies are. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47018023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47018023 I feel like German companies know they lost the innovation race (I mean companies that aren't Zeiss), they lost the cheap manufacturing race "thanks" to Russian gas dependence and ideological denuclearisation before enough renewables were built, so all that's left for them now to stay afloat is reducing labor and operating costs by offshoring and pinching all the pennies they can find, but even that it not enough since from where I stand there's weekly corporate bankruptcies and layoffs and that's including the fact that the government has been speeding like crazy the last 3+ years to make sure the private sector industry doesn't completely collapse.

twoodfin 7mo ago
I’m told that Germans in general are “cheap” and that this is an expected consequence of their economic policies designed to reinforce their industrial base. I wish I could find the reference I’m thinking of, but the idea was that Germans buying absurdly cheap wine and their constantly underfunded trains were part of a pattern of deliberate domestic under-investment to keep exports competitive. Someone ITT surely knows more.
- logicchains 7mo ago
  Surely not as cheap as the Dutch, who'll apparently send you a bill for a couple dollars worth of snacks you ate at their house.
  - joe_mamba 7mo ago
    Dutch may be cheap at hospitality but they're savvy at running business, while Germans are cheap at running business and the economy in general, hence why austerity is their favorite word in the vocabulary, they're penny wise and pound foolish. And unfortunately the focus on austerity post-2008 spearheaded by Germany only held the EU economy back compared to the US.
RGamma 7mo ago
~46M employed (of which ~16M part time, usually related to child or elder care), ~84M total population, ~22M pensioners, avg age ~47, lots of SMEs, little natural resources. It's part of necessary consolidation. Considering all that, we're doing quite well...
- slaw 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - AlexeyBelov 7mo ago
    That's some Nazi nonsense. If I live in Germany for a long period of time I am German.
    - slaw 7mo ago
      [flagged]
      - AlexeyBelov 6mo ago
        Such analogies are so imprecise as to be useless.
  - RGamma 7mo ago
    They're part of the reason we're doing so well. Source: Know some.
specialist 7mo ago
> blow your brains of how cheap Yes and: ossified, top-heavy, ever more bureaucratic, MBA/consultant brain rot. From your linked comment: > willing to bet my entire salary that the costs of all the new extra bureaucratic overhead Yup.
petre 7mo ago
If they're planning to reduce labour with this BMW robot, I have interesting news for them: the Chinese showcased kung fu dancing robots that runs circles around their lame German humanoid robot who can't even pour a beer, let alone assemble cars.

0x000xca0xfe 7mo ago

I don't know if it's sheer stubbornness or they're just wired differently. As a German I believe it's more about demographics nowadays. The country and all large companies are run by older people who only saw rising prosperity their entire life. They all have settled in a comfortable place and do not seriously care about the future anymore. They just want to keep the system running until retirement. There is no long-term strategic thinking anymore, only feel-good policies and short-term cash burning for their respective clientele. As a young person it infuriates me but there is nothing we can do.

OKRainbowKid 7mo ago
That's my impression as well. The future is being sold for the present.
- joe_mamba 7mo ago
  >The future is being sold for the present. That's where the famous high European pensions come from. In France now the average pension is higher than the average salary.
shafyy 7mo ago
You are right about the issue, but wrong about the action. There are things you can do. Vote for candidates and parties that genuinely want a different future. Become politically active yourself. Run for office. Work with your local community. Every bit of action helps.
- ivan_gammel 7mo ago
  There is no party in German political landscape interested, capable of solving or even understanding the problems that needed to be solved. We have lost political center to groups of special interests and medieval guides. The state sponsored tool for informing about political programs (Wahl-O-Mat) is biased towards political issues of the mainstream. E.g. nobody is talking about the suffocating monopoly of notaries or increasing the property ownership by any significant margin. Running for office is an interesting idea, but in party-dominated politics to achieve anything is a decades-long adventure.

Gravityloss 7mo ago

I have long experience of multiple German car brands. The interface spectrum goes like this: driving and seats etc are close to perfect for me. As long as it's about buttons, they are really good. But once it goes to screens, it starts getting worse. And then, with mobile app, it's basically barely functioning at all.

petre 7mo ago
I like how the VW controls are laid out on older models but not the seats. They're too hard and not confortable. Even my Suzuki has better, more confy seats. The seats in the A1 I had were a diaster, especially the back seats, totally useless unless you put 10 year old kids in them.The fronts seats were hard, your butt would hurt after 3 hours. The engine was rattling new and the car is a pita to repair, something broke all the time. But it stuck to the road and was so much fun to drive that I skidded in a roundabout and nearly hit the lane separator. A Civic is probably better in every regard though. Newer Audi diesel models automotive eat up oil, adblue. You basically need to fill up at least 3 or 4 fluids all of the time, including screenwash. Just another extra reason to avoid diesels.
neuralRiot 7mo ago
I work on German cars on a daily basis, the “online diagnostic” of one of the top brands runs on a sort of remote desktop fashion complete with windows boot screen, I don’t need to tell you that speed is not one of its main features.

stephencanon 7mo ago

Our (~2015) 3-series controls are just about perfect. Where they differ from Honda/Toyota's controls that I am also very familiar with, they're noticeably better now that I'm familiar with them. Everything is really well thought-out. Of course, now they (and almost every other manufacturer) have followed Tesla off the cliff and made everything a screen, so the current generation cars have abysmal controls.

expedition32 7mo ago

There was always global competition but Mercedes and BMW had the brand power. At least Volkswagen is still building relatively cheap and reliable cars for the masses- they can compete with Kia and Skoda.

brummm 7mo ago
Skoda is owned by VW
- Bombthecat 7mo ago
  For me, it feels like Skoda is the old VW...