13 ms·

Mercedes Boots Robots from the Production Line

56 points by monort 11y ago

FreedomToCreate 11y ago
The rapid updating of car models is either going to be a success or blow up in the car manufacturers face. The sales of cars has been high over the past few years, but economically sustaining car sales year and adding growth year of year is not feasible with the current model of purchasing and holding onto a car as a long term liable asset. Newer business models will be needed to make this shift for newer model sales on a smaller time frame. I see a big push for leasing coming.
- alexhawdon 11y ago
  This is already happening, at least in the UK. I don't have the numbers but leasing is being pushed heavily by advertisers and is becoming the normal way for people to get hold of a new car who mightn't otherwise.
  - branchless 11y ago
    All part of the culture of debt forever.
    - shiftpgdn 11y ago
      A car is not an investment. I lease a new car every 3 years as a daily driver because the opportunity cost of dealing with maintenance and other issues is so high. I have no ownership, it is an expense just like gas and insurance. I am buying the ability to get around freely and not indebting myself as I would with a purchase. At the end of 3 years I can simply walk away. You can get a lease for a silly small amount of money if you play your cards right. Check out leasehackr.com . Right now I could walk into a Ford dealer and walk out with a Ford Fusion for $147/month. Or if I don't want to deal with gas I could get a Fiat 500e for $99/month. I spend more on coffee than that!
      - gvb 11y ago
        Your lease is a debt with a three year term. To the extent that you lease a new car every three years, your debt is forever.
        shiftpgdn 11y ago
        I don't need a car forever. If I decide to move to Singapore or Honk Kong or even San Francisco/Manhattan proper I will probably not need a car. The Fiat 500e lease example above is a great example because I'm only in for $3600 for 36 months. Name a car that you can purchase outright for $3600 that will never need unplanned service, replacement tires, etc.
        LeifCarrotson 11y ago
        It's not about purchasing a car outright for $3600, it's that at the end of the lease you have to (not "get to") walk away. I put 50-100,000 miles on cars that start with about 100,000 that I buy for $3000-$5000. I haven't needed much unplanned service, largely due to luck and buying well-maintained cars. When I am done with the car, I sell it for about $1000-$1500 less than I paid for it. And the insurance on these cars is MUCH cheaper than for a new car. So by not "getting to" walk away at the end, my total cost is not $3600, but $1500. You could buy a car for $10000 and sell it at $6400 if you wanted a newer model. But the big difference is that if I get laid off or have to file for disability or something, I have an asset that I can keep using instead of upgrading if I want, or sell if I need the money. A lease is a liability!
        branchless 11y ago
        Also car markets are highly liquid. If you buy a common car there will be a buyer waiting to take it off you.
        LeifCarrotson 11y ago
        It's not about purchasing a car outright for $3600, it's that at the end of the lease you have to (not "get to") walk away. I put 50-100,000 miles on cars that start with about 100,000 that I buy for $3000-$5000. I haven't needed much unplanned service, largely due to luck and buying well-maintained cars. When I am done with the car, I sell it for about $1000-$1500 less than I paid for it. And the insurance on these cars is MUCH cheaper than for a new car. So by not "getting to" walk away at the end, my total cost is not $3600, but $1500. You could buy a car for $10000 and sell it at $6400 if you wanted a newer model. But the big difference is that if I get laid off or have to file for disability or something, I have an asset that I can keep using instead of upgrading if I want, or sell if I need the money. A lease is a liability!
  - bsder 11y ago
    > I don't have the numbers but leasing is being pushed heavily by advertisers and is becoming the normal way for people to get hold of a new car who mightn't otherwise. At least in the US, the problem is that if you total the car during your lease, you owe the remaining value of the car. That makes leasing an absolutely horrible decision in the US--all the downside of buying a car with none of the upside. How is the UK dealing with that?
    - scrumper 11y ago
      Insurance is surely required to cover the financial exposure on the lease?
    - zo1 11y ago
      Here in South Africa, you can't do either without proving that you have insurance for full-coverage of the value of the car.
    - pc86 11y ago
      What state are you in? Gap insurance has been a requirement for every lease contract I've ever signed. Which means that the difference is paid by insurance. And no, leasing is sometimes an excellent decision, let's not be silly.
tedchs 11y ago
Article seems to speak out both sides of its mouth, that robots are going away for Mercedes, and also that tons of small robots are being added. Anybody else get that takeaway?
- thehoff 11y ago
  My takeaway: They are removing robots that are cordoned off into areas to keep workers safe. These robots are not very good at customizing/changing quickly. What they are being replaced with is people and much smaller robots that work side-by-side with those people. Assisting more than trying to do it all.
  - melling 11y ago
    Sounds like a business opportunity to build better robots.
    - sschueller 11y ago
      The large Robot manufactures such as ABB are already working on such solutions: http://new.abb.com/products/robotics/yumi http://new.abb.com/products/robotics/yumi
      - ju-st 11y ago
        The real billion dollar idea is robots which don't need engineers to instruct them. These robots will simply learn from humans who literally show them e.g. how to pick parts from a conveyor and put them in wire mesh crates.
        sschueller 11y ago
        This robot almost does this, you take its hands and 'show' it what is should do.
        dbcurtis 11y ago
        That is what Rod Brooks is pushing with Rethink. We'll see if it works.
lsv1 11y ago
I'm curious to know if the workers replacing the robots will be German.
crispyambulance 11y ago
ohh... "boot" as in "remove"
- taneq 11y ago
  > CHAIN "ROBOTS" hits 'return' key
thomasedwards 11y ago
A cheaper way of solving this problem would to be to make the cars less complicated. Just offer colour variants and give every option included in the base model. Economies of scale will create your profits.
- saiya-jin 11y ago
  something tells me sales would plummet? one example out of many - what about various gearboxes? some people swear by automats, I would not want such a car for free. leather/fabric interior, various suspension setups (hard & more enjoyable vs comfy & puddy). various light options (each has pros and cons). tyres size, rims design. etc etc etc. I am pretty damn sure I want a different car than you, ignoring color.
- tonyedgecombe 11y ago
  All those extra complications are really about extra profits for the manufacturer, there is no way they will give them up.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- taneq 11y ago
  People who buy custom spec'd Mercedes don't want cars that base-model plebs can afford. The options aren't there to increase the feature set, they're there to make the buyers feel special.
  - shepardrtc 11y ago
    Or maybe people just like to customize their cars. Like the teenager with the Civic and the neon lights, or the guy with the Jeep and the big tires.
  - pc86 11y ago
    No they're not. They are there because someone in Minnesota will almost certainly spend $500 on heated seats and thank you for the privilege while someone in Miami won't.
encoderer 11y ago
On the Mercedes AMG performance line, a single master craftsman builds the engine by himself. His signature is on the engine block. Mercedes doing something like this is interesting but they are a niche, luxury manufacturer (though they are the largest luxury brand at least in the us and maybe world wide). A change like this at Toyota would be more interesting to me.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- ben010783 11y ago
  The best selling luxury manufacturer in the US is BMW. They're followed by Lexus and Mercedes-Benz, but those two aren't far behind either. Toyota took a similar approach to how AMG cars are created when they made the Lexus LFA. They only built 500 models of the LFA, but those were all custom ordered and buyers had a huge array of options to choose from: http://www.lexus.com/lexus-share/v2/img/models/LFA/explore/Lexus-LFA-Available-Interior-Exterior-Colors.jpg http://www.lexus.com/lexus-share/v2/img/models/LFA/explore/L...
  - encoderer 11y ago
    http://www.statista.com/statistics/287620/luxury-vehicles-united-states-premium-vehicle-market-share/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/287620/luxury-vehicles-un...
- dsfyu404ed 11y ago
  I don't think I'd use the phrase "master craftsman" unless my paycheck came from their marketing dept. Being able to do a high quality, consistent job assembling engine after engine is not a huge feat, it just takes a lot of attention to detail. Being able to spec out and effectively execute a particular engine build is on a whole different level and the latter is what I'd be more inclined to call a "craftsman" The former doesn't need to care (but they likely do since anyone with that job probably does automotive stuff as a hobby) about things like how camshaft specs, rod length, piston velocity, intake design and about a million other variables interact with each other to affect performance of the whole system. The latter needs to be intimately familiar with them while also being able to do the job of the former. To put it in terms more people on HN will understand, the guy assembling the engine is like the user of some backed software stack. Sure they might write some scripts that interact with parts of the stack but they're nowhere near as well versed in how does what it does and why it does things the way it does when compared to the engineer who designed and built the stack.
Justsignedup 11y ago
> We’re saving money and safeguarding our future by making a good PR move FTFY. Seriously though, the only reason is because they are customizing and non-intelligent robots are not good at making variations. This doesn't solve the fundamental problem coming of robots who can handle variation. And as encoderer noted, this is a niche luxury market.
- Justsignedup 11y ago
  Exactly right. But they are selling it like some miracle anti-technology movement.
anentropic 11y ago
>“The variety is too much to take on for the machines,” said Schaefer, who’s pushing to reduce the hours needed to produce a car to 30 from 61 in 2005. “They can’t work with all the different options and keep pace with changes.” it sounds like they just have bad software it's not like there are random variations or an uncontrolled environment. in the end there's still only a finite menu of options. don't they just need better software for combining the options? like... it costs more to program the routines than to train and employ people to do the job?
- bryanlarsen 11y ago
  > it costs more to program the routines than to train and employ people to do the job? Exactly. The S-Class is not exactly a high volume vehicle, and it has a huge number of options. Given the low number of vehicles and the combinatorial explosion of different option combinations, it's quite possible that a custom S-Class is unique.
  - pc86 11y ago
    Ford sold more Focus models in June 2015 than Mercedes sold S-Class models in the entire year.[0, 1] [0] http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2011/01/mercedes-benz-s-class-sales-figures.html http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2011/01/mercedes-benz-s-class-s... [1] http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2011/01/ford-focus-sales-figures.html http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2011/01/ford-focus-sales-figure...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
a_thro_away 11y ago
...Marketer-speak meaning it erodes the "je ne sais quoi", that which is undefinable, about very expensive, often hand-made, goods. That is the real reason - how can you persuade big spenders that something is unique and valuable if it came from a factory, a robot? even if said quality may be demonstrably superior? (edit:said inferior).

56 points by monort 11y ago

The rapid updating of car models is either going to be a success or blow up in the car manufacturers face. The sales of cars has been high over the past few years, but economically sustaining car sales year and adding growth year of year is not feasible with the current model of purchasing and holding onto a car as a long term liable asset. Newer business models will be needed to make this shift for newer model sales on a smaller time frame. I see a big push for leasing coming.

alexhawdon 11y ago
This is already happening, at least in the UK. I don't have the numbers but leasing is being pushed heavily by advertisers and is becoming the normal way for people to get hold of a new car who mightn't otherwise.
- branchless 11y ago
  All part of the culture of debt forever.
  - shiftpgdn 11y ago
    A car is not an investment. I lease a new car every 3 years as a daily driver because the opportunity cost of dealing with maintenance and other issues is so high. I have no ownership, it is an expense just like gas and insurance. I am buying the ability to get around freely and not indebting myself as I would with a purchase. At the end of 3 years I can simply walk away. You can get a lease for a silly small amount of money if you play your cards right. Check out leasehackr.com . Right now I could walk into a Ford dealer and walk out with a Ford Fusion for $147/month. Or if I don't want to deal with gas I could get a Fiat 500e for $99/month. I spend more on coffee than that!
    - gvb 11y ago
      Your lease is a debt with a three year term. To the extent that you lease a new car every three years, your debt is forever.
      - shiftpgdn 11y ago
        I don't need a car forever. If I decide to move to Singapore or Honk Kong or even San Francisco/Manhattan proper I will probably not need a car. The Fiat 500e lease example above is a great example because I'm only in for $3600 for 36 months. Name a car that you can purchase outright for $3600 that will never need unplanned service, replacement tires, etc.
        LeifCarrotson 11y ago
        It's not about purchasing a car outright for $3600, it's that at the end of the lease you have to (not "get to") walk away. I put 50-100,000 miles on cars that start with about 100,000 that I buy for $3000-$5000. I haven't needed much unplanned service, largely due to luck and buying well-maintained cars. When I am done with the car, I sell it for about $1000-$1500 less than I paid for it. And the insurance on these cars is MUCH cheaper than for a new car. So by not "getting to" walk away at the end, my total cost is not $3600, but $1500. You could buy a car for $10000 and sell it at $6400 if you wanted a newer model. But the big difference is that if I get laid off or have to file for disability or something, I have an asset that I can keep using instead of upgrading if I want, or sell if I need the money. A lease is a liability!
        branchless 11y ago
        Also car markets are highly liquid. If you buy a common car there will be a buyer waiting to take it off you.
        LeifCarrotson 11y ago
        It's not about purchasing a car outright for $3600, it's that at the end of the lease you have to (not "get to") walk away. I put 50-100,000 miles on cars that start with about 100,000 that I buy for $3000-$5000. I haven't needed much unplanned service, largely due to luck and buying well-maintained cars. When I am done with the car, I sell it for about $1000-$1500 less than I paid for it. And the insurance on these cars is MUCH cheaper than for a new car. So by not "getting to" walk away at the end, my total cost is not $3600, but $1500. You could buy a car for $10000 and sell it at $6400 if you wanted a newer model. But the big difference is that if I get laid off or have to file for disability or something, I have an asset that I can keep using instead of upgrading if I want, or sell if I need the money. A lease is a liability!
- bsder 11y ago
  > I don't have the numbers but leasing is being pushed heavily by advertisers and is becoming the normal way for people to get hold of a new car who mightn't otherwise. At least in the US, the problem is that if you total the car during your lease, you owe the remaining value of the car. That makes leasing an absolutely horrible decision in the US--all the downside of buying a car with none of the upside. How is the UK dealing with that?
  - scrumper 11y ago
    Insurance is surely required to cover the financial exposure on the lease?
  - zo1 11y ago
    Here in South Africa, you can't do either without proving that you have insurance for full-coverage of the value of the car.
  - pc86 11y ago
    What state are you in? Gap insurance has been a requirement for every lease contract I've ever signed. Which means that the difference is paid by insurance. And no, leasing is sometimes an excellent decision, let's not be silly.

tedchs 11y ago

Article seems to speak out both sides of its mouth, that robots are going away for Mercedes, and also that tons of small robots are being added. Anybody else get that takeaway?

thehoff 11y ago
My takeaway: They are removing robots that are cordoned off into areas to keep workers safe. These robots are not very good at customizing/changing quickly. What they are being replaced with is people and much smaller robots that work side-by-side with those people. Assisting more than trying to do it all.
- melling 11y ago
  Sounds like a business opportunity to build better robots.
  - sschueller 11y ago
    The large Robot manufactures such as ABB are already working on such solutions: http://new.abb.com/products/robotics/yumi http://new.abb.com/products/robotics/yumi
    - ju-st 11y ago
      The real billion dollar idea is robots which don't need engineers to instruct them. These robots will simply learn from humans who literally show them e.g. how to pick parts from a conveyor and put them in wire mesh crates.
      - sschueller 11y ago
        This robot almost does this, you take its hands and 'show' it what is should do.
      - dbcurtis 11y ago
        That is what Rod Brooks is pushing with Rethink. We'll see if it works.

lsv1 11y ago

I'm curious to know if the workers replacing the robots will be German.

crispyambulance 11y ago

ohh... "boot" as in "remove"

taneq 11y ago
> CHAIN "ROBOTS" hits 'return' key

thomasedwards 11y ago

A cheaper way of solving this problem would to be to make the cars less complicated. Just offer colour variants and give every option included in the base model. Economies of scale will create your profits.

saiya-jin 11y ago
something tells me sales would plummet? one example out of many - what about various gearboxes? some people swear by automats, I would not want such a car for free. leather/fabric interior, various suspension setups (hard & more enjoyable vs comfy & puddy). various light options (each has pros and cons). tyres size, rims design. etc etc etc. I am pretty damn sure I want a different car than you, ignoring color.
tonyedgecombe 11y ago
All those extra complications are really about extra profits for the manufacturer, there is no way they will give them up.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
taneq 11y ago
People who buy custom spec'd Mercedes don't want cars that base-model plebs can afford. The options aren't there to increase the feature set, they're there to make the buyers feel special.
- shepardrtc 11y ago
  Or maybe people just like to customize their cars. Like the teenager with the Civic and the neon lights, or the guy with the Jeep and the big tires.
- pc86 11y ago
  No they're not. They are there because someone in Minnesota will almost certainly spend $500 on heated seats and thank you for the privilege while someone in Miami won't.

encoderer 11y ago

On the Mercedes AMG performance line, a single master craftsman builds the engine by himself. His signature is on the engine block. Mercedes doing something like this is interesting but they are a niche, luxury manufacturer (though they are the largest luxury brand at least in the us and maybe world wide). A change like this at Toyota would be more interesting to me.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ben010783 11y ago
The best selling luxury manufacturer in the US is BMW. They're followed by Lexus and Mercedes-Benz, but those two aren't far behind either. Toyota took a similar approach to how AMG cars are created when they made the Lexus LFA. They only built 500 models of the LFA, but those were all custom ordered and buyers had a huge array of options to choose from: http://www.lexus.com/lexus-share/v2/img/models/LFA/explore/Lexus-LFA-Available-Interior-Exterior-Colors.jpg http://www.lexus.com/lexus-share/v2/img/models/LFA/explore/L...
- encoderer 11y ago
  http://www.statista.com/statistics/287620/luxury-vehicles-united-states-premium-vehicle-market-share/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/287620/luxury-vehicles-un...
dsfyu404ed 11y ago
I don't think I'd use the phrase "master craftsman" unless my paycheck came from their marketing dept. Being able to do a high quality, consistent job assembling engine after engine is not a huge feat, it just takes a lot of attention to detail. Being able to spec out and effectively execute a particular engine build is on a whole different level and the latter is what I'd be more inclined to call a "craftsman" The former doesn't need to care (but they likely do since anyone with that job probably does automotive stuff as a hobby) about things like how camshaft specs, rod length, piston velocity, intake design and about a million other variables interact with each other to affect performance of the whole system. The latter needs to be intimately familiar with them while also being able to do the job of the former. To put it in terms more people on HN will understand, the guy assembling the engine is like the user of some backed software stack. Sure they might write some scripts that interact with parts of the stack but they're nowhere near as well versed in how does what it does and why it does things the way it does when compared to the engineer who designed and built the stack.

Justsignedup 11y ago

> We’re saving money and safeguarding our future by making a good PR move FTFY. Seriously though, the only reason is because they are customizing and non-intelligent robots are not good at making variations. This doesn't solve the fundamental problem coming of robots who can handle variation. And as encoderer noted, this is a niche luxury market.

Justsignedup 11y ago
Exactly right. But they are selling it like some miracle anti-technology movement.

anentropic 11y ago

>“The variety is too much to take on for the machines,” said Schaefer, who’s pushing to reduce the hours needed to produce a car to 30 from 61 in 2005. “They can’t work with all the different options and keep pace with changes.” it sounds like they just have bad software it's not like there are random variations or an uncontrolled environment. in the end there's still only a finite menu of options. don't they just need better software for combining the options? like... it costs more to program the routines than to train and employ people to do the job?

bryanlarsen 11y ago
> it costs more to program the routines than to train and employ people to do the job? Exactly. The S-Class is not exactly a high volume vehicle, and it has a huge number of options. Given the low number of vehicles and the combinatorial explosion of different option combinations, it's quite possible that a custom S-Class is unique.
- pc86 11y ago
  Ford sold more Focus models in June 2015 than Mercedes sold S-Class models in the entire year.[0, 1] [0] http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2011/01/mercedes-benz-s-class-sales-figures.html http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2011/01/mercedes-benz-s-class-s... [1] http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2011/01/ford-focus-sales-figures.html http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2011/01/ford-focus-sales-figure...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

a_thro_away 11y ago

...Marketer-speak meaning it erodes the "je ne sais quoi", that which is undefinable, about very expensive, often hand-made, goods. That is the real reason - how can you persuade big spenders that something is unique and valuable if it came from a factory, a robot? even if said quality may be demonstrably superior? (edit:said inferior).