4 ms·

Good, but a lot of models have yet to hit production and here in Germany the only fancy electric cars you can see are Teslas... Also, I don't think Tesla's adv

by kfk 9y ago

Good, but a lot of models have yet to hit production and here in Germany the only fancy electric cars you can see are Teslas... Also, I don't think Tesla's advantage is batteries as somebody here is commenting - it's software and data. Tesla is probably the best in class when it comes to software between automakers. German automakers don't make good software and I'd argue don't take it seriously enough even (just look at status and salary of programmers in Germany vs US). Tesla is collecting data on each of their cars, German automakers don't do that yet. Driveless cars are going to be about software and data and German automakers are weak in both categories. The only competitive advantage I see is production scale, but how long will this last?

adrianN 9y ago
The German carmakers also have practically infinite money to throw at research and development, so they could catch up quickly.
- sumedh 9y ago
  You could have said the same thing when Nokia was at its peak. Sometimes its not about the money, the top execs have to "get it" that software has to be taken seriously as well.
  - patrickk 9y ago
    Yeah it's more about being willing to cannabalise their existing product lines in favour of EVs, and throw away decades of internal combustion engine (and the associated paraphernalia) know-how, in favour of something new. Pretty terrifying for an incumbent car maker.
  - mavhc 9y ago
    Right, hardware people just can't do software (The only exception is Apple). Nokia was making phones then at the last minute picking an OS to bodge in there. Car companies don't write software, they outsource it. Musk's first companies were software based, and he doesn't have an existing business to prop up, that's the main advantage. If he manages to make his one car factory as fast as he predicts it will be able make as many cars as Ford's 30 factories, leaving Ford with 29 worthless factories. He'll need self driving cars just to get them out of the factory fast enough.
- BjoernKW 9y ago
  It doesn't work that way. German automakers are hampered by their mindset not by money.
- wklauss 9y ago
  That is not how R&D works. There's no direct correlation between money invested vs. results obtained. You need time and a long term vision. They can start working today in hopes to catch up later but it won't be fast.
blub 9y ago
>Tesla is collecting data on each of their cars, German automakers don't do that yet. This is a perfect example of how US software companies are ruining everyone's privacy. Company A gets competitive advantage through spyware and then everyone thinks they have to spy to keep up. Almost everything that a Tesla customer does in that car is recorded and probably uploaded to the mothership. When analysing accidents they're able to reconstruct what happened to a disturbing level of detail.
- headmelted 9y ago
  "When analysing accidents they're able to reconstruct what happened to a disturbing level of detail." I'm strongly pro-privacy on ethical grounds, but is this really a complaint you want to make? It establishes fault in accidents and provides statistically significant information to educate both the AI and the public as to what causes road accidents and how to avoid them.
  - simion314 9y ago
    You could have a blackbox that you extract in case of car crashes.
  - blub 9y ago
    Until there's clear laws establishing who can see the data, what can be collected, when it must be deleted and to give the driver control over shutting it off, that's exactly the argument that needs to be made. Right now Tesla does whatever they want with it, including publishing accident details for defensive PR.
- Pica_soO 9y ago
  No privacy in the planes cockpit to the black-box either, but i see your point.
ccozan 9y ago
Re: collecting data. They will never do it. The cannot because the law does not allow it. A more stricter law is coming. For the suppliers of self driving components is a nightmare, they only can infer datapoints. Tesla also cannot collect any data from cars driving in EU, but they gather enough data in US.
- patman81 9y ago
  Uploading of collected data is indeed deactivated by default on Tesla's cars in the EU. But you can opt-in by checking a box in the cars setting. You can also opt-in to share driving videos from the eight cameras sourounding the car, to help improve the selfdriving system.
- paganel 9y ago
  > Tesla also cannot collect any data from cars driving in EU, but they gather enough data in US. I'm a relatively recent driver (I've only gotten my license 3 years ago), but even so, from what I've read and what I've seen with my own eyes driving cross-border around several European countries I can tell you that there definitely is a "cultural" difference in driving between different areas of the globe. More exactly, a driver in Switzerland in Germany will react and act differently on the road compared to a driver from Romania, and a driver from a smaller city will certainly drive differently compared to a driver from a big, congested city (I noticed this phenomena with my own eyes a couple of weeks ago when I went to a quieter part of my country and I didn't understand why most of the incoming drivers weren't "negotiating" more when the roads were getting narrower, like it happens in the big city where I currently live, they were just sitting in front of my car not making any maneuver, waiting for I don't know what). Taking all this into consideration, I'm pretty sure that the differences in driving styles between Europe and the USA are big enough that Tesla's data collected in the States will be of not that much use when applied to European driving styles. Also, see this recent thread on /r/cars of car-obsessed redditors discussing about why German-like autobahns could never work in the States: https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/6p30xd/would_an_american_autobahn_be_feasible/ https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/6p30xd/would_an_ameri....
  - 9y ago
BjoernKW 9y ago
> just look at status and salary of programmers in Germany vs US While you do have a point you probably mean Germany vs Silicon Valley. The average developer salary in Germany isn't that much different from the average in the US as a whole. That said, in industries where software isn't seen as the main product but merely as something that helps selling that main products programmers have a low prestige (and by extension a lower salary) but I suppose that's the same in any country. Case in point: The ridiculously low rates programmers get in the financial industry in London.
- dood 9y ago
  > The average developer salary in Germany isn't that much different from the average in the US as a whole. I think you'd be surprised. Can't find a good source now, but last time I checked US average is roughly double Germany & UK. > The ridiculously low rates programmers get in the financial industry in London The finance industry in London is one of the few markets outside US that are comparable with US in salary, particularly contractors - £800/day is not uncommon for finance devs.
  - BjoernKW 9y ago
    > I think you'd be surprised. Can't find a good source now, but last time I checked US average is roughly double Germany & UK. There's a lot of variance and of course these kinds of surveys are also always contingent on industry and years of experience but taking currency exchange rates into account (which of course is questionable, too because in many aspects of daily life 1 USD probably equals 1 EUR) the factor is more like 1.3 to 1.5 at the most: https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-developer/salary https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-develope... http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Developer/Salary http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Developer/S... https://www.computerwoche.de/a/der-grosse-gehaltsvergleich-fuer-it-fachkraefte-2015-6,3218378 https://www.computerwoche.de/a/der-grosse-gehaltsvergleich-f... > The finance industry in London is one of the few markets outside US that are comparable with US in salary, particularly contractors - £800/day is not uncommon for finance devs. From my experience (which comes from client leads) the maximum is more like £550 / day with the average at about £400 and even £300 per day not being unheard of and that's pre-Brexit-vote. Since then daily rates have decreased.
KozmoNau7 9y ago
No BMW i3s? They're everywhere here in Copenhagen.
baybal2 9y ago
I don't think any "data" companies get any edge out of their data. Big data is about spending big efforts for nothing. Data is saleable to advertising guys thought.
dispo001 9y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if the Germans trained professional car trainers to drive up and down the popular crash sites. Engineers should just engineer. Germany will simply have towing cables in the road and make all cars self-driving, electric, 300 km/h etc By 2022 non of them will have engines.
Tanegashima 9y ago
The best things about Tesla is that they don’t make and don’t have inventory of ICE cars they need to sell.

by kfk 9y ago

adrianN 9y ago

The German carmakers also have practically infinite money to throw at research and development, so they could catch up quickly.

sumedh 9y ago
You could have said the same thing when Nokia was at its peak. Sometimes its not about the money, the top execs have to "get it" that software has to be taken seriously as well.
- patrickk 9y ago
  Yeah it's more about being willing to cannabalise their existing product lines in favour of EVs, and throw away decades of internal combustion engine (and the associated paraphernalia) know-how, in favour of something new. Pretty terrifying for an incumbent car maker.
- mavhc 9y ago
  Right, hardware people just can't do software (The only exception is Apple). Nokia was making phones then at the last minute picking an OS to bodge in there. Car companies don't write software, they outsource it. Musk's first companies were software based, and he doesn't have an existing business to prop up, that's the main advantage. If he manages to make his one car factory as fast as he predicts it will be able make as many cars as Ford's 30 factories, leaving Ford with 29 worthless factories. He'll need self driving cars just to get them out of the factory fast enough.
BjoernKW 9y ago
It doesn't work that way. German automakers are hampered by their mindset not by money.
wklauss 9y ago
That is not how R&D works. There's no direct correlation between money invested vs. results obtained. You need time and a long term vision. They can start working today in hopes to catch up later but it won't be fast.

blub 9y ago

>Tesla is collecting data on each of their cars, German automakers don't do that yet. This is a perfect example of how US software companies are ruining everyone's privacy. Company A gets competitive advantage through spyware and then everyone thinks they have to spy to keep up. Almost everything that a Tesla customer does in that car is recorded and probably uploaded to the mothership. When analysing accidents they're able to reconstruct what happened to a disturbing level of detail.

headmelted 9y ago
"When analysing accidents they're able to reconstruct what happened to a disturbing level of detail." I'm strongly pro-privacy on ethical grounds, but is this really a complaint you want to make? It establishes fault in accidents and provides statistically significant information to educate both the AI and the public as to what causes road accidents and how to avoid them.
- simion314 9y ago
  You could have a blackbox that you extract in case of car crashes.
- blub 9y ago
  Until there's clear laws establishing who can see the data, what can be collected, when it must be deleted and to give the driver control over shutting it off, that's exactly the argument that needs to be made. Right now Tesla does whatever they want with it, including publishing accident details for defensive PR.
Pica_soO 9y ago
No privacy in the planes cockpit to the black-box either, but i see your point.

ccozan 9y ago

Re: collecting data. They will never do it. The cannot because the law does not allow it. A more stricter law is coming. For the suppliers of self driving components is a nightmare, they only can infer datapoints. Tesla also cannot collect any data from cars driving in EU, but they gather enough data in US.

patman81 9y ago
Uploading of collected data is indeed deactivated by default on Tesla's cars in the EU. But you can opt-in by checking a box in the cars setting. You can also opt-in to share driving videos from the eight cameras sourounding the car, to help improve the selfdriving system.
paganel 9y ago
> Tesla also cannot collect any data from cars driving in EU, but they gather enough data in US. I'm a relatively recent driver (I've only gotten my license 3 years ago), but even so, from what I've read and what I've seen with my own eyes driving cross-border around several European countries I can tell you that there definitely is a "cultural" difference in driving between different areas of the globe. More exactly, a driver in Switzerland in Germany will react and act differently on the road compared to a driver from Romania, and a driver from a smaller city will certainly drive differently compared to a driver from a big, congested city (I noticed this phenomena with my own eyes a couple of weeks ago when I went to a quieter part of my country and I didn't understand why most of the incoming drivers weren't "negotiating" more when the roads were getting narrower, like it happens in the big city where I currently live, they were just sitting in front of my car not making any maneuver, waiting for I don't know what). Taking all this into consideration, I'm pretty sure that the differences in driving styles between Europe and the USA are big enough that Tesla's data collected in the States will be of not that much use when applied to European driving styles. Also, see this recent thread on /r/cars of car-obsessed redditors discussing about why German-like autobahns could never work in the States: https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/6p30xd/would_an_american_autobahn_be_feasible/ https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/6p30xd/would_an_ameri....
- 9y ago

BjoernKW 9y ago

> just look at status and salary of programmers in Germany vs US While you do have a point you probably mean Germany vs Silicon Valley. The average developer salary in Germany isn't that much different from the average in the US as a whole. That said, in industries where software isn't seen as the main product but merely as something that helps selling that main products programmers have a low prestige (and by extension a lower salary) but I suppose that's the same in any country. Case in point: The ridiculously low rates programmers get in the financial industry in London.

dood 9y ago
> The average developer salary in Germany isn't that much different from the average in the US as a whole. I think you'd be surprised. Can't find a good source now, but last time I checked US average is roughly double Germany & UK. > The ridiculously low rates programmers get in the financial industry in London The finance industry in London is one of the few markets outside US that are comparable with US in salary, particularly contractors - £800/day is not uncommon for finance devs.
- BjoernKW 9y ago
  > I think you'd be surprised. Can't find a good source now, but last time I checked US average is roughly double Germany & UK. There's a lot of variance and of course these kinds of surveys are also always contingent on industry and years of experience but taking currency exchange rates into account (which of course is questionable, too because in many aspects of daily life 1 USD probably equals 1 EUR) the factor is more like 1.3 to 1.5 at the most: https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-developer/salary https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-develope... http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Developer/Salary http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Developer/S... https://www.computerwoche.de/a/der-grosse-gehaltsvergleich-fuer-it-fachkraefte-2015-6,3218378 https://www.computerwoche.de/a/der-grosse-gehaltsvergleich-f... > The finance industry in London is one of the few markets outside US that are comparable with US in salary, particularly contractors - £800/day is not uncommon for finance devs. From my experience (which comes from client leads) the maximum is more like £550 / day with the average at about £400 and even £300 per day not being unheard of and that's pre-Brexit-vote. Since then daily rates have decreased.

KozmoNau7 9y ago

No BMW i3s? They're everywhere here in Copenhagen.

baybal2 9y ago

I don't think any "data" companies get any edge out of their data. Big data is about spending big efforts for nothing. Data is saleable to advertising guys thought.

dispo001 9y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if the Germans trained professional car trainers to drive up and down the popular crash sites. Engineers should just engineer. Germany will simply have towing cables in the road and make all cars self-driving, electric, 300 km/h etc By 2022 non of them will have engines.

Tanegashima 9y ago

The best things about Tesla is that they don’t make and don’t have inventory of ICE cars they need to sell.