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While there are probably horrible bureaucratic structures in Germany's car industry, I think this comment isn't quite fair. Mercedes and BMW are still very nic
by xcvvv 8y ago
While there are probably horrible bureaucratic structures in Germany's car industry, I think this comment isn't quite fair.
Mercedes and BMW are still very nice to drive in. The issue is more that German's generally don't believe in fads, and self-driving cars are one of them.
I just don't want a self driving car, which takes away the last bit of fun of sitting in a metal box: Being in charge of where the damn box goes.
Germans just have a higher bar for "innovation": It has to be useful.
- mpweiher 8y ago> I just don't want a self driving car Yeah, markets are different. In the US, manual transmissions are almost unheard of these days, in Germany they have a market share of >70% overall and >90% in small cars.
- ivan_gammel 8y ago>Germans just have a higher bar for "innovation": It has to be useful. Somehow they don't find credit cards useful and still pay a lot in cash, when the rest of the world already embraced wireless payments. :)
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoAlright then, has to be useful whilst not weaponising their lack of privacy. The rest of the world embraced wireless payments whilst Germans still have a realistic view of privacy impacts. Being at the tail end of that particular adoption curve may still be seen as a feature in Germany. :) I wish their view were a little more widespread.
- fileeditview 8y agoI guess if the rest of the world "embraced" it it must be great? You can pay with credit card for practically anything in Germany. Besides that fact I personally really like to have the option to pay in cash. I don't want literally everything logged by my bank.
- AdrianB1 8y agoThey have historical reasons for that. Hard to understand if you don't have the background.
- ivan_gammel 8y agoI do have the background, just like people from other countries who lived in the surveillance states and dictatorships. Privacy and anonymity are different things and can be protected in different ways, not necessarily by avoiding leaving any traces in daily life.
- AdrianB1 8y agoNot only privacy and anonymity: in my country there was confiscation. It is harder to confiscate cash than bank accounts. Or to block bank accounts.
- jessaustin 8y agoOf course they're correct in that particular preference.
- RealityVoid 8y agoI find it hilarious you're pointing self-driving cars as a "fad". It is such a transformative technology for society, its usefulness is obvious and it's not even deployed, so how then, can it be a fad?
- dgudkov 8y agoThe fad is not the technology but the hype around it. The expectations are overblown. Safe, suitable for mass use, understandable from a legal perspective, self-driving cars most probably won't happen in the next 10 years.