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Mercedes is perhaps the only auto company that is both supremely innovative and supremely respectable at the same time. Tesla is innovative, but they get ahead
by ralmidani 5y ago
Mercedes is perhaps the only auto company that is both supremely innovative and supremely respectable at the same time.
Tesla is innovative, but they get ahead of themselves, and Musk is a glorified internet troll who bullies and arguably lies.
The Big 3 are respectable in that they don’t really overhype or misrepresent, but Mercedes will probably out-innovate them in self-driving like they’ve out-innovated them (and pretty much everyone else) in just about every other aspect that matters over the past century.
Disclaimer: I drive a Toyota Sienna and a Subaru Outback. But I’ve seen a few Mercedes up close (and sometimes driven them) over the years. The only really crappy one in my experience was the ~2006 G500.
- 1970-01-01 5y agoI stopped respecting Mercedes engineering when they (and the others) were caught cheating (x2) on emissions. IMHO, they all had a better chance to compete with Tesla, but they took the path of cheating and global pollution. https://jalopnik.com/mercedes-may-have-been-caught-using-defeat-devices-agai-1848009546 https://jalopnik.com/mercedes-may-have-been-caught-using-def... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal#Mercedes-Benz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal#Merce...
- mempko 5y agoKind of interesting then that Mercedes was an early Tesla investor. Seems at least someone in Mercedes saw the future.
- carlivar 5y agoIs there a statute of limitations on that, or are they tainted forever?
- space_rock 5y agoStatute of limitations did not apply. All crimes were scrubbed by Western govts and forgotten by Western media. Remember legacy auto pays for most ads during news broadcasts
- ahahahahah 5y agoGiven the context provided by the rest of the sentence, they were clearly not talking about any legal statute of limitations.
- Workaccount2 5y agoI've never worked on Mercedes, but if it's anything like BMW, its the equivalent of overtly complex spaghetti code hidden behind a super nice interface.
- judge2020 5y agoMercedes' tech is largely a joint effort with Luminar, so I'm not sure you can consider them innovative in themselves, they probably just know when and where to invest to stay in the game.
- judge2020 5y ago> he only really crappy one in my experience was the ~2006 G500. Try the CLA 250. Their mid and high ends are pretty nice, but they tried to target <40k without sacrificing too much of their margins.
- zaat 5y agoThe comparison with Tesla baffles me. One is a fairly common car with limited self driving abilities that are commonly used all over, the other is an exclusive model. Tesla sells each quarter an order of magnitude more than they yearly sells of s-class. Most of the s-class are irrelevant - they are not sold in Germany. When Mercedes will make this feature and promise available to each A-class sold worldwide we will be able to compare abilities. This day will come some time in the future, but the current move is not leading me to believe that Mercedes is a safer bet then Tesla.
- pavon 5y agoI think GM is doing a pretty good job. Super Cruise is one of the better driver assist technologies on the market today. And Cruise (unrelated despite the name) is second only to Waymo in full self-driving technology. Mary Barra has stated that they want to sell cars with Cruise technology once it is sufficiently mature, not just offer a ride service.
- nosefrog 5y agoFWIW, my friend at Cruise thinks that GM is messing up the company.