7 ms·

Closing factories will not be enough to save Volkswagen

26 points by doener 2y ago

pfdietz 2y ago
> Developing software in particular has flummoxed VW. This is reminding me of Motorola, or really any of the old cell phone companies that were blown away by Apple and smart phones. It was easier to get a company that was good at software to make phones, than it was to make a company that was good at phones to make software.
- raverbashing 2y ago
  Yup Hardware engineers (most of them, anyway) make awful software developers. They always get dregged on any slightly flexible process and higher level development.
  - sandworm101 2y ago
    And when software engineers are allowed to built hardware, we end up using touchscreens to turn on our headlights. Whoever decided that we need an app to open our car doors was't a hardware engineer.
    - DanielHB 2y ago
      You use touchscreens to turn on your headlights because it is cheaper, touchscreens and embedded SoCs are so cheap these days that adding one to your car (as long as it is rectangular) is tons cheaper than wiring multiple buttons on your dashboard. The cost of programming those displays is relatively small and fixed, it doesn't get more expensive if you sell 1 million cars or 10. But these companies still haven't managed to have proper processes for the software platforms for their cars so the software ends up sucking. They treat their cars like video game developers, once done and released there might be a few patches. But the next car is mostly rebuilding the software from scratch. On an aside as more people are becoming aware that buttons and knobs are actually nice you will likely see them coming back, but only on the more expensive vehicles.
      - emsign 2y ago
        > On an aside as more people are becoming aware that buttons and knobs are actually nice you will likely see them coming back, but only on the more expensive vehicles. While the inflationary overuse for touchscreen is driven by cost (and fashion), it's not really like that buttons are coming back only in higher priced cars. Dacia being the cheapest European automaker uses lotsof buttons in their cockpits.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    I can design hardware - but as a programmer I know I'm not very good with it and avoid it. I know when I design something it will be subject to things I barely understand like RF and cross talk. I could get a EE degree (either formally or just by self study), but that would be a lot of work and so I think it is better to not do that. Hardware developers fail to understand they are not very good at software and they don't understand the mess they are making.
- readthenotes1 2y ago
  Apple may have produced a few pieces of popular hardware before they produce the iPhone. I expect a more telling difference is whether the management of the successful company is overtaken by people who are better at political infighting than competing with other companies
  - repelsteeltje 2y ago
    But wouldn't you agree that by the time of iPhone, Apple had had a fair share of political infighting and forgetting to compete with other companies too?
    - bluGill 2y ago
      At the time of the iPhone Steve Jobs made the iphone an important project and so political infighting was not done. There is always political infighting, but sometimes it can work for you.
    - rzwitserloot 2y ago
      Not really. Feels like orders of magnitude less than other companies of similar size. And still feels like that today. However, the fact that this sense of 'we are ALL and thus need not bother with anything but company-internal politics and how we influence the world at large' is missing at Apple is now hurting them: They appear to be pretty brazenly picking fights with governments thinking they are the david, and they.. really, _really_ aren't. One wonders why. * Lingering influence of Jobs? Even now? * Their somewhat well known weird corporate structure? * A cultural conviction that they are the underdog, instilled decades ago when Apple was doing badly, a conviction that is cherished with such religious fervour it survives even today when Apple has been top 3 market cap world wide, has reigned the profitability-in-cell-phones charts for over a decade, and in general has a profitability that makes your head spin, it's incomparably large (literally: Compare it to other big corps and it is mind boggling). I just don't know what it is. I find it remarkable that Apple does _not_ seem like it has had its fair share of political infighting and forgetting to compete. It has had its share of that, sure. But not its fair share. Not even a tenth.
  - 2y ago
- dzhiurgis 2y ago
  I’ve just rented a toyota and it’s comical. How people keep buying this??? Car is perfectly fine (despite being an anaemic ICE), but damn fix your UX. People shit on Teslas touchscreen, but buttons on your Toyotas are worse - smaller, crowded and hard to discern. Audio connectivity feels designed by lawyers who wish you to crash car as quickly as possible (thinking about this loud - maybe it’s a good thing, like the tullock spike?)
  - taneq 2y ago
    The last Toyota rental I drove (think it was a ‘22 or so?) sure had a smaller, less ‘app-like’ touchscreen and a lot of physical buttons, but I could use those buttons while driving. I’m giving this one to the Toyota. Edit: Your not meant to try and pair your phone while driving on any car.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    All cars I’ve rented in the last 5+ years have CarPlay/Android Auto, so it is all the same UX. Connect the phone via usb or Bluetooth, and I’m good to go. Can’t say that for Teslas.
    - phinnaeus 2y ago
      CarPlay is a handy crutch for cars with terrible software. Teslas have had generally good software.
    - ianbooker 2y ago
      This is exactly the Volvo / Polestar philosophy. There is a Decoder podcast with their CEO about just this sentiment.
    - dzhiurgis 2y ago
      Except most cars I've tried had shite carplay connectivity.
  - beowulfey 2y ago
    My 2019 Toyota has terrible UX. The higher end cars, particularly newer ones, are a little better (comparing Camry vs Corolla e.g.) but overall pretty bad. Would love to hear people's opinions on car UX though. The Tesla is terrible too, as are most newer car brands. I haven't minded Hyundai cars, and I recently drove a new Nissan that was decent.
- nojvek 2y ago
  Apple had iPod which was almost an iPhone already and they had decades of hardware and UX experience. They needed the cellular bits which they didn’t all build inhouse. Qualcomm is still the modem giant and Apple still uses them.
- sunflowerfly 2y ago
  This is true across many industries as well. For example, today’s SLR cameras have terrible software that is nearly impossible to change by anyone other than the manufacturer. I feel they should be a sensor and physical buttons with today’s phone hardware for brains. Let the user load custom software to control the hardware if they wish.
  - paulmd 2y ago
    not only are they not going to do that, Sony’s android phones delete the firmware if you unlock the bootloader
Kenji 2y ago
[dead]
foobarian 2y ago
I wonder what plan B should be for the Western labor forces that are not competitive with 9-9-6 kind of labor. With transportation as cheap as it is, obviously the two sides must equalize one way or another.
- aurareturn 2y ago
  War & tariffs. That seems to be the way it's going.
- mensetmanusman 2y ago
  996 is self-destructive. The current events have more to do with the entire Chinese society (knowingly or unknowingly) being led by the CCP to massively subsidize their manufacturing far beyond demand curves at >10x the rate of the west. Many of their industrial companies now only survive as jobs programs that would collapse if they were not being subsidized by the government. This is a publicly acknowledged long term play that is starting to bear fruit. 1) Invite tech companies like VW to manufacture in China. 2) Set up government funded parallel factories to quickly clone the output. 3) Compete on price with a government backed supply chain. 4) Flood the zone and put global competitors out of business who don’t have the 10x subsidizes. 5) Reduce subsidies and be the last company standing. Edit: Here is a department of treasury talk on this from July: https://www.cfr.org/event/us-china-economic-relations-jay-shambaugh https://www.cfr.org/event/us-china-economic-relations-jay-sh...
  - novaRom 2y ago
    This strategy is not unique to one particular country. Basically, it happens on different scales but repeatedly in the history (like Japan post-war).
    - mensetmanusman 2y ago
      Having an order of magnitude larger country makes this strategy somewhat similar, but different in kind, due to the new economic distortions that haven’t been trialed before.
stbenjam 2y ago
Maybe their focus on costs is why their recent cars are terrible. I've had a 22 Jetta as a loaner and it's the worst car I've driven in a long time. I've driven older jettas like 10-15 years ago and they were pretty sporty. This one's a boring sedan. The screen is so tiny. Its lane keeping is beyond useless. We had to do a 6-hour road trip, and everyone agreed the seats are unbearable after about 2 hours.
elzbardico 2y ago
Excessive enthusiasm with EVs were the spell of death for german auto manufacturers. Then, the absurdly stupid sanctions on Russian Oil and Gas, coupled with the irrealistic and inconsequential energy transition and other absurdly emotionally charged decisions like phasing out nuclear power. Germany industrial competitivity depended a lot on cheap Russian energy that could only be realistically replaced with Nuclear Energy. Blaming volkswagen demise on incidental stuff like their issues with software is something that only someone as ignorant of the real world as a journalist from The Economist could do.
- lpcvoid 2y ago
  Why do you think that nuclear energy, requiring Uranium, a resource that again has to be bought from another country (a lot of the supply comes from Autocracies), is the better alternative to renewable energies? Edit: And moving away from russian energy is the best thing Germany did since the Berlin wall fell.
  - rswskg 2y ago
    Until storage is solved (and it might not ever be), then nuclear is excellent for base load. Germany lacks coast line for wind and is in northern europe. Nuclear is ideal for them.
  - room4 2y ago
    Germany could power their entire grid using only Organic, fair-trade, hand-picked, artisanal Uranium and still be far ahead of relying on fracked gas and petroleum. Wind and Solar are great, but still require peaker plants to maintain 24x7x365 power. Grid-scale storage is coming along, but is still cost-prohibitive to do something like power the grid overnight from solar.
  - elzbardico 2y ago
    Because solar and wind renewables are intermitent, and the factual reality of energy prices and grid stability in every fucking place of earth that went all in into renewables trumps the all the wishful thinking of the the rent seeking renewable energy industry. The reality nowadays is that for every single GW of renewable capacity generation you forcibly have to have another GW of dispatchable generation, usually natural gas, it is also inescapable that renewables, especially solar, displace baseload generation, reducing its ROI while not eliminating its fixed costs, making energy as a whole more expensive. Most people have no fucking idea of how electric power generation and distribution and are easy to be mistified with bullshit accounting concepts such as LCOE. But what matter is the total SYSTEM-WIDE cost of energy. And there is not a single place in the world where widespread adoption of intermitent non-dispatchable power sources haven't absurdly increased the final costs of electricity for the customers. Of course, lots of people are making a lot of money out of that, a lot of talking heads have their careers based on that and they will say otherwise. So, just move to germany, california, UK or south Australia, enjoy your expensive electric bills, and stop worrying and learn to love increasingly frequent blackouts. It is not that intermitent renewables are useless and can't be a part of the grid under some constraints. Also, if you have enough hydro-power potential, go ahead. But otherwise, unless you come up with a magic storage solution, solar and wind can't replace nuclear and thermal more than for a small percentage. And while we are at that, solar in a northern european country is a particularly dumb idea.
hunglee2 2y ago
VW plan was to JV with a Chinese auto brand (or buy one outright), design & make in China, and then re-import them into Europe. The only way they could get price down for the consumer, at the quality level required to sell in Germany, is to leverage China supply chain and automated manufacturing advantages. VW EV built in Germany currently incurs significant loss per vehicle. This is part of the reason why German auto was so against EU tariffs - which basically scuppers this plan
- cjrp 2y ago
  Wouldn't the tariffs help them sell their own cars though? Collaborating with a Chinese manufacturer would only be required because the Chinese cars would undercut on price in the EU market. With tariffs, they won't.
  - hunglee2 2y ago
    Germany made VW EV are already too expensive (and yet still make a loss per vehicle). Tariffs might give a short window - VW CFO has said 1-2 years - to get to the level where they can make cars profitably and affordable for the consumer. No chance of this
- ianbooker 2y ago
  VW has Chinese joint ventures since decades. They already sell their "jv-EVs" in China, just not in Europe. I think in that regard, they are undecided wheter these products will meet brand standards in Germany. VW as a brand went upmarket in the 2000s, with Skoda / Seat / jvs going for the meat. They became world class in repackaging and rebadging, and EoS helped a lot. That also made them kind of conservative in engineering, since everyting everywhere is super path dependent. You could find the same switch in a Seat Arosa and in a Bentley. They are not trying to make a good EV, they try to replicate their ecosystem as a whole and that needs EoS above anything.
ExoticPearTree 2y ago
I had no idea VW Group did so badly. On the other hand, the ID series... I don't even have words for how bad it looks on the outside and on the inside. And the pricing... very, very expensive. Glancing through the article, it seems VW is doing the same mistakes as other corporations that are not software native: they see software development as an assembly line and think it works like an assembly line where you have an expected output rate.
- emsign 2y ago
  VW had more profits 23 than in 22. It's their VW brand that is in trouble, Seat and Skoda are much more profitable.
  - ExoticPearTree 2y ago
    How come? All the cars are basically identical, just the logo is changed and they look a bit different on the outside.
- dagw 2y ago
  On the other hand, the ID series... I don't even have words for how bad it looks Really? While I'm not a huge fan of the ID 3 or 4, I think both the 5 and especially 7 look OK. Plus the Buzz is pretty cool. I agree that all their ID cars are too expensive though.
  - m_fayer 2y ago
    I waited for the buzz with excitement. Then it came out and the details, and price were... an insult. Do they really want to restrict their consumer buyers to (questionably) fashion-forward rich hipsters? How far from their roots they've wandered...
    - dagw 2y ago
      Do they really want to restrict their consumer buyers to (questionably) fashion-forward rich hipsters? I mean if you have to pick a group to target, you could do a lot worse. That being said 80-90% of the ID Buzz's I actually see on the road are company cargo vans, so that might be the actual target market.
cosmicradiance 2y ago
China didn't look like a competitor until they were miles ahead. "Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak" - Sun Tzu
redtriumph 2y ago
http://archive.today/fXG5O http://archive.today/fXG5O
lnsru 2y ago
I was absolute Volkswagen fan. The Audi Quattro was great. Diesel engines were a huge leap forward during Golf 4 times (20 years ago). 1.9 TDI was great, had that nice 96 kW version. Afterwards VW cut quality. Suspension in VW got worse than in Audi branded cars. The FSI engines came with timing chain problems. Then the big story with diesel defeat device and gasing apes. And then ID branded electric cars showed up and were obviously at least one generation behind competition. And every year the price jumped higher and higher and there was no improvements in quality or design. Current VW is a brand of boring expensive cars with average quality and very arrogant management. This is a perfect recipe to disappear.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jiehong 2y ago
That’s what a global market does: global competition from both Tesla and other imports. Companies come and go: c’est la vie. Yet, it might be too soon to write down VW.
novaRom 2y ago
Is German Economy in a free fall at the moment? Looks like many companies are in a "zombie state" unable to survive high interest rates, high inflation, and widespread job losses happen mostly among high-income individuals? "Green idea" seems to have failed completely, and the long-term effects remain uncertain. Meanwhile, far-right and far-left parties are gaining momentum, that's scary!
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Related: An 'earthquake' at Volkswagen – and a crisis for Germany? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41473376 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41473376
randerson 2y ago
Dear VW Group, please follow Tesla's example and eliminate your rent-seeking dealership network. Then you can reduce prices to a level that customers are willing to pay.

26 points by doener 2y ago

> Developing software in particular has flummoxed VW. This is reminding me of Motorola, or really any of the old cell phone companies that were blown away by Apple and smart phones. It was easier to get a company that was good at software to make phones, than it was to make a company that was good at phones to make software.

raverbashing 2y ago
Yup Hardware engineers (most of them, anyway) make awful software developers. They always get dregged on any slightly flexible process and higher level development.
- sandworm101 2y ago
  And when software engineers are allowed to built hardware, we end up using touchscreens to turn on our headlights. Whoever decided that we need an app to open our car doors was't a hardware engineer.
  - DanielHB 2y ago
    You use touchscreens to turn on your headlights because it is cheaper, touchscreens and embedded SoCs are so cheap these days that adding one to your car (as long as it is rectangular) is tons cheaper than wiring multiple buttons on your dashboard. The cost of programming those displays is relatively small and fixed, it doesn't get more expensive if you sell 1 million cars or 10. But these companies still haven't managed to have proper processes for the software platforms for their cars so the software ends up sucking. They treat their cars like video game developers, once done and released there might be a few patches. But the next car is mostly rebuilding the software from scratch. On an aside as more people are becoming aware that buttons and knobs are actually nice you will likely see them coming back, but only on the more expensive vehicles.
    - emsign 2y ago
      > On an aside as more people are becoming aware that buttons and knobs are actually nice you will likely see them coming back, but only on the more expensive vehicles. While the inflationary overuse for touchscreen is driven by cost (and fashion), it's not really like that buttons are coming back only in higher priced cars. Dacia being the cheapest European automaker uses lotsof buttons in their cockpits.
- bluGill 2y ago
  I can design hardware - but as a programmer I know I'm not very good with it and avoid it. I know when I design something it will be subject to things I barely understand like RF and cross talk. I could get a EE degree (either formally or just by self study), but that would be a lot of work and so I think it is better to not do that. Hardware developers fail to understand they are not very good at software and they don't understand the mess they are making.
readthenotes1 2y ago
Apple may have produced a few pieces of popular hardware before they produce the iPhone. I expect a more telling difference is whether the management of the successful company is overtaken by people who are better at political infighting than competing with other companies
- repelsteeltje 2y ago
  But wouldn't you agree that by the time of iPhone, Apple had had a fair share of political infighting and forgetting to compete with other companies too?
  - bluGill 2y ago
    At the time of the iPhone Steve Jobs made the iphone an important project and so political infighting was not done. There is always political infighting, but sometimes it can work for you.
  - rzwitserloot 2y ago
    Not really. Feels like orders of magnitude less than other companies of similar size. And still feels like that today. However, the fact that this sense of 'we are ALL and thus need not bother with anything but company-internal politics and how we influence the world at large' is missing at Apple is now hurting them: They appear to be pretty brazenly picking fights with governments thinking they are the david, and they.. really, _really_ aren't. One wonders why. * Lingering influence of Jobs? Even now? * Their somewhat well known weird corporate structure? * A cultural conviction that they are the underdog, instilled decades ago when Apple was doing badly, a conviction that is cherished with such religious fervour it survives even today when Apple has been top 3 market cap world wide, has reigned the profitability-in-cell-phones charts for over a decade, and in general has a profitability that makes your head spin, it's incomparably large (literally: Compare it to other big corps and it is mind boggling). I just don't know what it is. I find it remarkable that Apple does _not_ seem like it has had its fair share of political infighting and forgetting to compete. It has had its share of that, sure. But not its fair share. Not even a tenth.
- 2y ago
dzhiurgis 2y ago
I’ve just rented a toyota and it’s comical. How people keep buying this??? Car is perfectly fine (despite being an anaemic ICE), but damn fix your UX. People shit on Teslas touchscreen, but buttons on your Toyotas are worse - smaller, crowded and hard to discern. Audio connectivity feels designed by lawyers who wish you to crash car as quickly as possible (thinking about this loud - maybe it’s a good thing, like the tullock spike?)
- taneq 2y ago
  The last Toyota rental I drove (think it was a ‘22 or so?) sure had a smaller, less ‘app-like’ touchscreen and a lot of physical buttons, but I could use those buttons while driving. I’m giving this one to the Toyota. Edit: Your not meant to try and pair your phone while driving on any car.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  All cars I’ve rented in the last 5+ years have CarPlay/Android Auto, so it is all the same UX. Connect the phone via usb or Bluetooth, and I’m good to go. Can’t say that for Teslas.
  - phinnaeus 2y ago
    CarPlay is a handy crutch for cars with terrible software. Teslas have had generally good software.
  - ianbooker 2y ago
    This is exactly the Volvo / Polestar philosophy. There is a Decoder podcast with their CEO about just this sentiment.
  - dzhiurgis 2y ago
    Except most cars I've tried had shite carplay connectivity.
- beowulfey 2y ago
  My 2019 Toyota has terrible UX. The higher end cars, particularly newer ones, are a little better (comparing Camry vs Corolla e.g.) but overall pretty bad. Would love to hear people's opinions on car UX though. The Tesla is terrible too, as are most newer car brands. I haven't minded Hyundai cars, and I recently drove a new Nissan that was decent.
nojvek 2y ago
Apple had iPod which was almost an iPhone already and they had decades of hardware and UX experience. They needed the cellular bits which they didn’t all build inhouse. Qualcomm is still the modem giant and Apple still uses them.
sunflowerfly 2y ago
This is true across many industries as well. For example, today’s SLR cameras have terrible software that is nearly impossible to change by anyone other than the manufacturer. I feel they should be a sensor and physical buttons with today’s phone hardware for brains. Let the user load custom software to control the hardware if they wish.
- paulmd 2y ago
  not only are they not going to do that, Sony’s android phones delete the firmware if you unlock the bootloader

Kenji 2y ago

[dead]

foobarian 2y ago

I wonder what plan B should be for the Western labor forces that are not competitive with 9-9-6 kind of labor. With transportation as cheap as it is, obviously the two sides must equalize one way or another.

aurareturn 2y ago
War & tariffs. That seems to be the way it's going.
mensetmanusman 2y ago
996 is self-destructive. The current events have more to do with the entire Chinese society (knowingly or unknowingly) being led by the CCP to massively subsidize their manufacturing far beyond demand curves at >10x the rate of the west. Many of their industrial companies now only survive as jobs programs that would collapse if they were not being subsidized by the government. This is a publicly acknowledged long term play that is starting to bear fruit. 1) Invite tech companies like VW to manufacture in China. 2) Set up government funded parallel factories to quickly clone the output. 3) Compete on price with a government backed supply chain. 4) Flood the zone and put global competitors out of business who don’t have the 10x subsidizes. 5) Reduce subsidies and be the last company standing. Edit: Here is a department of treasury talk on this from July: https://www.cfr.org/event/us-china-economic-relations-jay-shambaugh https://www.cfr.org/event/us-china-economic-relations-jay-sh...
- novaRom 2y ago
  This strategy is not unique to one particular country. Basically, it happens on different scales but repeatedly in the history (like Japan post-war).
  - mensetmanusman 2y ago
    Having an order of magnitude larger country makes this strategy somewhat similar, but different in kind, due to the new economic distortions that haven’t been trialed before.

stbenjam 2y ago

Maybe their focus on costs is why their recent cars are terrible. I've had a 22 Jetta as a loaner and it's the worst car I've driven in a long time. I've driven older jettas like 10-15 years ago and they were pretty sporty. This one's a boring sedan. The screen is so tiny. Its lane keeping is beyond useless. We had to do a 6-hour road trip, and everyone agreed the seats are unbearable after about 2 hours.

elzbardico 2y ago

Excessive enthusiasm with EVs were the spell of death for german auto manufacturers. Then, the absurdly stupid sanctions on Russian Oil and Gas, coupled with the irrealistic and inconsequential energy transition and other absurdly emotionally charged decisions like phasing out nuclear power. Germany industrial competitivity depended a lot on cheap Russian energy that could only be realistically replaced with Nuclear Energy. Blaming volkswagen demise on incidental stuff like their issues with software is something that only someone as ignorant of the real world as a journalist from The Economist could do.

lpcvoid 2y ago
Why do you think that nuclear energy, requiring Uranium, a resource that again has to be bought from another country (a lot of the supply comes from Autocracies), is the better alternative to renewable energies? Edit: And moving away from russian energy is the best thing Germany did since the Berlin wall fell.
- rswskg 2y ago
  Until storage is solved (and it might not ever be), then nuclear is excellent for base load. Germany lacks coast line for wind and is in northern europe. Nuclear is ideal for them.
- room4 2y ago
  Germany could power their entire grid using only Organic, fair-trade, hand-picked, artisanal Uranium and still be far ahead of relying on fracked gas and petroleum. Wind and Solar are great, but still require peaker plants to maintain 24x7x365 power. Grid-scale storage is coming along, but is still cost-prohibitive to do something like power the grid overnight from solar.
- elzbardico 2y ago
  Because solar and wind renewables are intermitent, and the factual reality of energy prices and grid stability in every fucking place of earth that went all in into renewables trumps the all the wishful thinking of the the rent seeking renewable energy industry. The reality nowadays is that for every single GW of renewable capacity generation you forcibly have to have another GW of dispatchable generation, usually natural gas, it is also inescapable that renewables, especially solar, displace baseload generation, reducing its ROI while not eliminating its fixed costs, making energy as a whole more expensive. Most people have no fucking idea of how electric power generation and distribution and are easy to be mistified with bullshit accounting concepts such as LCOE. But what matter is the total SYSTEM-WIDE cost of energy. And there is not a single place in the world where widespread adoption of intermitent non-dispatchable power sources haven't absurdly increased the final costs of electricity for the customers. Of course, lots of people are making a lot of money out of that, a lot of talking heads have their careers based on that and they will say otherwise. So, just move to germany, california, UK or south Australia, enjoy your expensive electric bills, and stop worrying and learn to love increasingly frequent blackouts. It is not that intermitent renewables are useless and can't be a part of the grid under some constraints. Also, if you have enough hydro-power potential, go ahead. But otherwise, unless you come up with a magic storage solution, solar and wind can't replace nuclear and thermal more than for a small percentage. And while we are at that, solar in a northern european country is a particularly dumb idea.

hunglee2 2y ago

VW plan was to JV with a Chinese auto brand (or buy one outright), design & make in China, and then re-import them into Europe. The only way they could get price down for the consumer, at the quality level required to sell in Germany, is to leverage China supply chain and automated manufacturing advantages. VW EV built in Germany currently incurs significant loss per vehicle. This is part of the reason why German auto was so against EU tariffs - which basically scuppers this plan

cjrp 2y ago
Wouldn't the tariffs help them sell their own cars though? Collaborating with a Chinese manufacturer would only be required because the Chinese cars would undercut on price in the EU market. With tariffs, they won't.
- hunglee2 2y ago
  Germany made VW EV are already too expensive (and yet still make a loss per vehicle). Tariffs might give a short window - VW CFO has said 1-2 years - to get to the level where they can make cars profitably and affordable for the consumer. No chance of this
ianbooker 2y ago
VW has Chinese joint ventures since decades. They already sell their "jv-EVs" in China, just not in Europe. I think in that regard, they are undecided wheter these products will meet brand standards in Germany. VW as a brand went upmarket in the 2000s, with Skoda / Seat / jvs going for the meat. They became world class in repackaging and rebadging, and EoS helped a lot. That also made them kind of conservative in engineering, since everyting everywhere is super path dependent. You could find the same switch in a Seat Arosa and in a Bentley. They are not trying to make a good EV, they try to replicate their ecosystem as a whole and that needs EoS above anything.

ExoticPearTree 2y ago

I had no idea VW Group did so badly. On the other hand, the ID series... I don't even have words for how bad it looks on the outside and on the inside. And the pricing... very, very expensive. Glancing through the article, it seems VW is doing the same mistakes as other corporations that are not software native: they see software development as an assembly line and think it works like an assembly line where you have an expected output rate.

emsign 2y ago
VW had more profits 23 than in 22. It's their VW brand that is in trouble, Seat and Skoda are much more profitable.
- ExoticPearTree 2y ago
  How come? All the cars are basically identical, just the logo is changed and they look a bit different on the outside.
dagw 2y ago
On the other hand, the ID series... I don't even have words for how bad it looks Really? While I'm not a huge fan of the ID 3 or 4, I think both the 5 and especially 7 look OK. Plus the Buzz is pretty cool. I agree that all their ID cars are too expensive though.
- m_fayer 2y ago
  I waited for the buzz with excitement. Then it came out and the details, and price were... an insult. Do they really want to restrict their consumer buyers to (questionably) fashion-forward rich hipsters? How far from their roots they've wandered...
  - dagw 2y ago
    Do they really want to restrict their consumer buyers to (questionably) fashion-forward rich hipsters? I mean if you have to pick a group to target, you could do a lot worse. That being said 80-90% of the ID Buzz's I actually see on the road are company cargo vans, so that might be the actual target market.

cosmicradiance 2y ago

China didn't look like a competitor until they were miles ahead. "Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak" - Sun Tzu

redtriumph 2y ago

http://archive.today/fXG5O http://archive.today/fXG5O

lnsru 2y ago

I was absolute Volkswagen fan. The Audi Quattro was great. Diesel engines were a huge leap forward during Golf 4 times (20 years ago). 1.9 TDI was great, had that nice 96 kW version. Afterwards VW cut quality. Suspension in VW got worse than in Audi branded cars. The FSI engines came with timing chain problems. Then the big story with diesel defeat device and gasing apes. And then ID branded electric cars showed up and were obviously at least one generation behind competition. And every year the price jumped higher and higher and there was no improvements in quality or design. Current VW is a brand of boring expensive cars with average quality and very arrogant management. This is a perfect recipe to disappear.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

jiehong 2y ago

That’s what a global market does: global competition from both Tesla and other imports. Companies come and go: c’est la vie. Yet, it might be too soon to write down VW.

novaRom 2y ago

Is German Economy in a free fall at the moment? Looks like many companies are in a "zombie state" unable to survive high interest rates, high inflation, and widespread job losses happen mostly among high-income individuals? "Green idea" seems to have failed completely, and the long-term effects remain uncertain. Meanwhile, far-right and far-left parties are gaining momentum, that's scary!

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

Related: An 'earthquake' at Volkswagen – and a crisis for Germany? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41473376 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41473376

randerson 2y ago

Dear VW Group, please follow Tesla's example and eliminate your rent-seeking dealership network. Then you can reduce prices to a level that customers are willing to pay.