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Automotive EE here… If you would have gone back twenty years and been like “hey, you know how you think the Germans are running ChryslerDodgeJeep into the grou

Automotive EE here… If you would have gone back twenty years and been like “hey, you know how you think the Germans are running ChryslerDodgeJeep into the ground? … just wait until you see what the Italians do… and then the French right after that!!” I wouldn’t have believed it. Turns out the Germans really weren’t so bad. Honestly, Stellantis is making the wrong move at every turn and one possibility that makes sense is stripping the company… or some elaborate revenge plot… because it seems like they speedrunning destruction.

senectus1 1y ago
how much of this is China eating their lunch.. forcing them into poor decisions?
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  Another (former)auto EE here. Their own poor decisions resulted in China eating their lunch. They couldn't stop shooting themselves in the foot, high on their own arrogance of European hundred year old industry superiority. Man, I wish I had a way to digitally export my memory of the townhall meeting in 2014 of a German luxury brand exec laughing on how bad Chinese EVs were. I bet, they aint laughing now, that's for sure. Germans and Italians had a multi decade lead on EV motors, battery, self driving and electronic tech over China (why I entered the industry) but they shelved it because they wanted to sell more diesel engines, outsourced all R&D to the lowest bidder to save costs and invest all profits into share buybacks or dividends instead of R&D (why I exited the industry). Are the German and Italian executives in charge of those decisions being held accountable for the mess they created, or are the enjoying a golden retirements/parachutes while thousands of workers are now being laid off and governments forced to spend taxpayer money to bail out their mistakes and rescue what's left to prevent further layoffs? What were the lavishly paid EU politicians and regulators watching over in that time? To me this is another nail in the western industry players falling victims to their own short sighted greed coffin. If only there have been any past examples in history to serve as cautionary tales, cough, Kodak, cough. /s
  - olivermuty 1y ago
    While this is mostly true, a big missing context is that europeans simply didnt want to buy electric cars for a long time.
    - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
      Ah yes, the classic "let's blame the customer for not buying our shit products", amirite?! How come they were buying Teslas like crazy in 2014-2020 though, if they "didn't want to buy EVs"? The problem is European makers just didn't want to sell EVs to begin with, it was just an annoyance for them so they were doing the bare minimum for compliance and virtue signaling to the EU regulators, and only making some low volume ugly EVs or ICE platforms that they converted to be crappy EVs. European makers were even giving Tesla money for their CO2 credits lol, that's how much they didn't want to sell EVs. Just let that sink in for a second that European companies would just rather pay off an US car company than sell EVs and somehow nobody in the EU thought this was a problem?! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Also, on the topic of EU EV demand since you brought it up, a lot of Europeans are more urbanized, living in apartment buildings compared to US single family homes, so most don't have chargers at home to justify an EV purchase but still need cars to get to work, so of course that without matching charging infrastructure at home or at work, Europeans couldn't justify the purchase of an EV especially given the lower purchasing power compared to USaians. Not to mention that as a double whammy, EU city dwellers are also more likely to be tenants than owners which again, doesn't incentivize owners to invest in EV infrastructure. I live in a supposedly rich EU country on paper, and public charging infrastructure is still severely lacking. Only newly built post-2018 apartments have power sockets in the garage so you can install a charger, the rest? God speed. Government action here has been lacking on public EV infrastructure front, they just gave subsidies for EVs which were ultimately just handouts to businesses and rich people who owned their own single family homes with chargers and solar panels, but now that market of house owners is saturated, since they already own EVs so of course sales have tanked, d'uh! It was just another politically driven short sighted move, and now again, they're looking at fixing just the resulting effect and not the root cause. So in a Kafkaesque way, the huge amount of EU regulation, protectionism and interference had done more harm than good to the EU EV industry versus ripping the band aid during the good economic times and letting free market run its course, so now the industry is stuck with an economic recession to boot waiting for more regulations to save it, which might again, harm it more in the long term instead of making it competitive.
- SV_BubbleTime 1y ago
  IMO very little. China can’t sell cars in the US or Europe markets well. Not only for political reasons, but the Chinese cars just don’t pass regulations and the Chinese aren’t very interested in trying. The one exception to that is Volvo. Which you may think is a European brand, but it is 100% Geely Automotive. A Chinese company. Interestingly, the seemed to buy Volvo to push for lobbying with a good name just as much if not more than sell cars and trucks.
  - slaw 1y ago
    What regulations Chinese cars cannot pass? Chinese cars are excellent at safety tests. https://insideevs.com/news/765522/chinese-cars-safety-rating-evs/ https://insideevs.com/news/765522/chinese-cars-safety-rating...
    - SV_BubbleTime 1y ago
      Homologation, CAFE, CARB, NTHSA crash… lights, signals, mirrors, visibility, software and supplier BOMs, … how much do you know about building cars?
      - slaw 1y ago
        I see you know less than nothing.
crinkly 1y ago
Stellantis are doing a wonderfully disastrous rebrand thing at the moment after finishing a previous one. They rebranded the local dealership and service centre here “stellantis and you” at great cost. No one actually seems to know who the hell stellantis is or which car brands they own or sell. That sort of stuff always feels like a death spiral. The previous disaster was splitting lines. I had a Citroen which I was told was not a Citroen but a DS. Turned out it was both and put together with left over parts from both ranges. This caused all sorts of service problems.
barkingcat 1y ago
What is an EE in automotive parlance?
- alextingle 1y ago
  Electrical Engineer?
  - SV_BubbleTime 1y ago
    Yes. Actually, computer engineer. But I’m so tired of having to explain that, I just say EE usually.

senectus1 1y ago

how much of this is China eating their lunch.. forcing them into poor decisions?

FirmwareBurner 1y ago
Another (former)auto EE here. Their own poor decisions resulted in China eating their lunch. They couldn't stop shooting themselves in the foot, high on their own arrogance of European hundred year old industry superiority. Man, I wish I had a way to digitally export my memory of the townhall meeting in 2014 of a German luxury brand exec laughing on how bad Chinese EVs were. I bet, they aint laughing now, that's for sure. Germans and Italians had a multi decade lead on EV motors, battery, self driving and electronic tech over China (why I entered the industry) but they shelved it because they wanted to sell more diesel engines, outsourced all R&D to the lowest bidder to save costs and invest all profits into share buybacks or dividends instead of R&D (why I exited the industry). Are the German and Italian executives in charge of those decisions being held accountable for the mess they created, or are the enjoying a golden retirements/parachutes while thousands of workers are now being laid off and governments forced to spend taxpayer money to bail out their mistakes and rescue what's left to prevent further layoffs? What were the lavishly paid EU politicians and regulators watching over in that time? To me this is another nail in the western industry players falling victims to their own short sighted greed coffin. If only there have been any past examples in history to serve as cautionary tales, cough, Kodak, cough. /s
- olivermuty 1y ago
  While this is mostly true, a big missing context is that europeans simply didnt want to buy electric cars for a long time.
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    Ah yes, the classic "let's blame the customer for not buying our shit products", amirite?! How come they were buying Teslas like crazy in 2014-2020 though, if they "didn't want to buy EVs"? The problem is European makers just didn't want to sell EVs to begin with, it was just an annoyance for them so they were doing the bare minimum for compliance and virtue signaling to the EU regulators, and only making some low volume ugly EVs or ICE platforms that they converted to be crappy EVs. European makers were even giving Tesla money for their CO2 credits lol, that's how much they didn't want to sell EVs. Just let that sink in for a second that European companies would just rather pay off an US car company than sell EVs and somehow nobody in the EU thought this was a problem?! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Also, on the topic of EU EV demand since you brought it up, a lot of Europeans are more urbanized, living in apartment buildings compared to US single family homes, so most don't have chargers at home to justify an EV purchase but still need cars to get to work, so of course that without matching charging infrastructure at home or at work, Europeans couldn't justify the purchase of an EV especially given the lower purchasing power compared to USaians. Not to mention that as a double whammy, EU city dwellers are also more likely to be tenants than owners which again, doesn't incentivize owners to invest in EV infrastructure. I live in a supposedly rich EU country on paper, and public charging infrastructure is still severely lacking. Only newly built post-2018 apartments have power sockets in the garage so you can install a charger, the rest? God speed. Government action here has been lacking on public EV infrastructure front, they just gave subsidies for EVs which were ultimately just handouts to businesses and rich people who owned their own single family homes with chargers and solar panels, but now that market of house owners is saturated, since they already own EVs so of course sales have tanked, d'uh! It was just another politically driven short sighted move, and now again, they're looking at fixing just the resulting effect and not the root cause. So in a Kafkaesque way, the huge amount of EU regulation, protectionism and interference had done more harm than good to the EU EV industry versus ripping the band aid during the good economic times and letting free market run its course, so now the industry is stuck with an economic recession to boot waiting for more regulations to save it, which might again, harm it more in the long term instead of making it competitive.
SV_BubbleTime 1y ago
IMO very little. China can’t sell cars in the US or Europe markets well. Not only for political reasons, but the Chinese cars just don’t pass regulations and the Chinese aren’t very interested in trying. The one exception to that is Volvo. Which you may think is a European brand, but it is 100% Geely Automotive. A Chinese company. Interestingly, the seemed to buy Volvo to push for lobbying with a good name just as much if not more than sell cars and trucks.
- slaw 1y ago
  What regulations Chinese cars cannot pass? Chinese cars are excellent at safety tests. https://insideevs.com/news/765522/chinese-cars-safety-rating-evs/ https://insideevs.com/news/765522/chinese-cars-safety-rating...
  - SV_BubbleTime 1y ago
    Homologation, CAFE, CARB, NTHSA crash… lights, signals, mirrors, visibility, software and supplier BOMs, … how much do you know about building cars?
    - slaw 1y ago
      I see you know less than nothing.

crinkly 1y ago

Stellantis are doing a wonderfully disastrous rebrand thing at the moment after finishing a previous one. They rebranded the local dealership and service centre here “stellantis and you” at great cost. No one actually seems to know who the hell stellantis is or which car brands they own or sell. That sort of stuff always feels like a death spiral. The previous disaster was splitting lines. I had a Citroen which I was told was not a Citroen but a DS. Turned out it was both and put together with left over parts from both ranges. This caused all sorts of service problems.

barkingcat 1y ago

What is an EE in automotive parlance?

alextingle 1y ago
Electrical Engineer?
- SV_BubbleTime 1y ago
  Yes. Actually, computer engineer. But I’m so tired of having to explain that, I just say EE usually.