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Global sales of Porsche, Audi, Mercedes and BMW brand ( BMW Group sales increased marginally, but includes) have all declined. The end is in sight for German c
by KnuthIsGod 9mo ago
Global sales of Porsche, Audi, Mercedes and BMW brand ( BMW Group sales increased marginally, but includes) have all declined.
The end is in sight for German cars as Chinese made electric cars take over.
I have had several German cars.
Never again !
Sticking to Japanese and probably Chinese cars in the future.
German cars were decent once.
Now they are notorious for poor long term reliability.
- rr808 9mo agoJapanese and Chinese are very different buckets. What is the long term reliability of Chinese cars? Nobody knows.
- thaumasiotes 9mo agoI wouldn't be too concerned. Hyundai used to be synonymous with "garbage".
- dietr1ch 9mo agoYeah maybe I'll get a Chinese car in 50yrs
- linksnapzz 9mo agoPeople who have purchased Hyundai/Kia products w/ the GDI Theta II engine would, perhaps, take issue with "used to be".
- Braxton1980 9mo agoOne engine issue due to a manufacturing flaw shouldn't be enough to counter their massive change in produt lines over the years
- olyjohn 9mo agoMaybe just anecdotal evidence, but i'm noticing a lot of Kias with no brake lights. I'm suspecting bad body control modules are going to become more of a thing as these cars age. I noticed when GMT800 trucks were blowing DRLs constantly and lo and behold there's a TSB for that. So I don't think I'm imagining things.
- calvinmorrison 9mo agowhat it with cheap imports and no DRLs? 9/10 cars driving in the rain seem to be grey nissans that are invisible 30 feet away
- randerson 9mo agoThe E-GMP Hyundai/Kia EV platform is also unreliable. Around 1 in every 50 of these cars will suddenly lose power while driving due to ICCU failure. Search any forum for the EV6 or Ioniq 5 and this is all over. Mine broke down and got towed back to the shop so many times, where it sat for ages because my dealer was sharing a single EV-qualified tech with 2 other dealers. I eventually had the car Lemon Law'd. As far as I know this issue is still unsolved after 4+ years. (The software recall made no difference.) I loved the car when it was working though.
- jmb99 9mo agoI have a decent amount of second hand experience with used cars, through my brother who is a mechanic and spent a number of years working at a used car dealership. Hyundai/Kia is the only company he ever had to do engine replacements for at said dealership, and he did dozens. All under 200k km (frequently right after the extended warranty on the engines ran out, and occasionally on the second or even third engine for the vehicle). These are cars with good service history and otherwise in excellent condition. Sometimes cars they got on trade, sometimes purchased from auctions, sometimes customer cars (after they were sold). No rhyme or reason, just a genuinely bad design that was “fixed” but never fixed. The only other universally-bad major component is JATCO CVT transmissions. I think his record was an Infiniti QX60 that had 95k km and a blown transmission. Most small vehicle/sedan CVTs he did were in the 160-190k km range, with some lasting as long as 250k km. And of course they were not repairable, since even if parts were available, the entire thing grenades leaving basically nothing left to rebuild. Point being, “one engine issue due to a manufacturing flaw” is drastically underselling the issue, at best. It is an incorrectly-engineered engine that fails prematurely when built within specification, except when the tolerance stackup lines up in your favour and you perform much more frequent maintenance than prescribed. Oh and the affected engines were manufactured over about 15 years (and there’s signs that their current GDI 4-cylinders are still affected).
- Braxton1980 9mo agoThe theta 2 is installed in millions. It the failure rate was even close to 20% within 30k miles dealers would be overwhelmed. It may it be as well designed and that is responsible for some failures when combined with poor maintenance. I think the manufacturing issues bumped it to a percentage that is noticeable. However. It can't be a significant amount because it would collapse the dealer network
- linksnapzz 9mo ago>It can't be significant 1.3 Billion-Dollar settlement. Seems significant. https://safetyresearch.net/hyundai-kias-billion-dollar-engine-problem-that-broke-the-nhtsa-civil-penalty-barrier/ https://safetyresearch.net/hyundai-kias-billion-dollar-engin...
- everdrive 9mo agoHyundai is fairly unreliable. They were up and coming back in the 2000s and to some extent the 2010s, but their reliability has been quite poor in the past 5-10 years and I really wouldn't recommend a Hyundai to anyone.
- a-french-anon 9mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kia_Challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kia_Challenge
- neogodless 9mo agohttps://www.dashboard-light.com/reports/Hyundai.html https://www.dashboard-light.com/reports/Hyundai.html For what it's worth, this puts Hyundai around "industry average", above Acura, Audi, BMW, Subaru, Mazda, Nissan. Below Chevrolet, Honda, Porsche, Toyota.
- mindfulmark 9mo agoAnecdotal, but I'm extremely disappointed with my Hyundai Tucson purchase. It's the first car I've owned. The drive train is gone on it and the mechanic says it's a common issue. Only 140k on it, 2019. It's hard to believe I paid so much for it and got so little use.
- TheJoeMan 9mo ago140,000 miles is a lot of use in 7 years. "expected" design life of cars can be 10yrs/100,000 miles. Sorry to hear about your drivetrain issues. I don't know about the Tucson in particular, but many manufacturers are lying about the transmissions having "lifetime" fluid when the transmission manufacturers themselves recommend fluid changes around 60-80k. But if you don't change it, yes technically the car will make it to 100k, but then no shop will touch the transmission fluid for fear of wrecking it.
- jacquesm 9mo agoI don't mind paying more for a European product, and as for the 'poor long term reliability': we don't know what the long term reliability of Chinese vehicles is yet. Not that it really matters, my car is 27 years old this year and I won't be getting another one but that has to do with wanting a car that is doing what I want it to do rather than what it wants to do.
- dottjt 9mo agoI don't know if this is paranoia, but one fear I have for high-tech Chinese products is that if a world war were to start with China, that they'd have the ability to remotely disable these kinds of products.
- jacquesm 9mo agoAfter the Israeli attack using pagers I think this is no longer paranoid at all. The same goes for Chinese built cloud connected hardware, especially if it is grid connected, contains heater elements or batteries. Inverters, solar panels, vehicles, 3D printers, the list is endless and all of these are either potential fire starters or ways to destabilize the grid. Used maliciously the potential for misery is pretty large. All this crap that wants to connect to the cloud from a country where your average citizen has very limited access to the internet should give you pause: if the Chinese government thinks these connections are A-ok then they must see some advantage, especially if all the services are supposedly free of charge.
- thesmtsolver2 9mo agoSuddenly most of the world doesn't care about human rights? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Brazil_working_conditions_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Brazil_working_conditions_... https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/10/human-rights-ranking-electric-vehicle-industry/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/10/human-rights-... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3v5n7w55kpo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3v5n7w55kpo
- luigi23 9mo agoyes, because when cars were bad and chinese brands were cheap, it was virtuous to pinpoint human rights vs 'chinese cars are yucky and i want to look cool'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_and_intrinsic_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_and_intrinsic_val...
- light_hue_1 9mo agoNo one cared to begin with. Just look up the horrors involved with Apple phones. People want their fancy devices. Doesn't matter if slave labor is involved. Doesn't matter if we need to add nets to prevent laborers from killing themselves instead of putting up with the horrible conditions we force them into.
- asdff 9mo agoDon't ask german car companies what they were doing between 1939 and 1945
- cortesoft 9mo agoAre all German cars the same? Is there a reason they all declined together, in your opinion?
- Braxton1980 9mo agoHey. He has ancedtoal evidence he used to make a sweeping generalization about all cars based on country even though that grouping has little to no value in the cars themselves.
- Grimblewald 9mo agono OP, but as someone who comes from a family where German cars were king for several reasons, who have all become disillusioned and now buy Asian cars, where the reason is simple. American style corporate greed infested German auto-manufactures and it shows at every level. It is most obvious with things like subscription services for basic function, like acceleration or the seat heaters you already paid for, but it has been present in a more insidious way for far longer, like intentionally breaking good design so that small cheap and easy to mass manufacture parts break at predictable schedules. These are then quoted to you at $900+ for a part that will cost you 60 through china, for what is a plastic mould, some magnets and a wire. The cheap replacements work just fine and last just as long. So, over time, we've become so fed-up with it, and it is a problem present from bmw, vw, audi and beyond, that we just started going with Toyota/Hyundai or Chinese EV's etc, and no one has a gripe since. Repairs when required are cheap and easy, often easily done at home, cars drive almost if not just as well, mileage is comparable, joy of driving is comparable, overall there is simply no value left in German cars beyond the status symbol, something we care little for.
- avidiax 9mo agoI haven't bought German ever, but everything I hear seems pretty negative. Some of the recent models have plastic timing chain guides and have turned the engine around so that the timing chains are in the back. The only innocent explanation is that the car is only meant to last 10 years at most, so saving the money on plastic instead of metal and screwing whoever owns the car when the timing chains need to be redone (or ruining the engine when the chain fails) is out of scope for their quality team. There were many older models of BMW that had an electric water pump. If that sounds silly, well, it is. And it failed frequently and was again, very difficult to replace. I just don't have any respect for German automotive engineering. Reliability is job #1. And the company's themselves, well, "collusive" is a pretty good term. I saw an estimate that German auto industry collusion resulted in about $10k of additional cost per vehicle to U.S. buyers. The cases have somehow been kept quiet, but they've at least been caught holding back innovations until the other automakers have a competitive response, and gaslighting regulators into allowing higher emissions from diesels in the name of reducing the size and filling frequency of the AdBlue tank. I've also heard that there's another layer of this in the parts suppliers. Explains how a wiper motor or wiper body module is somehow hundreds of dollars.
- Braxton1980 9mo agoDoes this also apply to electric cars? They use different platforms most of the time.
- brianpan 9mo agoIf we're comparing notes, I traded in my Model 3 for a BMW i4 and I couldn't be happier. It's a nicer car and more fun to drive! JD Power and Consumer Reports both rate BMW above average. BTW, my impression of BMW maintenance from prior decades is expensive and not great reliability. I care about it less now with EVs because there is so much less regular maintenance. No oil changes, no brake pad changes, etc.
- dotancohen 9mo agoCounterpoint. After driving my Model 3 in 2022, a colleague bought his first non-BMW: a Tesla Model 3. His only complaints were the seat and the handling. Everything else he liked better about the Tesla. This from someone who owned three or four BMWs.
- the_pwner224 9mo agoYou can get a BMW for $40k or $120k. Big spectrum. As another datapoint, I have one of those higher tier BMWs and even the top trim Lucid's interior feels like a downgrade compared to my car. The $50-80k BMWs also feel cheap and crappy to drive when I've tested them. Tesla can't compete on anything except their ADAS which is superior. If you're transitioning from a barebones 330i then yeah the Tesla is probably better. But it's not even close when you compare to the top end German vehicles.
- dotancohen 9mo agoThanks for the counter counter point. I actually don't know which models BMW were in this guy's past. The last one was either a 5 or 3 series, four doors, not an M.
- brianpan 9mo agoLate reply, but did your colleague go from ICE BMWs to an EV Model 3? For me, zero maintenance and no more stopping at gas stations (you need a charger at home) were HUGE advantages to switching to an EV. So I also really liked switching from ICE to Tesla EV. But I also much prefer my EV BMW to my previous Teslas. Nicer to drive, nicer features (better sound, HUD, sunroof), hardware controls, door handles that you can open with either hand, better in weather (no rain in the trunk). My family complains the i4 has a smaller cabin, but the driver's seat feels just fine to me. :D
- etempleton 9mo agoPorsche / Audi are selling a lot more cars then they were 10-15 years ago. I think they will be okay. Chinese brands will cut into all establish automaker sales, but the German cars have strong brands that symbolize luxury. Look at Land Rover. There are cars are completely unreliable and they are selling more than ever at increasingly ludicrous prices. I agree with you, but luxury car manufactures largely sell leases. So they are designing their cars for that market.
- monero-xmr 9mo agoI am very much interested in electric cars that look like normal cars. I understand the battery changes things. But why they have to shit up the design of 75% of electric cars is nonsensical to me
- NetMageSCW 9mo agoDesigners can’t help themselves when given the freedom to take things in a new direction, they forget there might be practical reasons for the old designs. (See Liquid Glass.)
- etempleton 9mo agoEarly adopters of electric cars apparently want their cars to look like electric cars, but I am with you. Make them look normal and blend in a stop doing wonky things with the rest of the car like making door handles that are finicky and cumbersome. We already solved that problem.
- toephu2 9mo agoICE cars are on the way to becoming obsolete. Japan doesn't produce many strong competing EVs at the moment. Why are you sticking with Japanese cars? why not American? But yes definitely Chinese EVs in the future when they come to America/Europe.
- PunchyHamster 9mo agoamericans are junk in comparison