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Despite China, IT development is a complete disaster in Germany. All car so called German car manufacturers UX/UI is horrible to say the least. Dieter Rams is

Despite China, IT development is a complete disaster in Germany. All car so called German car manufacturers UX/UI is horrible to say the least. Dieter Rams is the only UX/UI designer, who became famous - outside of Germany. Hartmut Esslinger kind of popularized DR, what an irony, that two Germans made history, but of course not in Germany and even in Germany DR wasn't well known. Braun was a brand and statement, but because the devices were and still are extremely convenient. Braun never put design or beauty in the spotlight - it wasn't recognized as such and therefore not of value to capitalize on. VW? "No one needs Apple Car or Android. We are the world wide Nr. 1 in car business, what does a computer company know about cars? hahaha" Hubris, resulted into a failed attempt to build in 2 years a complete Car OS. It was so bad, I was mocked back then, because I bet against it. I am the only one who successfully build a No Code platform in financial services that became such a hit internally, that it became the standard. dbCORE is its name. Very long story, but design by committee is the norm in Germany, and since outsourcing is the way to go, vendors sell changes all the time otherwise they lose the customer. Value chains like Apple or Google are inconceivable and no one in Business has a background in CS. Porsche 997-2 had the best UX/UI there was. Fantastic blend of nobs and touchscreen. It blew my mind, really. This was 2008. The iPhone came to light 2007! Really, highly impressive, extremely functional and almost no friction at all. 90% was top. And to the haters: Show me any company or product from Germany in IT that is Top 100 globally. Only SAP is or has been featured somewhere below the bottom. And I gurantee you, no one fell in love with its UX/UI...

symisc_devel 5mo ago
BMW's latest infotainment despite being intimidating for first time users is quite decent and intuitive compared to the horrors I saw from other German car makers.
microtonal 5mo ago
VW? "No one needs Apple Car or Android. We are the world wide Nr. 1 in car business, what does a computer company know about cars? hahaha" I have no idea what you are talking about. I think all recent VW cars (since 2018) support Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. CarPlay works great with our VW ID.3. Also, since a refresh a few years ago, the in-car system has had great UX/UI. We are perfectly happy with it and this is after almost two decades of iOS + having tried the systems of various different cars (including NIO). We do not have anything to complain about, except more physical buttons would be nice, but the latest generation is bringing them back (e.g. the new ID.3 NEO). We are considering upgrading to the ID.3 NEO soon (or maybe Hyundai).
- formerly_proven 5mo ago
  The facelift/software that was introduced with the ID.7 is really good (especially the navigation system with AR HUD), but you kinda have to consider that the HN user population is extremely US-centric and IDs aren't really available in the US, so I don't think it's surprising that the opinions on HN lag behind reality by a couple years there.
lysace 5mo ago
100% agreed. I think it's safe to say that good software UX is incompatible with the way German hardware companies are generally run. It's the same old story about how hardware companies can't do software UX, except extra amplified because of the strong emphasis on hierarchy, formal degrees and their, errm, heavy processes.
donkyrf 5mo ago
My 992.2 has AA/CarPlay, and an outstanding user interface, with a nice mix of configurable displays and physical buttons. Fairly certain it is a top 100 product in it's market.
- BrentOzar 5mo ago
  The cup holder situation, on the other hand… (992.1 owner)
  - donkyrf 5mo ago
    I've had to give up drinking trenta-sized Starbucks entirely.
    - anentropic 5mo ago
      a good idea anyway
    - NetMageSCW 5mo ago
      I found an add-on cup holder (similar to one I had for my NSX which had none from the factory) that clips behind the inner center console panel and the cup sits on (or near, depending on diameter) the floor. Unfortunately it is expensive for being a 3D printed part that needs better QC (had to sand the changeable cup part) (the NSX one was aluminum) but it works very well. A better design would be to have a smaller diameter clip-in piece so you can size down when you have a smaller item.
  - sandworm101 5mo ago
    My favorite car was a 92 BMW 325IS coupe, standard. It was a simple driving machine. It drove well. It performed when asked. It had room for four, or three plus skiis with half the rear seat folded down. And BMW took a strong stance against drinking and driving: zero cup holders. I miss that car. I would buy one again in a heartbeat if BMW still made them.
    - ssl-3 5mo ago
the_mitsuhiko 5mo ago
> VW? "No one needs Apple Car or Android. We are the world wide Nr. 1 in car business, what does a computer company know about cars? hahaha" VW was supporting CarPlay from launch and the VW MEB dash was on all pro material of Apple for ages.
- virtualritz 5mo ago
  Ever heard of CARIAD, the biggest trainwreck, er carwreck, of a software company south of the north pole? 6000 people to develop a software stack for VW. Go figure. The fact VW supported CarPlay early is footnote in this comedy.
  - the_mitsuhiko 5mo ago
    Not sure how CARIAD is relevant here. That company was started years after carplay landed in VAG.
  - throw_await 5mo ago
    Nowadays those 6000 people don't even develop anything, they do outsourcing.
Archelaos 5mo ago
> And to the haters: Show me any company or product from Germany in IT that is Top 100 globally. Also I wouldn’t want to disagree with you outright, there are still a few important German companies in the IT sector (or related): Siemens, Infineon, Deutsche Telekom, Bechtle, TeamViewer come to my mind. What Siemens exemplifies is that the strength of German industry is not pure software, but high-tech machinery. While Siemens and most of its spin-offs are doing somewhat okay, the stocks of its spin-off Siemens Energy have risen by ~700 % in the last 3 years.
- joe_mamba 5mo ago
  >a few important German companies in the IT sector (or related): Siemens, Infineon, Deutsche Telekom, Bechtle, TeamViewer come to my mind. None of them famous or being praised by customers for having amazing UI/UX though, because they're not consumer products, they're targeting engineers who either don't care about UX, or don't have a choice in the matter because their company is buying it, not them. Cars on the other hand ARE consumer products and do need great UX, and German companies long forgot how to do that since they operate everything as a cost center and outsource everything they perceive ads no value. >the strength of German industry is not pure software, but high-tech machinery Yeah but there's more margins in pure software and more buyers in the world for consumer devices than for high tech machinery. Apple can probably buy all of Germany's machine tool makers if they wanted to. It's the perk of selling to 7 billion consumers in the world. > the stocks of its spin-off Siemens Energy have risen by ~700 % in the last 3 years. Just like every energy and defense stock in the world right now, but that's to be expected and somewhat offtopic for SW and UX. If we look at some of their other consumer and healthcare spin-offs like Gigaset or Healthineers, they are doing insanely poor, which is embarrassing.
  - sandworm101 5mo ago
    They havent totally forgotten. I drove a 2025 BMW last week and noticed many similarities to my favorite car, the '92 325IS. The speedo and tach both aligned in top gear, the thumb hooks were still perfect, and the cluster still dimmed enough for night driving. Someone at BMW remembers how to do UI.
epolanski 5mo ago
Apple Car and Android Auto are on VW cars since a decade. Comments about this dreadful UI/UX on german cars feels really decade old. In any case I rent cars quite often, mostly get Korean, Japanese and German cars with few rare US ones, and I really don't see those differences across the board software wise. They all suck, they are all slow, clunky and unintuitive.
- holistio 5mo ago
  They are all like TVs. The native interface sucks, you plug Apple in and it's suddenly good. I have never used the native UI of my Samsung Frame. I haven't used any car's own navigation or music app in at least a decade.
  - mh- 5mo ago
    Yep, except on my TV I don't have to leave Apple TV to adjust my climate control every time. (Mk8 GTI)
    - gib444 5mo ago
      I drove such a VW. Once. I still get annoyed when I'm reminded of it! I couldn't help myself and just watched a video demo of it https://www.evshift.com/242850/how-to-adjust-the-heating-and-cooling-features-in-your-volkswagen-with-climate-control/ https://www.evshift.com/242850/how-to-adjust-the-heating-and... The actual rage it induces LOL!
dangus 5mo ago
Total nonsense you’re spewing here. Especially for it being very country-biased in a world where giants like Volkswagen and BMW are highly international. https://www.bmwgroup.com/en/innovation/innovation-network/tech-offices.html https://www.bmwgroup.com/en/innovation/innovation-network/te... For example, BMW tech offices exist in Silicon Valley and Shanghai, among other locations. German cars have been very well-regarded in terms of their automotive interfaces by the automotive press and reviewers as well as customers. Watch any Doug DeMuro [1] video and on the subject of infotainment systems and you’ll see that BMW and Mercedes are up toward the top in terms of usability and customization. You’ll see brands with good technology reputations like Kia refuse to put a GPS map in the gauge cluster while the Germans have been doing it for a decade plus now. I will also remind us all that Mercedes beat Tesla to market on level 3 autonomy. The only companies beating the German brands on tech are EV startups in China and companies like Tesla, but of course those companies are doing so mainly because they are replacing physical buttons with that technology, and generally integrating a lot of gimmmicks that are low hanging fruit compared to the things they can’t replicate as well like driving platform dynamics. [1] I choose Doug DeMuro for this because he’s somewhat “in the middle” on technology. He prefers touch screens over purist physical controls for many functions but isn’t wildly biased toward them or incredibly tech savvy like the kind of person who blindly embraces Teslafication. He’s the kind of reviewer that will miss the “but actually there’s a setting for that” solution for his nitpicks, effectively showing the car as an layperson who isn’t techbrained but also isn’t your dad who wishes the screen was gone entirely.
- CrimsonRain 5mo ago
  Where driving platform dynamics are they offering that helps normal people (not talking about car junkies here)?? All the provide is a squeeze money scheme by making everything paid upgrade, laggy software, buggy software, bad range and much more. There's nothing good about most German cars anymore. Bmw neu klasse is finally a decent answer but it took how many years?
  - dangus 5mo ago
    Time to put up your receipts. What are you talking about with “bad range?” I’m not even talking about EVs directly. Two of the top 10 Edmunds tested EV range vehicles are made by Mercedes. The next 10 vehicles include 5 German brand cars. “Paid update” are you saying competing brands don’t have subscriptions? https://www.toyota.com/connected-services/ https://www.toyota.com/connected-services/ Laggy software? According to whom? Can you link me a review of a German vehicle that complains about laggy software? Buggy software, compared to what? “Car junkies” are a more profitable segment than customers who shop by price and don’t care how the car drives.
enaaem 5mo ago
Not IT, but I think Leica has the best camera design. At around the Leica M6 they decided that the design was done, and every future M camera is essentially an M6 clone.
brnt 5mo ago
Actually... My 2016 Skoda Rapid let's me update the map for free through a user removable SD card. Pretty great UX compared to every other car I've ever had the displeasure of having to navigate with. Software is nothing special otherwise, but gets the job done. Car is 95% physical buttons through. Also, my 2020 Mii Electric is 100% physical buttons. Pretty great. Frankly, I am wary of anything but VWAG at this point.
satvikpendem 5mo ago
> And to the haters: Show me any company or product from Germany in IT that is Top 100 globally. Only SAP is or has been featured somewhere below the bottom. Much as people seem to dislike when I say this, but, Europe simply cannot compete anymore in technology and tries to legislate away its problems, which, while sometimes something good does come out of it like the DMA, it does not help long term when there are no good home grown big tech (or indeed, any sector in the top 100) companies of their own.
- Silhouette 5mo ago
  "Europe" is about 750,000,000 people in about 50 countries. There are huge differences in both culture and economics between one country and another and often even among different parts of the same country. It's probably not a great idea to generalise to "Europe simply cannot compete anymore in technology and tries to legislate away its problems". One of the main reasons Europe doesn't have a lot of big tech companies is that a lot of its most innovative and successful companies get bought out by the giants in the US before they reach that scale themselves. I expect this is going to happen less in the future because of the recent shifts in opinions though.
  - fakedang 5mo ago
    Or maybe they leave voluntarily, because the EU is simply not a place to do business? Because the EU has been regulatory-captured by aging tech entities such as Siemens, IBM and SAP? Mistral, Zendesk, Basecamp, etc. left Europe for the US early on. If we take into account European founders who started their companies in the US right away, the list is even longer.
    - Silhouette 5mo ago
      The EU and Europe are different. 27/50ish (depending on who you ask) countries in Europe are EU member states and they collectively have about 3/5 of the European population. My own country - the UK - is (in)famously not a part of the EU and I don't think anyone would seriously claim that we have no technological innovation or successful tech businesses here in Cambridge. The city is practically overflowing with tech startups either spun out directly from university research or keen to employ people from the local tech community. But what tends to happen is that when one of those companies reaches a certain stage the founders will cash out. Not everyone needs to be the next Bezos or Musk. Not everyone needs to see their company of 20 or 50 or 100 people grow to 5000 with international divisions set up before an eventual IPO. Not everyone wants to go through multiple rounds of VC funding and then have to run their company under the influence of the VC's people on the board. There are a lot of founders who would be very happy to take an eight figure payday after 10 or 20 years of working on the business and then have no need to work any longer if they don't want to and the freedom to do almost anything they want for the rest of their lives. I've personally known a few of them. Some did effectively retire. Others later started something new. But one thing I don't recall a single one of them ever expressing is regret over the timing of their exit. If anything I'd say what is missing here is a culture where people feel the need to carry on past that stage in their startup's growth. And so instead of that successful business continuing - perhaps after some other form of exit for the founders - as a local company that might eventually become big enough to buy up other successful startups we instead see them get taken over by companies ultimately run from the USA because they're the ones with enough resources for an acquisition at that scale. Of course there have been a few that did become much bigger before an eventual exit - ARM is probably the most obvious one locally and for all the tragedies in the Autonomy story it was another - but they are the exception and not the rule here. To come back to the car business we were originally discussing today - I doubt very much that we will build the next Tesla or BYD or even Polestar here in Cambridge - but I could easily imagine a startup here developing the next generation of car control system and then selling the IP to one of those companies as the exit strategy.
CamperBob2 5mo ago
Nah, 991.1/981 had the best UX/UI. It used screens for the controls that need to be on screens (navigation and entertainment), and physical buttons for everything else. There needs to be a screen, but it should be used only for optional features. It shouldn't be required. The 9x1 generation got that. In the 992, you can't even open your garage door without fumbling around with the stupid touchscreen.
varispeed 5mo ago
Engineers in Europe are essentially pariahs, a necessary evil for corporations hiring them. Sure they earn more than cleaners or teachers, but not substantially more. Difference between being able to afford 2 visits in restaurant a month rather than just 1. This means engineering is not attractive and no longer something to build life around. It takes years of learning, patience, trial and error for not much different remuneration than jobs requiring far less commitment.
gsich 5mo ago
>And to the haters: Show me any company or product from Germany in IT that is Top 100 globally. Only SAP is or has been featured somewhere below the bottom. And I gurantee you, no one fell in love with its UX/UI Games count I suppose?
jjtheblunt 5mo ago
> All car so called German car manufacturers UX/UI is horrible to say the least. What? My BMW i4 has iDrive 8.5 and it's excellent, and i've had Mercedes and Audi and VW and Honda and SAAB. the BMW and the 40 years ago SAAB (i bought it very used) both were easy to operate without looking away from the road.
Kurtose 5mo ago
Not a hater, just an example from today’s HN front page: Ableton from Berlin. World class UX/UI leading the DAW market for 25 years and counting. Not “Top 100” enough for validation? Just ask Thomas Bangalter. He’s taken it around the world to get lucky.
- dahauns 5mo ago
  Heh, when it comes to audio software, you could throw a lot more in the mix, e.g. Logic Pro, Native Instruments (at least in the past - shame what happened to them) and - arguably ;) - Steinberg among others.
- sneak 5mo ago
  Live is not world class UI. It’s great software but that’s despite the interface, not because of it. Same thing with Premiere, or the Pioneer CDJ. It’s not the standard because it’s a joy to use, it’s a standard because it’s functional.
raxxorraxor 5mo ago
Software in Germany is simply not highly regarded, on the contrary. It is seen as necessary evil at best. Ageing population that finds itself overwhelmed is my guess. There are exceptions, but they are far and few between.
- jcgrillo 5mo ago
  That seems like a good thing. Mostly software doesn't make people's lives better, instead it does the exact opposite. A society that recognizes that, and rejects the people who build it, is ahead of the curve.
  - jqbd 5mo ago
    Same as with nuclear...
  - joe_mamba 5mo ago
    Yeah but then you get demolished by the economies who made bank with software and loose a lot of your skilled youth to them via brain drain and are left with an ageing population and high welfare costs with nobody left to pay for it because they all left to work in SW in other countries. You can't expect the entire population to share your luxury belief. People at the end of the day want a better living. In a globally competitive environment, there's no virtue, no reward at the end, for dying on a hill as a broke luddite.
    - jcgrillo 5mo ago
      Maybe the reward is that all the awful tech people went somewhere else?
  - skrtskrt 5mo ago
    Well no, the result is they still make a lot of software it’s just really bad
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5mo ago
  Silicon Valley VC once wrote, "Software is eating the world"
iRomain 5mo ago
Well there’s Bosch. Software wise I salute their home connect initiative which is maybe not the best UX but at least it works locally so either it is good forward thinking software engineering choices either it shows neglected software engineering practices.
teamonkey 5mo ago
> Only SAP is or has been featured somewhere below the bottom. “The company is the largest non-American software company by revenue and the world's fifth-largest publicly traded software company by revenue. In June 2025, it was the largest European company by market capitalization, as well as one of the 30 most valuable publicly traded companies in the world.” https://wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP https://wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP
- marvin 5mo ago
  High market cap but universally hated by its end-users is probably not a great yardstick to measure consumer software against.
  - sam_bristow 5mo ago
    No, but it seems to be par for the course for enterprise software.
rawoke083600 5mo ago
No disagreeing with your points. I can see the passion in your reply :) But Hetzner Cloud UX/UI is wonderful, compared to the rivals, Digital Ocean, Google, AWS (yea those are bigger and offer more, but still)
Saline9515 5mo ago
Your comment reminds me of the hostile, to say the least, Munich U-Bahn map: https://drmory.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/TARIFPLAN_Innenraum_2018.jpg https://drmory.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/TARIFPLAN_Inne... I remember seeing it back then in the subway, looking for directions and feeling really confused about it. "Damn why didn't I get a transportation systems PhD before coming to Germany!"
- butlike 5mo ago
  Hostile is the PERFECT way to describe that map. You got me chucking this AM.
- GenerWork 5mo ago
  The concentric rings remind me of atomic bomb destruction maps where they have different rings for different damage levels.
  - wongarsu 5mo ago
    Different levels of damage to your wallet. Each time you cross a circle the fare goes up. So really the same idea, just that here you want to be in the epicenter
torginus 5mo ago
In the defense of VW, their EVs launched with absolutely horrible software, but apparently its pretty good now, and its still the same indigenous platform. And to join in the bashing - I once went to a tradeshow where a software company building infotainment for high end Mercedes cars told me the cars are running k8s clusters with multiple computers. Not sure if that's the red flag I make it out to be, but it sure doesn't inspire confidence.
comprambler 5mo ago
MBUX is pretty great, as it is running Research in Motion’s QNX! Hence the bb touchpads. It plays flac via usb.

symisc_devel 5mo ago

BMW's latest infotainment despite being intimidating for first time users is quite decent and intuitive compared to the horrors I saw from other German car makers.

microtonal 5mo ago

VW? "No one needs Apple Car or Android. We are the world wide Nr. 1 in car business, what does a computer company know about cars? hahaha" I have no idea what you are talking about. I think all recent VW cars (since 2018) support Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. CarPlay works great with our VW ID.3. Also, since a refresh a few years ago, the in-car system has had great UX/UI. We are perfectly happy with it and this is after almost two decades of iOS + having tried the systems of various different cars (including NIO). We do not have anything to complain about, except more physical buttons would be nice, but the latest generation is bringing them back (e.g. the new ID.3 NEO). We are considering upgrading to the ID.3 NEO soon (or maybe Hyundai).

formerly_proven 5mo ago
The facelift/software that was introduced with the ID.7 is really good (especially the navigation system with AR HUD), but you kinda have to consider that the HN user population is extremely US-centric and IDs aren't really available in the US, so I don't think it's surprising that the opinions on HN lag behind reality by a couple years there.

lysace 5mo ago

100% agreed. I think it's safe to say that good software UX is incompatible with the way German hardware companies are generally run. It's the same old story about how hardware companies can't do software UX, except extra amplified because of the strong emphasis on hierarchy, formal degrees and their, errm, heavy processes.

donkyrf 5mo ago

My 992.2 has AA/CarPlay, and an outstanding user interface, with a nice mix of configurable displays and physical buttons. Fairly certain it is a top 100 product in it's market.

BrentOzar 5mo ago
The cup holder situation, on the other hand… (992.1 owner)
- donkyrf 5mo ago
  I've had to give up drinking trenta-sized Starbucks entirely.
  - anentropic 5mo ago
    a good idea anyway
  - NetMageSCW 5mo ago
    I found an add-on cup holder (similar to one I had for my NSX which had none from the factory) that clips behind the inner center console panel and the cup sits on (or near, depending on diameter) the floor. Unfortunately it is expensive for being a 3D printed part that needs better QC (had to sand the changeable cup part) (the NSX one was aluminum) but it works very well. A better design would be to have a smaller diameter clip-in piece so you can size down when you have a smaller item.
- sandworm101 5mo ago
  My favorite car was a 92 BMW 325IS coupe, standard. It was a simple driving machine. It drove well. It performed when asked. It had room for four, or three plus skiis with half the rear seat folded down. And BMW took a strong stance against drinking and driving: zero cup holders. I miss that car. I would buy one again in a heartbeat if BMW still made them.
  - ssl-3 5mo ago

the_mitsuhiko 5mo ago

> VW? "No one needs Apple Car or Android. We are the world wide Nr. 1 in car business, what does a computer company know about cars? hahaha" VW was supporting CarPlay from launch and the VW MEB dash was on all pro material of Apple for ages.

virtualritz 5mo ago
Ever heard of CARIAD, the biggest trainwreck, er carwreck, of a software company south of the north pole? 6000 people to develop a software stack for VW. Go figure. The fact VW supported CarPlay early is footnote in this comedy.
- the_mitsuhiko 5mo ago
  Not sure how CARIAD is relevant here. That company was started years after carplay landed in VAG.
- throw_await 5mo ago
  Nowadays those 6000 people don't even develop anything, they do outsourcing.

Archelaos 5mo ago

> And to the haters: Show me any company or product from Germany in IT that is Top 100 globally. Also I wouldn’t want to disagree with you outright, there are still a few important German companies in the IT sector (or related): Siemens, Infineon, Deutsche Telekom, Bechtle, TeamViewer come to my mind. What Siemens exemplifies is that the strength of German industry is not pure software, but high-tech machinery. While Siemens and most of its spin-offs are doing somewhat okay, the stocks of its spin-off Siemens Energy have risen by ~700 % in the last 3 years.

joe_mamba 5mo ago
>a few important German companies in the IT sector (or related): Siemens, Infineon, Deutsche Telekom, Bechtle, TeamViewer come to my mind. None of them famous or being praised by customers for having amazing UI/UX though, because they're not consumer products, they're targeting engineers who either don't care about UX, or don't have a choice in the matter because their company is buying it, not them. Cars on the other hand ARE consumer products and do need great UX, and German companies long forgot how to do that since they operate everything as a cost center and outsource everything they perceive ads no value. >the strength of German industry is not pure software, but high-tech machinery Yeah but there's more margins in pure software and more buyers in the world for consumer devices than for high tech machinery. Apple can probably buy all of Germany's machine tool makers if they wanted to. It's the perk of selling to 7 billion consumers in the world. > the stocks of its spin-off Siemens Energy have risen by ~700 % in the last 3 years. Just like every energy and defense stock in the world right now, but that's to be expected and somewhat offtopic for SW and UX. If we look at some of their other consumer and healthcare spin-offs like Gigaset or Healthineers, they are doing insanely poor, which is embarrassing.
- sandworm101 5mo ago
  They havent totally forgotten. I drove a 2025 BMW last week and noticed many similarities to my favorite car, the '92 325IS. The speedo and tach both aligned in top gear, the thumb hooks were still perfect, and the cluster still dimmed enough for night driving. Someone at BMW remembers how to do UI.

epolanski 5mo ago

Apple Car and Android Auto are on VW cars since a decade. Comments about this dreadful UI/UX on german cars feels really decade old. In any case I rent cars quite often, mostly get Korean, Japanese and German cars with few rare US ones, and I really don't see those differences across the board software wise. They all suck, they are all slow, clunky and unintuitive.

holistio 5mo ago
They are all like TVs. The native interface sucks, you plug Apple in and it's suddenly good. I have never used the native UI of my Samsung Frame. I haven't used any car's own navigation or music app in at least a decade.
- mh- 5mo ago
  Yep, except on my TV I don't have to leave Apple TV to adjust my climate control every time. (Mk8 GTI)
  - gib444 5mo ago
    I drove such a VW. Once. I still get annoyed when I'm reminded of it! I couldn't help myself and just watched a video demo of it https://www.evshift.com/242850/how-to-adjust-the-heating-and-cooling-features-in-your-volkswagen-with-climate-control/ https://www.evshift.com/242850/how-to-adjust-the-heating-and... The actual rage it induces LOL!

dangus 5mo ago

Total nonsense you’re spewing here. Especially for it being very country-biased in a world where giants like Volkswagen and BMW are highly international. https://www.bmwgroup.com/en/innovation/innovation-network/tech-offices.html https://www.bmwgroup.com/en/innovation/innovation-network/te... For example, BMW tech offices exist in Silicon Valley and Shanghai, among other locations. German cars have been very well-regarded in terms of their automotive interfaces by the automotive press and reviewers as well as customers. Watch any Doug DeMuro [1] video and on the subject of infotainment systems and you’ll see that BMW and Mercedes are up toward the top in terms of usability and customization. You’ll see brands with good technology reputations like Kia refuse to put a GPS map in the gauge cluster while the Germans have been doing it for a decade plus now. I will also remind us all that Mercedes beat Tesla to market on level 3 autonomy. The only companies beating the German brands on tech are EV startups in China and companies like Tesla, but of course those companies are doing so mainly because they are replacing physical buttons with that technology, and generally integrating a lot of gimmmicks that are low hanging fruit compared to the things they can’t replicate as well like driving platform dynamics. [1] I choose Doug DeMuro for this because he’s somewhat “in the middle” on technology. He prefers touch screens over purist physical controls for many functions but isn’t wildly biased toward them or incredibly tech savvy like the kind of person who blindly embraces Teslafication. He’s the kind of reviewer that will miss the “but actually there’s a setting for that” solution for his nitpicks, effectively showing the car as an layperson who isn’t techbrained but also isn’t your dad who wishes the screen was gone entirely.

CrimsonRain 5mo ago
Where driving platform dynamics are they offering that helps normal people (not talking about car junkies here)?? All the provide is a squeeze money scheme by making everything paid upgrade, laggy software, buggy software, bad range and much more. There's nothing good about most German cars anymore. Bmw neu klasse is finally a decent answer but it took how many years?
- dangus 5mo ago
  Time to put up your receipts. What are you talking about with “bad range?” I’m not even talking about EVs directly. Two of the top 10 Edmunds tested EV range vehicles are made by Mercedes. The next 10 vehicles include 5 German brand cars. “Paid update” are you saying competing brands don’t have subscriptions? https://www.toyota.com/connected-services/ https://www.toyota.com/connected-services/ Laggy software? According to whom? Can you link me a review of a German vehicle that complains about laggy software? Buggy software, compared to what? “Car junkies” are a more profitable segment than customers who shop by price and don’t care how the car drives.

enaaem 5mo ago

Not IT, but I think Leica has the best camera design. At around the Leica M6 they decided that the design was done, and every future M camera is essentially an M6 clone.

brnt 5mo ago

Actually... My 2016 Skoda Rapid let's me update the map for free through a user removable SD card. Pretty great UX compared to every other car I've ever had the displeasure of having to navigate with. Software is nothing special otherwise, but gets the job done. Car is 95% physical buttons through. Also, my 2020 Mii Electric is 100% physical buttons. Pretty great. Frankly, I am wary of anything but VWAG at this point.

satvikpendem 5mo ago

> And to the haters: Show me any company or product from Germany in IT that is Top 100 globally. Only SAP is or has been featured somewhere below the bottom. Much as people seem to dislike when I say this, but, Europe simply cannot compete anymore in technology and tries to legislate away its problems, which, while sometimes something good does come out of it like the DMA, it does not help long term when there are no good home grown big tech (or indeed, any sector in the top 100) companies of their own.

Silhouette 5mo ago
"Europe" is about 750,000,000 people in about 50 countries. There are huge differences in both culture and economics between one country and another and often even among different parts of the same country. It's probably not a great idea to generalise to "Europe simply cannot compete anymore in technology and tries to legislate away its problems". One of the main reasons Europe doesn't have a lot of big tech companies is that a lot of its most innovative and successful companies get bought out by the giants in the US before they reach that scale themselves. I expect this is going to happen less in the future because of the recent shifts in opinions though.
- fakedang 5mo ago
  Or maybe they leave voluntarily, because the EU is simply not a place to do business? Because the EU has been regulatory-captured by aging tech entities such as Siemens, IBM and SAP? Mistral, Zendesk, Basecamp, etc. left Europe for the US early on. If we take into account European founders who started their companies in the US right away, the list is even longer.
  - Silhouette 5mo ago
    The EU and Europe are different. 27/50ish (depending on who you ask) countries in Europe are EU member states and they collectively have about 3/5 of the European population. My own country - the UK - is (in)famously not a part of the EU and I don't think anyone would seriously claim that we have no technological innovation or successful tech businesses here in Cambridge. The city is practically overflowing with tech startups either spun out directly from university research or keen to employ people from the local tech community. But what tends to happen is that when one of those companies reaches a certain stage the founders will cash out. Not everyone needs to be the next Bezos or Musk. Not everyone needs to see their company of 20 or 50 or 100 people grow to 5000 with international divisions set up before an eventual IPO. Not everyone wants to go through multiple rounds of VC funding and then have to run their company under the influence of the VC's people on the board. There are a lot of founders who would be very happy to take an eight figure payday after 10 or 20 years of working on the business and then have no need to work any longer if they don't want to and the freedom to do almost anything they want for the rest of their lives. I've personally known a few of them. Some did effectively retire. Others later started something new. But one thing I don't recall a single one of them ever expressing is regret over the timing of their exit. If anything I'd say what is missing here is a culture where people feel the need to carry on past that stage in their startup's growth. And so instead of that successful business continuing - perhaps after some other form of exit for the founders - as a local company that might eventually become big enough to buy up other successful startups we instead see them get taken over by companies ultimately run from the USA because they're the ones with enough resources for an acquisition at that scale. Of course there have been a few that did become much bigger before an eventual exit - ARM is probably the most obvious one locally and for all the tragedies in the Autonomy story it was another - but they are the exception and not the rule here. To come back to the car business we were originally discussing today - I doubt very much that we will build the next Tesla or BYD or even Polestar here in Cambridge - but I could easily imagine a startup here developing the next generation of car control system and then selling the IP to one of those companies as the exit strategy.

CamperBob2 5mo ago

Nah, 991.1/981 had the best UX/UI. It used screens for the controls that need to be on screens (navigation and entertainment), and physical buttons for everything else. There needs to be a screen, but it should be used only for optional features. It shouldn't be required. The 9x1 generation got that. In the 992, you can't even open your garage door without fumbling around with the stupid touchscreen.

varispeed 5mo ago

Engineers in Europe are essentially pariahs, a necessary evil for corporations hiring them. Sure they earn more than cleaners or teachers, but not substantially more. Difference between being able to afford 2 visits in restaurant a month rather than just 1. This means engineering is not attractive and no longer something to build life around. It takes years of learning, patience, trial and error for not much different remuneration than jobs requiring far less commitment.

gsich 5mo ago

>And to the haters: Show me any company or product from Germany in IT that is Top 100 globally. Only SAP is or has been featured somewhere below the bottom. And I gurantee you, no one fell in love with its UX/UI Games count I suppose?

jjtheblunt 5mo ago

> All car so called German car manufacturers UX/UI is horrible to say the least. What? My BMW i4 has iDrive 8.5 and it's excellent, and i've had Mercedes and Audi and VW and Honda and SAAB. the BMW and the 40 years ago SAAB (i bought it very used) both were easy to operate without looking away from the road.

Kurtose 5mo ago

Not a hater, just an example from today’s HN front page: Ableton from Berlin. World class UX/UI leading the DAW market for 25 years and counting. Not “Top 100” enough for validation? Just ask Thomas Bangalter. He’s taken it around the world to get lucky.

dahauns 5mo ago
Heh, when it comes to audio software, you could throw a lot more in the mix, e.g. Logic Pro, Native Instruments (at least in the past - shame what happened to them) and - arguably ;) - Steinberg among others.
sneak 5mo ago
Live is not world class UI. It’s great software but that’s despite the interface, not because of it. Same thing with Premiere, or the Pioneer CDJ. It’s not the standard because it’s a joy to use, it’s a standard because it’s functional.

raxxorraxor 5mo ago

Software in Germany is simply not highly regarded, on the contrary. It is seen as necessary evil at best. Ageing population that finds itself overwhelmed is my guess. There are exceptions, but they are far and few between.

jcgrillo 5mo ago
That seems like a good thing. Mostly software doesn't make people's lives better, instead it does the exact opposite. A society that recognizes that, and rejects the people who build it, is ahead of the curve.
- jqbd 5mo ago
  Same as with nuclear...
- joe_mamba 5mo ago
  Yeah but then you get demolished by the economies who made bank with software and loose a lot of your skilled youth to them via brain drain and are left with an ageing population and high welfare costs with nobody left to pay for it because they all left to work in SW in other countries. You can't expect the entire population to share your luxury belief. People at the end of the day want a better living. In a globally competitive environment, there's no virtue, no reward at the end, for dying on a hill as a broke luddite.
  - jcgrillo 5mo ago
    Maybe the reward is that all the awful tech people went somewhere else?
- skrtskrt 5mo ago
  Well no, the result is they still make a lot of software it’s just really bad
1vuio0pswjnm7 5mo ago
Silicon Valley VC once wrote, "Software is eating the world"

iRomain 5mo ago

Well there’s Bosch. Software wise I salute their home connect initiative which is maybe not the best UX but at least it works locally so either it is good forward thinking software engineering choices either it shows neglected software engineering practices.

teamonkey 5mo ago

> Only SAP is or has been featured somewhere below the bottom. “The company is the largest non-American software company by revenue and the world's fifth-largest publicly traded software company by revenue. In June 2025, it was the largest European company by market capitalization, as well as one of the 30 most valuable publicly traded companies in the world.” https://wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP https://wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP

marvin 5mo ago
High market cap but universally hated by its end-users is probably not a great yardstick to measure consumer software against.
- sam_bristow 5mo ago
  No, but it seems to be par for the course for enterprise software.

rawoke083600 5mo ago

No disagreeing with your points. I can see the passion in your reply :) But Hetzner Cloud UX/UI is wonderful, compared to the rivals, Digital Ocean, Google, AWS (yea those are bigger and offer more, but still)

Saline9515 5mo ago

Your comment reminds me of the hostile, to say the least, Munich U-Bahn map: https://drmory.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/TARIFPLAN_Innenraum_2018.jpg https://drmory.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/TARIFPLAN_Inne... I remember seeing it back then in the subway, looking for directions and feeling really confused about it. "Damn why didn't I get a transportation systems PhD before coming to Germany!"

butlike 5mo ago
Hostile is the PERFECT way to describe that map. You got me chucking this AM.
GenerWork 5mo ago
The concentric rings remind me of atomic bomb destruction maps where they have different rings for different damage levels.
- wongarsu 5mo ago
  Different levels of damage to your wallet. Each time you cross a circle the fare goes up. So really the same idea, just that here you want to be in the epicenter

torginus 5mo ago

In the defense of VW, their EVs launched with absolutely horrible software, but apparently its pretty good now, and its still the same indigenous platform. And to join in the bashing - I once went to a tradeshow where a software company building infotainment for high end Mercedes cars told me the cars are running k8s clusters with multiple computers. Not sure if that's the red flag I make it out to be, but it sure doesn't inspire confidence.

comprambler 5mo ago

MBUX is pretty great, as it is running Research in Motion’s QNX! Hence the bb touchpads. It plays flac via usb.