Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings • Hacker News Board

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#41

Post by beefield » Mon, Nov 11, 2019, 10:07 AM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #5

This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice. I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in…

> Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice.

I have this a bit uneasy impression[1] that a really significant chunk of US is basically a developing country with bigger cars.

[1] Based only on visiting a few developing countries as well as a few states of US. Not on any statistics or data whatsoever.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#42

Post by jacobush » Mon, Nov 11, 2019, 10:07 AM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #9

inferiorhuman wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're much simpler but they're still complicated and you still require experience to design and build properly. Tesla was too busy breaking the rules to stop and think about why things may have been done a certain way.

I think it is a fallacy that EVs are simpler. You have just moved mechanical regulators to software so the complexity is hidden. I.e. instead of a timing belt you have an inverter etc. Instead of a water pump driven by a belt you habe an electrical pump cooling the batteries and motor.

Agreed, but the potential is there even so, software can not wear out with use. (Corrupted flash notwithstanding.)

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#43

Post by roenxi » Mon, Nov 11, 2019, 10:09 AM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #5

This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice. I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in…

America has a trade deficit of ~600 billion, which roughly equates to every American having $2,000 to spend buying stuff from overseas. Then on top of that there are all the services America exports.

If foreigners are willing to give Americans stuff for paper there is a real pressure for Americans not to bother making stuff and printing more paper instead. That probably influences a lot of the decisions behind American made consumer goods.

> The cheapest studio apartment in Western Europe or Japan ends up with better infrastructure than the $2M duplex in California.

I live a long way from California, but the first stop should always be to check the local tax code, financial incentives and regulations. Most countries I've been to end up having strange tax incentives that influence how much money gets spent on primary residences; and taxes can put a real dampener on what gets done. I speak mainly from experience in Australia where there are massive tax incentives for a person to spend money on their primary home.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#44

Post by tim333 » Mon, Nov 11, 2019, 10:09 AM UTC

A lot of the issues may come down to whether management prioritize financial engineering / making huge bonuses / pleasing wall street vs making good vehicles. The same with Boeing - they used to be run by engineers who wanted to make great planes and then the shifted control to finance guys in Chicago who wanted to make big profits. You see the effect a bit with Tesla where I'm sure Musk would love to focus on quality but has to rush things out to make decent quarterly numbers or risk going bust by not getting ongoing financing.

The Japanese seem to have almost the opposite attitude to finance where they will keep putting money into loss making stuff for ages out of a kind of loyalty which may lead to it's own issues of course.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#45

Post by taurath » Mon, Nov 11, 2019, 10:09 AM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #5

This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice. I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in…

That’s all I ever think of when traveling, even to relatively poorer countries. The US doesn’t even seem to try to be a top tier country in anything that brings quality of life.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#46

Post by ralfd » Mon, Nov 11, 2019, 10:09 AM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #5

This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice. I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in…

> The UX is awful

Wait, what UX does a fridge need? Mine just has a scroll wheel which goes from cool to cold.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#47

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 11, 2019, 10:10 AM UTC

tpush wrote: post #38

atmosx wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen others, Arianna Grande on a amateur video amongst them, complaining about the diff in quality between European and US street food being inconceivable .

Like, US street food being incredibly better or worse than EU?

[deleted]

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#48

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Mon, Nov 11, 2019, 10:10 AM UTC

eej71 wrote: post #17

rtpg wrote: post #5

This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice. I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in…

I remember thumbing through the CR car ratings book in the early 1980s and the track record of American cars was terrible (by comparison) even then. The Japanese cars were consistently good. So I don't think it's 30 years of wage stagnation either.

My thoughts exactly.

Those of us “of a certain age” will remember that this is not new at all.

I can’t speculate on the reasons, but I agree about standard quality levels being higher in Japan and Western Europe; but so are costs.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#49

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Mon, Nov 11, 2019, 10:12 AM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #43

rtpg wrote: post #5

This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice. I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in…

America has a trade deficit of ~600 billion, which roughly equates to every American having $2,000 to spend buying stuff from overseas. Then on top of that there are all the services America exports. If foreigners are willing to give Americans stuff for paper there is a real pressure for Americans not to bother making stuff and printing more paper instead. That probably influences a lot of the decisions behind Americ…

I live in Australia.

What are the tax incentives to spending money on my home?

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#50

Post by Someone1234 » Mon, Nov 11, 2019, 10:12 AM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #5

This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice. I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in…

American bread is particularly problematic as someone that moved from Europe. Until I found bread I liked I'd often joke that it was suitable for storage in a bomb shelter since it has an unnatural shelf-life and tastes like it.

After a tedious search, we wound up buying $2.60 "Sara Lee Artesano Style Bread" which is still less good than a 70c loaf of Hovis in the UK, and certainly less good than fresh made French bread (which in my opinion is world class). But it is very notable that it has a 7~10 shelf life, not one month like other supermarket breads, is actually soft, and not overly sweet.

It is kind of unfortunately that in the US basically passable bread is called "Artesano" and earns a price premium. Many living in the US haven't had the opportunity to try elsewhere to compare. The strangest thing about this is that you'd expect the US's bread to be much cheaper (given the quality reduction) but that wasn't at all my experience (in fact fresher bread in Europe was substantially cheaper than long-shelf-life-bagged bread in the US).