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

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

#391

Post by jonfw »

dajohnson89 wrote: post #274
AcerbicZero wrote: post #251

Its not a direct comparison, but having owned cars from Japan, the US, and Germany, watching the videos of cars being made by the major manufacturers makes the difference somewhat obvious. I've linked them below, but just looking at the factory processes, the workers, and the methods used it seems the German process is just designed to build cars with tighter tolerances. The cars don't move down assembly lines with h…

it's worth pointing out that a porsche 911 base MSRP is ~$110,000, while a corvette base starts around $60k.

With similar HP ratings!

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

#392

Post by mattlondon »

mantoto wrote: post #78
lnsru wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Infrastructure in Leipzig is awesome because it was newly created after joining Western Germany for the money from westerners. Infrastructure in Western Germany is crap! My wife uses subway in Munich and there is no week without complaining about delayed or canceled trains. Buildings of universities in Western Germany is a bad joke. University in Regensburg was literally collapsing while one in Dresden got many new b…

Our subway is good. I'm using it every day and just because one train is canceled doesn't mean anything because 10 minutes later the next one comes

10 minutes? Good for you - I get pissed off if I have to wait more than 5 minutes between trains in London.

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

#393

Post by ckastner »

taurath wrote: post #234
ckastner wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I visited Portland a few years ago and the quantity and quality of street food being offered was amazing. There were entire squares packed with vendors. I enjoy the street food scene in London, but I'd choose Portland over it any day.

Over downtown near the waterfront during a farmers market, or food trucks?

In my case: food trucks.

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

#394

Post by gumby »

wahern wrote: post #387
hnick wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We chose the cheap option but don't blame us! This was entirely unexpected!

It's the meaning of nobody every got fired for choosing IBM/Microsoft/AWS. These were definitely never the cheapest. You paid a premium for being able to pass the buck--"hey, we just did what everybody else did and which was considered 'best practice'".

Good insight.

Another related excuse is "you aren't paying for this."

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

#395

Post by Arbalest »

vannevar wrote: post #358

Is this new? I'd be curious to know the last time it wasn't true, outside of Tesla. I'm guessing you'd have to go back to the 60s or early 70s. I actually think US cars have improved tremendously in the last decade, though.

Maybe it finally got into the heads of American executives that you do actually have to put in some effort and not cut every corner. Probably because sales numbers were not in their favour.

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

#396

Post by noobermin »

hnick wrote: post #360
taurath wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of software companies tend to do this too. You had an outage? Oh that was just the vendor. Or failed software projects being blamed on a contractor.

We chose the cheap option but don't blame us! This was entirely unexpected!

This is the problem though, all your competitors go cheap, you go cheap. Customers (often, not always) don't notice until it affects them, and eventually acclimate to the new normal that is trash service.

Just see for example how shitty phone bots have replaced call centers which were already outsourced. The thing is no one chooses a cellular provider based on the customer service, we generally just accept the service will be terrible and optimize on cost of plan which will be what we use it for primarily anyway.

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

#397

Post by unknownunknowns »

tobias3 wrote: post #96
lgbr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then you get to grocery stores, and you have to go to the “fancy places” to even get the baseline of quality you see in the rest of the developed world. All the chocolate is bad. While I agree with you on other points, I take issue with this. American grocery stores are a real treat when visiting. Produce is colorful, plentiful, and delicious thanks to American embrace of GMO's and subsidies for farmers. Raw ingred…

There are already 1873 German Aldi discounters in the US. Maybe it's not where the HN croud buyes their stuff (that would be trader joe's ;) ). But there is a way to get cheap fresh produce in the US now.

Unfortunately we don't have Aldi yet in the bay area, which makes up for a good proportion of HN readers. However we do have Grocery Outlet, which IMO is the best discount grocer in the US, having previously lived in the midwest and southeast.

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

#398

Post by mattlondon »

rjzzleep wrote: post #129
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same in the UK, where most of the bread you can get is basically intended for a toaster. But, it's down to volume and consumption; in my country (NL), bread is a daily staple, often featured in two meals a day - so a family will easily go through a loaf a day. It makes more sense to optimize the production and logistics for a shelf life of days instead of weeks. We can get reasonably fresh (factory-produced)…

I actually hosted some couch surfers from the UK and other places in the world while in Germany. I had a local market with an old bakery(remember that even in Germany the great majority of bakers are now a handful of companies) very close to my place. The bread they bake is genius it has just the right amount(little) sourness and never tastes soaky, crispy around but soft inside. But the point being is that some of t…

I have never seen high fructose corn syrup in the UK. There is a bunch of chat right now about not watering down our food (and other) standards to allow US-quality food here after/if Brexit happens.

FWIW brown bread in the UK has been "a thing" since well before I was born, so there there is not just an expectation for white.

I would wager that the typical couch surfer is the sort of person who as well as focusing on value on where they choose to sleep probably also subsists on fairly cheap basic foods.

Certainly in the past decade or two the UK you'll see a lot more variety in what you can get even in convenience stores in London: white, brown, granary, soda, rye, sourdough, bagels, barbari, boule brioche, baguette, challa, chapati, ciabatta - you name it. It all seems to get sold and presumably eaten. Not saying it is any good of particularly authentic or "correct" but there is a lot of variety in the most common of shops.

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

#399

Post by barry-cotter »

hailwren wrote: post #268
toomuchtodo wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GM knew of an issue with ignition key switches that killed 124 people and required a recall of over 30 million vehicles. Tesla definitely has fault, but legacy automakers have faired far worse in safety standards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch... Ford has had to recall over a million trucks due to engine block heaters that would cause your engine block to catch fire. https://www.google.…

I don't think anyone is arguing that they're the absolute worst carmaker. A comparison to Toyota or Honda would have been a better choice. I don't want a power plant that is advertised as "more earthquake resistant than Fukushima" in my backyard.

One person has died from radiation from the Fukushima accident. The possible range for casualties ranges from zero to hundreds. The evacuation killed over 2,000 people. This for an earthquake ~10 times greater than the tolerance it was designed for. I’d rather live within a km of Fukushima now than 10km of a coal power plant.

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

#400

Post by mattlondon »

nostrademons wrote: post #355
oblio wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be. I find it amusing that from a climate change point of view, both their comments are basically negative: * good windows provide better insulation and reduce the need to heat/cool down a building, plus their reduce dampness since they keep moisture out * while a tumble dryer uses electricity for something which is not much of a chore (it takes like, 5 minutes, to hang the laundry and 5 more minutes to pick it…

A lot of Americans consider hanging clothes to be unsightly (it's even become an idiom: "Don't air your dirty laundry in public"). Some apartment managers will even get mad at you and ask you to stop or hang them indoors if you do. There's also an issue with general social cohesion, inequality, and safety in American urban environments: many people are afraid people will steal their clothes if they just hang them up…

Hanging laundry in the UK is also kinda in the same condition - in your own back garden fine, but if you live in an apartment with a balcony it is usually a 100% hard no to hanging laundry.

Personally I never liked the smell of clothes that had hung dry, much preferred them "done properly" in the drier :)

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