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Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian

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Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian

#71

Post by constantcrying »

dagw wrote: post #58
constantcrying wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but Skoda is already developing next year's platform which VW will use. Do you have any evidence for Skoda developing a platform on their own? Audi and Porsche did do their own platform development, but that was never used by VW or Seat or Skoda and was for a completely different market segment.

Do you have any evidence for Skoda developing a platform on their own? https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/skoda-handed-con...

This platform has been developed by VW over a decade ago. It is not something which Skoda has developed on their own, it is Skoda getting to do legacy support for one small part of a large platform family.

Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian

#72

Post by sveme »

constantcrying wrote: post #39
swores wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or even make it a full acquisition, but allow VW to remain a separate organisation with its own CEO and own board who answer to Apple's shareholders (and/or to the very top Apple execs) rather than to a separate group of shareholders? I.E. securing any future VW profits, and ensuring that the IP licensing deal is indefinite, while staying hands off and allowing VW to keep doing what they do with the exception of usin…

VW has comparable revenue to Apple, 4 times the employees, twice the assets and triple the equity. Additionally it can only be bought by negotiating with a single family. No, apple can not buy VW. This idea is totally absurd.

The state of Lower Saxony, where VW is located, is also a 20% stakeholder and politically extremely influential.

Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian

#73

Post by sveme »

n_ary wrote: post #66
constantcrying wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do instead? The VW processes for mechanical, manufacturing and mechatronics engineering seem to work reasonably well. How do you change the culture of such a large company, without breaking what works?

The core issues of such daughter concerns is that, despite being a separate thing, a lot of "leadership" people from core management are shipped to run the separate thing. These leadership people carry over the whole process and cultural mess into the new place while claiming to be "startup culture". Secondly, one major issue that frequently occurs but goes unnoticed is that, the pay is abysmal. Basically, the leader…

Leadership at Cariad also seems to have a background in mechanical engineering, so those processes translate. You need people with hands-on software engineering experience to create a new culture that works for software development.

Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian

#74

Post by dagw »

constantcrying wrote: post #71
dagw wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any evidence for Skoda developing a platform on their own? https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/skoda-handed-con...

This platform has been developed by VW over a decade ago. It is not something which Skoda has developed on their own, it is Skoda getting to do legacy support for one small part of a large platform family.

"...the Czech manufacturer's development of the specialised MQB-A0-IN"

Not developing as in starting from zero, but developing as in taking an existing platform and modifying/improving it for a new series of cars (in this case simplifying the platform to make it cheaper to produce, and targeting the very lowest end of the car market). Admittedly not a platform we're likely to see in 'the west', and sure it's nothing fancy, but I guess you have to start somewhere.

edit: reading back through the original thread, I agree that you are correct that Skoda is not developing a ground up platform that will be the basis for several VAG cars.

Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian

#75

Post by kcb »

constantcrying wrote: post #21
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They even tried to create a separate company This is an attempt to sidestep the politically hairy problem of changing a company’s culture. This never works because the daughter company either gets eaten by the more powerful parent company‘s culture, or their output is ignored and never integrated back into the parent.

What do you do instead? The VW processes for mechanical, manufacturing and mechatronics engineering seem to work reasonably well. How do you change the culture of such a large company, without breaking what works?

Don't treat all software development as "IT".

Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian

#76

Post by constantcrying »

kcb wrote: post #75
constantcrying wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do instead? The VW processes for mechanical, manufacturing and mechatronics engineering seem to work reasonably well. How do you change the culture of such a large company, without breaking what works?

Don't treat all software development as "IT".

What did you mean? Where did I even come close to doing that?

Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian

#77

Post by constantcrying »

dagw wrote: post #74
constantcrying wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This platform has been developed by VW over a decade ago. It is not something which Skoda has developed on their own, it is Skoda getting to do legacy support for one small part of a large platform family.

"...the Czech manufacturer's development of the specialised MQB-A0-IN" Not developing as in starting from zero, but developing as in taking an existing platform and modifying/improving it for a new series of cars (in this case simplifying the platform to make it cheaper to produce, and targeting the very lowest end of the car market). Admittedly not a platform we're likely to see in 'the west', and sure it's nothing…

Which is completely different from developing your own platform.

And it definitely isn't something which VW uses to base their own cars on.

Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian

#78

Post by kcb »

constantcrying wrote: post #76
kcb wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't treat all software development as "IT".

What did you mean? Where did I even come close to doing that?

Sorry, I meant as a response to your question. But point is, software at European non-software companies gets grouped in with IT. Treated as a support team rather than a revenue team, with salaries to match.

Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian

#79

Post by morbicer »

lostlogin wrote: post #25
neals wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VW has had large problems getting their software processes straight. They've thrown money at the problem for years (instead of changing company culture, which needs to happen first) so I'm not surprised they'd buy a whole car company just for the software.

So there is Apple, a massive company that makes software and has struggled with its car project, and VW, a massive company that makes cars and has struggle with software. In another universe, I wonder if this could have been a partnership?

Apple makes stellar HW but their software is kinda meh.

Crippled ipadOS, lagging Safari, abysmal window management of macOS, total disaster of XCode, dumb Siri, degrading iTunes and iCloud isn't spotless either.

Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian

#80

Post by ajb »

constantcrying wrote: post #33
ajb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple regularly does acquisitions (like, multiple per year), so I guess it's not impossible - but they seem to usually be much smaller companies which presumably assimilate. Their last big one[1] seems to have been the purchase of Intel's smartphone modem for $1B, still a lot smaller than VW's market cap of $58B. A company which does multiple acquisitions per year will have a team specialising in the integration of a…

>Their last big one[1] seems to have been the purchase of Intel's smartphone modem for $1B, still a lot smaller than VW's market cap of $58B. That isn't how you can buy VW, the market cap is totally misleading. VW Group has a bizarre structure, it is actually directly controlled by some Porsche Holding company, which is directly owned by the Porsche–Piëch family.

Oh it ended up owned by Porsch? So confusing. I remember the short squeeze, but usually I don't follow this stuff.

I wasn't really quoting $58B as the price Apple would pay - just an indicator of the size of VW. But probably the wrong one I guess?

I know that a merger doesn't involve paying the market cap. It's more about convincing the shareholders that their final shares in the merged company would be worth more than the sum of whatever shares they have in each part. If it's legally structured as an acquisition, the purchase price is a bit of a fiction.

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