41–50 of 69 posts
At least I hope they leave the corporate culture baggage that has ruined the German car industry behind and do not transplant it into other companies. In which you stick to your old guns and hope that politics protects you with tariffs against any future developments from international competitors on the car market. (It failed. Now the Chinese make better cars than the Germans.)
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its just people underestimating what people do in their actual jobs. Every thing has a huge long tail of work. things like 'accounting' is obvious but there are entire jobs around just buying stuff, around logistics, around fleet management, around managing your staff (HR), there are LOTs of specialized roles and they're not all dumb because you think they don't do anything. Even in accounting there are many roles an…
I think you misunderstood my comment, I was talking about different layers of management. Not different roles like accounting or sales etc. but there is absolutely no reason to have 10 different layers of management.
VAG employs 600,000 people - that you have 8 or 10 layers is not absurd.
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German car industry can produce state of art ICE, because they can manufacture the heart of ICE - the engine. German car industry is trailing with EVs, because they can not manufacture the heart of EV - the battery.
I think the biggest problem with German EVs are not the battery but the software. EVs are practically computers on a wheel and compared to the competitors the software and features it offers are still terrible. I remember VW even had a huge joint venture with Rivian to get things back on track. But seems like it didn’t work out
aren't all cars these days?
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Yeah with China pumping state subventions into car manufacturing, they can outcompete any car manufacturer anywhere in the world. The leading battery technology is in Asia anyways. The German car industry will not die completely, as the EU can protect its market from chinese manufacturers through regulation. But it will shrink and transform. Probably also back to fossil fuels (yuck), because there the Germans still h…
German car industry can produce state of art ICE, because they can manufacture the heart of ICE - the engine. German car industry is trailing with EVs, because they can not manufacture the heart of EV - the battery.
I really feel that plugin hybrids with 40-50 miles of electric range are the ideal car for like 85%+ of Americans whose usual daily commute could all be done on electric. I've heard all the arguments against them, and after owning 2 PHEVs (Chevy Volt before this), I disagree with all these arguments. Yes, I understand that they're more complicated that a pure EV, I know pure EVs will be the future (I'll also be dead in the future), but my ownership experience with PHEVs over the past decade proved they were the perfect car for me. Never had any reliability issues, and despite hearing arguments that they are "the worst of both worlds", they were definitely the best of both worlds for me - all the benefits of an EV (low operating cost, fantastic acceleration, quiet, smooth ride, almost no trips to the gas station) with none of the downsides (didn't need to install an expensive charger at home as the wall charger was sufficient, never had to worry about range anxiety, never had to carefully plan road trips around charger locations).
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> I don't have kind words for SPD/Die Grünen in specific, or, to be frank, Germany in general. because they've governed Germany for the past decades ... wait ... they have not?
Out of the last 28 years they have spent only 4 in the opposition. SPD together with CDU are the two major parties shaping Germany. As opposition they also always had a majority veto right.
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Oh no, not at all. When CDU and SPD were both very strong (until about 2005-2010), they never once had a coalition, and CDU won elections more often than SPD.
Yeah right, Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt are from CDU
There were SPD chancellors for 24 years total, CDU the rest. German politics have been traditionally mostly CDU dominated.
Not a scientific study, but here in the UK where we don't have tariffs against Chinese car manufacturers, there are loads of electric BYDs and Jaecoos (the "Temu Range Rover") driving around recently.
Yeah with China pumping state subventions into car manufacturing, they can outcompete any car manufacturer anywhere in the world. The leading battery technology is in Asia anyways. The German car industry will not die completely, as the EU can protect its market from chinese manufacturers through regulation. But it will shrink and transform. Probably also back to fossil fuels (yuck), because there the Germans still h…
All it does is simply makes the Chinese government sound good and competent.
Oh, nice, a government that does good things that lead to good outcomes! How unusual, how unexpected! That's basically cheating!
We can't realistically have our government be useful and competent and serve our interests, so there's no way we can compete!
At least I hope they leave the corporate culture baggage that has ruined the German car industry behind and do not transplant it into other companies. In which you stick to your old guns and hope that politics protects you with tariffs against any future developments from international competitors on the car market. (It failed. Now the Chinese make better cars than the Germans.)
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You can't have a functional government that serves the interests of it's people and enables the country to dominate increasingly more sectors!
It's basically cheating!
The government has to be dysfunctional, and should only collect disproportionate taxes with the idea that they'd be wasted extremely inefficiently.... on god knows what, some bullshit, some "social programmes" and "culture" and the dumbest things imaginable - whatever they might be, but not anything that's actually ... you know good for the country!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah with China pumping state subventions into car manufacturing, they can outcompete any car manufacturer anywhere in the world. The leading battery technology is in Asia anyways. The German car industry will not die completely, as the EU can protect its market from chinese manufacturers through regulation. But it will shrink and transform. Probably also back to fossil fuels (yuck), because there the Germans still h…
Man, every time where there's a Chinese product category you realistically can't compete with - it's always some excuse of - because Chinese state is subsidizing it and supporting it. All it does is simply makes the Chinese government sound good and competent. Oh, nice, a government that does good things that lead to good outcomes! How unusual, how unexpected! That's basically cheating! We can't realistically have ou…