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Mercedes spends $8bn/year on R&D

caranddriver.com

11–20 of 108 posts

Re: Mercedes spends $8bn/year on R&D

#11
post #7

[flagged]

Tesla build quality is atrocious, the interior feels cheap, and their repair process is very long cycle time. I’ve known several people in the “never (Tesla) again” camp and now they’re buying Mercedes EVs, rivians (surprisingly) and Lucids. I have had a few Mercedes and they know how to maintain service on cars for a long long time. I’d never buy a Tesla. They are a joke and you’re paying for the name and they used…

The people who are impressed with a Tesla are the same people who are impressed with the build quality of a Chevy or a Buick. Ergo: they haven’t been exposed much to Mercedes-level build quality.

Re: Mercedes spends $8bn/year on R&D

#13
post #10

Yet they are rumored to be sourcing 2026 CLA engine from Chinese Geely. Nothing agains Chinese companies, but aren't MB suppose to be luxury brand? Geely will probably offer vehicle with same engine, more tech for half the price.

That R&D budget hasn't resulted in Mercedes making good engines. For example the M271 was notorious for going through timing chains, a supposedly lifetime part, in about 100 000 km.

I've also owned two Mercedes and both have had the rear brake lines rust away. Thankfully in the latter they were replaced before they rusted through.

Re: Mercedes spends $8bn/year on R&D

#14
I haven’t worked in a revenue positive company for over 5 years. But prior to that, once a year, someone would sit at my desk asking for anything I did was “new” and how so. In the states, any “research” work is a tax write off. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mercedes is using this as well.

Re: Mercedes spends $8bn/year on R&D

#16

… and VW drops 23 billion on RND each year, but I’m not seeing 6x the output compared to Tesla.

If you knew VW, it has way more people on payroll doing nothing for huge salaries than Imma-fire-80%-of-people Elon. Love him or hate him, he gets shit done.

Re: Mercedes spends $8bn/year on R&D

#17
post #7

[flagged]

Tesla build quality is atrocious, the interior feels cheap, and their repair process is very long cycle time. I’ve known several people in the “never (Tesla) again” camp and now they’re buying Mercedes EVs, rivians (surprisingly) and Lucids. I have had a few Mercedes and they know how to maintain service on cars for a long long time. I’d never buy a Tesla. They are a joke and you’re paying for the name and they used…

Why “surprisingly” about rivians?

Build quality and serviceability of a Toyota is hard to beat though.

Re: Mercedes spends $8bn/year on R&D

#18
OK WTF ist most of this? How about not targeting the upper market during inflation?

> If I had had this tool when ordering my Porsche 911 a few years ago, I probably would have made a different color choice.

Why not focus on what normal people want, like affordable reliable cars, instead of luxury cars with a dozen computers and screens in it where you need to get something fixed twice a year.

Look at fucking Volkswagen being a whiney bitch about sluggish sales when they focused on the upper market too for the past couple years. They just fired a huge amount of staff. Obviously just from the lower ranks, you know, the folks who actually get shit done, to ensure the coke-sniffing managers can still pay themselves huge bonuses for being dumb idiots making the wrong calls.

In 2019 Robert Habeck (green party) famously said in an interview[1], addressing head of Volkswagen Herbert Diess: "if you can't offer an EV for under 20,000€ by 2025, I fear you'll fail" - seems he was way off - by about a year.

> Volkswagen AG revenue for the twelve months ending June 30, 2024 was $351.396B, a 10.2% increase year-over-year.

But of course VW has enough buddies in politics that we'll probably just get a huge bailout package for poor Volkswagen, and all the managers can congratulate each other and keep going.

[1] https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/robert-habeck-...

Re: Mercedes spends $8bn/year on R&D

#19
Hopefully it's about how to make their cars more reliable. /s

Somehow Mercedes owners I know always have their car in the shop complaining how expensive it is to own a Mercedes and how often the fancy little features they have always break down.

Re: Mercedes spends $8bn/year on R&D

#20

I haven’t worked in a revenue positive company for over 5 years. But prior to that, once a year, someone would sit at my desk asking for anything I did was “new” and how so. In the states, any “research” work is a tax write off. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mercedes is using this as well.

I have worked at a very ubiquitous large tech company and the file all data science team salaries as a tax write-off. because we are part of the r&d team, you might see yourself as being in the rnd team in your company HR management tool specifically for this reason
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