121–130 of 130 posts
But also their cars can cost too much. They're doing a lot of sharing with Ford. Take for example the T7 platform. Why pay VW prices for a Ford?
I've bought a Skoda after owning VW in the past and couldn't be happier. 80% (probably 95% for the things I actually care about) of what VW offers for almost 50% less.
> But also their cars can cost too much. They're doing a lot of sharing with Ford. Take for example the T7 platform. Why pay VW prices for a Ford? Do you have more details? From what I gather as an American from 5 minutes of Googling is that Ford sells a van in Europe that's a re-badged VW T7, but it's not like VW is selling Ford stuff.
Re T naming convention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Transporter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Transporter_(2024) Straight up based on the ford platform Vw Transporter Panel Van £38,620 Ford Ford Transit® Custom £33,350
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It seems a lot of blame is put on regulation when there is also a lack of a "can do attitude" or a sense or urgency that procedures that might have been okay to take a couple of years in the past have to happen much more quickly nowadays.
The lack of can-do-attitude can be explained by regulations, imho. After you've seen the first few trivial things take ages because somebody has yet to stamp form 23b in triplicate and hand in 1k pages of environmental impact assessment, noise studies and socio-economic impact predictions, you loose the belief that you can do anything here. After you've been stonewalled by a few bureaucrats over a missing comma in th…
But its also true that things CAN get through regulations. 1000 pages of environmental impact assessment takes time. But it doesn't take years. Things can be done in parallel if someone actually gave a fuck.
Sadly no one does because by the time anything starts 2-3 new governments/administrators/mayors have been in place. And people don't like to work on things someone else already took credit for.
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They would likely have been correct. Don't get me wrong, I agree there is such a thing as "forget the comparative advantage of trade, this is national security", and I even think steel and cement need to be in that category right after farm subsidies, but also you do have to be strategic, and you don't want private corporations "too important to fail" which turn subsidies into shareholder returns without adding real…
And even more, if someone does buy into today's expanded definition of national security, keeping industries safe from Japanese or Chinese style zombies is a desirable thing.
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Export markets for European cars are cratering. The Chinese and Koreans are taking over with really decent, affordable EVs. And while the likes of VW are producing good EVs, it's at the cost of their ICE vehicles and those losses aren't offset by their EV sales. In general the ICE car market is not just car manufacturers but many thousands of companies all over the place that make parts and components. Quite a few of…
German cars have always been slightly more expensive, but buyers (internal and export) thought this was a good deal because of higher (perceived) value and quality. Nowadays quality has become an issue, where you could, back in the day, drive your Mercedes for 500.000km over a 30years lifetime, nowadays you are lucky to make it past the factory warranty. Along with quality, repairability, tuneability and parts availa…
Look at a brand new, not cheap Audi Q3 with it's hard plastic grey on grey interior and then compare it to something like a Zeekr X or Xpeng G6 et al. It's night and day quality and feel.
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> liberal agenda It is quite the opposite of a liberal agenda. German policy is very illiberal in that it is heavy on bureaucracy, strict on regulations, and nowadays firmly stuck in a green-at-any-cost course. All that leads to high energy prices, sky-high barriers for industrial development and entrepreneurship and therefore high prices of german-produced goods.
Did you look at the state of rail and water ways, did you see subsidies for agricultural diesel, do you know they’re still buying gas from Russia, gasoline is still heavily subsidised, etc…
They’re greener than the US, yes. But far from green at any cost. They built these huge mountain of papers that make everything difficult, not just building a wind turbine (~7 years, literally trucks of paper…).
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With LNG, it's not as bad. It is about as bad as oil imports. No dependence is created because all LNG is the same and you can just buy it from anyone on the market - unlike a pipeline that creates a mutual dependence. We can see though that it turned out to be worse for Russia than for Europe: they haven't found another export market when Europe declined imports, only other candidate is China but knowing they are th…
a lot of LNG is actually Russian tho, using shadow fleets, and this is ridiculous and stupid. But it's what Europe need... imho, while all the investment should be on solar, wind and water - it would be better to cut the hypocrisy and to buy cheap gas from russia.
Also, Russian LNG will be let go of rather soon, this is in the upcoming sanctions package.
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The lack of can-do-attitude can be explained by regulations, imho. After you've seen the first few trivial things take ages because somebody has yet to stamp form 23b in triplicate and hand in 1k pages of environmental impact assessment, noise studies and socio-economic impact predictions, you loose the belief that you can do anything here. After you've been stonewalled by a few bureaucrats over a missing comma in th…
Previous poster got a point though. Yes regulations are ridiculous thanks to every German and every EU government piling on more crap. Zero argument there. 100% true. But its also true that things CAN get through regulations. 1000 pages of environmental impact assessment takes time. But it doesn't take years. Things can be done in parallel if someone actually gave a fuck. Sadly no one does because by the time anythin…
Oh, but it does. For example, if there is a suspected hamster population, you need at least one year of data gathering to assess local population state. And then you need a resettlement plan for the hamsters. This alone takes at least a year because of the data gathering, and of course you need an expensive and busy hamster expert to do the gathering and writing.
German only, but I guess a translation tool can get across the most absurd points ;) https://artenschutz.naturschutzinformationen.nrw.de/artensch...
Oh, and btw, that's just for permitting. After you get your permit, you have to have those hamsters professionally resettled, observed and documented.
You are right that it is theoretically still possible to get stuff done. Prime example is Elon Musks Gigafactory in Brandenburg, where there was enough political and economic pressure to get it done. But that is a rare thing to happen, and lots of those steps you have to do are out of your control and up to some bureaucrat who is of course "very busy" and "cannot at this time give an estimate as to when the permit might be completed". It is just hard to convey how bad it really is...
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1% of GDP of an entire country is massive, that's not a rounding error!
Massive numbers for an individual are commonly rounding errors for a nation. Specifically, if you see a budget breakdown, generally things are rounded to the nearest 1%, and the sum of numbers shown often turns out not to be 100% because of that rounding.
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Massive numbers for an individual are commonly rounding errors for a nation. Specifically, if you see a budget breakdown, generally things are rounded to the nearest 1%, and the sum of numbers shown often turns out not to be 100% because of that rounding.
That governments struggle with rounding and maths isn't a justification for arguing 1% of GDP doesn't matter. It's a vast sum of money. In the UK's case getting an extra 1% of GDP for free was a no brainer. Its economy hasn't departed from the European average so what was it paying for, apparently nothing.
It's 1%.
1% of your pay is what?
1% of everyone's pay is just that everyone feels the impact of 1% of their income.
> In the UK's case getting an extra 1% of GDP for free was a no brainer. Its economy hasn't departed from the European average so what was it paying for, apparently nothing.
Except for all the evidence that it has harmed the UK, which Brexit proponents blame on the simultaneous Covid pandemic.