BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time • Hacker News Board

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#211

Post by speeder » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 3:33 PM UTC

piquadrat wrote: post #205

speeder wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked on BMW infotainment for a time. My opinions are my own obviously, I don't even work at BMW anymore. So, when I was working, I found the decisions regarding the infotainment mind boggling, to me they made zero sense, until I found some random documents deep in the BMW intranet, where I found the logic of it all: The focus was actually increasing the car range, so for example instead of having one infotainment…

Isn't what you are describing known as Zonal Architecture (as opposed to Domain Architecture) and supposed to be the hot new way of architecting automotive platforms? Tesla was pioneering it. The Volkswagen Group spent billions to get their hands on Rivian's zonal architecture platform. https://insideevs.com/features/724945/zonal-architecture-sof...

Yes that is the name.

But bafflingly to me, almost zero of my coworkers seemed to be aware of it. They would just get the seemly weird orders from above and would execute them, without figuring out the end goal, and this does result into some bad software engineering (because people don't know the end goal they don't know what they can optimize, so they just don't).

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#212

Post by joe_mamba » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 3:33 PM UTC

logicchains wrote: post #207

twoodfin wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m told that Germans in general are “cheap” and that this is an expected consequence of their economic policies designed to reinforce their industrial base. I wish I could find the reference I’m thinking of, but the idea was that Germans buying absurdly cheap wine and their constantly underfunded trains were part of a pattern of deliberate domestic under-investment to keep exports competitive. Someone ITT surely kno…

Surely not as cheap as the Dutch, who'll apparently send you a bill for a couple dollars worth of snacks you ate at their house.

Dutch may be cheap at hospitality but they're savvy at running business, while Germans are cheap at running business and the economy in general, hence why austerity is their favorite word in the vocabulary, they're penny wise and pound foolish.

And unfortunately the focus on austerity post-2008 spearheaded by Germany only held the EU economy back compared to the US.

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#213

Post by wwosik » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 3:36 PM UTC

wenc wrote: post #63

Maxion wrote: post #23

Whenever I hear german companies mention digitalisation, I get reminded that they still use pen and pencil in production environments to log data, pass those sheets to secreteries who enter the data into legacy systems so data analysts can enter it into another system that then has an integration with SAP. Data from SAP then flows onwards to some buzzword filled Azure product that costs a few million a month from whi…

I used to work for the US side of a German multinational (one of the largest in the world) and discovered the same thing when it came to software. The German side always had slick presentations (they always had good visual marketing) and impressive claims, but whenever I tried to work with their products, I always found the claims overstated and that they hadn't really executed deeply. This despite my German counterp…

My experience is totally to the contrary. That American software is overpromoted crap - see you there Salesforce.

I have an (admittedly) older BMW. It just works. At first I thought that the cruise control lever is worse than buttons on the weel. After spending a lot of time in the car - no it isn't, it's much better.

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#214

Post by wwosik » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 3:40 PM UTC

moooo99 wrote: post #183

Underqualified wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in manufacturing and one of the driving forces here is the proposed cost of these humanoids. The target price range given by some companies is somewhere between 10k€ and 30k€, which would make them insanely competitive vs a human or a custom automation (which is easily over 100k€).

> which would make them insanely competitive vs a human or a custom automation (which is easily over 100k€). But the humanoids are not competing with custom automation. Judging by some of the footage from BMW and the humanoid manufacturers themselves, they very frequently boil down to pick n place tasks, which is a field where lower to low cost automation solutions have been available for a while. Often times with si…

well, I imagine they have to start somewhere

and they will gradually get complicated tasks

actually sounds like a trainee

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#215

Post by expedition32 » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 4:04 PM UTC

pcurve wrote: post #100

wenc wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work for the US side of a German multinational (one of the largest in the world) and discovered the same thing when it came to software. The German side always had slick presentations (they always had good visual marketing) and impressive claims, but whenever I tried to work with their products, I always found the claims overstated and that they hadn't really executed deeply. This despite my German counterp…

"if you've ever driven a German car, you'll realize that the car was built for engineers and not for end users " cracks me up. I once leased a BMW for 3 years. By the time I returned the car, I still didn't what all the cryptic buttons for HVAC and other controls. They just refused to follow established automotive ergonomic conventions. Anyway, my father used to do business with Germans for a long time. He had many i…

There was always global competition but Mercedes and BMW had the brand power.

At least Volkswagen is still building relatively cheap and reliable cars for the masses- they can compete with Kia and Skoda.

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#216

Post by FabHK » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 4:07 PM UTC

throwaway2037 wrote: post #89

SoftTalker wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I distinctly remember reading that the entire bill of materials for building a Boeing 747 was managed in Excel. I have not been able to find that claim since then but it was so amazing to me that I remember it. It doesn't really make sense as I think about it now, because the 747 design predates Excel by many years so maybe it was BS.

Assume that later models of the 747 were managed in Excel. No trolling: What is wrong with that? You can write insanely powerful software using (1) formulas on the sheet (which are essentially functional programming) and (2) imperative logic in VBA (HTTP calls, database calls, file system, etc.). For years, I used this model and wrote pretty powerful software. Sometimes, I miss it for the encapsulated system. These d…

Investment banks were running complex trading books in Excel well into this century. Insanely powerful software.

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#217

Post by brummm » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 4:10 PM UTC

expedition32 wrote: post #215

pcurve wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"if you've ever driven a German car, you'll realize that the car was built for engineers and not for end users " cracks me up. I once leased a BMW for 3 years. By the time I returned the car, I still didn't what all the cryptic buttons for HVAC and other controls. They just refused to follow established automotive ergonomic conventions. Anyway, my father used to do business with Germans for a long time. He had many i…

There was always global competition but Mercedes and BMW had the brand power. At least Volkswagen is still building relatively cheap and reliable cars for the masses- they can compete with Kia and Skoda.

Skoda is owned by VW

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#218

Post by kuerbel » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 4:19 PM UTC

ivan_gammel wrote: post #194

shafyy wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right about the issue, but wrong about the action. There are things you can do. Vote for candidates and parties that genuinely want a different future. Become politically active yourself. Run for office. Work with your local community. Every bit of action helps.

There is no party in German political landscape interested, capable of solving or even understanding the problems that needed to be solved. We have lost political center to groups of special interests and medieval guides. The state sponsored tool for informing about political programs (Wahl-O-Mat) is biased towards political issues of the mainstream. E.g. nobody is talking about the suffocating monopoly of notaries o…

The wahl-o-mat is not biased, it's based on the respective election programs. If one party decides to put something "about the suffocating monopoly of notaries" in it, it's not enough to be mentioned. There have to be some parties at least to make it comparable.

Also feel free to peruse election programs yourself. Most parties put out short versions.

You also don't need to run for office to have an effect on party lines. I'm a member of a party. There are congresses on a regional (Bundesland) and national level. In my party the process is voting for proposals before the national congress due to the huge amount of proposals, but usually every proposal on regional level is discussed and voted on. It does not take much time to prepare a proposal, but it shapes the discourse.

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#219

Post by wholinator2 » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 4:50 PM UTC

dogemaster2025 wrote: post #204

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As a German I believe it's more about demographics nowadays. The country and all large companies are run by older people who only saw rising prosperity their entire life. They all have settled in a comfortable place and do not seriously care about the future anymore However bad Germany is in this regard, I suspect the US is far worse. There is no cohort in the US who remembers living in "East US" to temper the exces…

Certain liberal cities are the “East US.”

What do you mean?

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#220

Post by collingreen » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 4:52 PM UTC

0x000xca0xfe wrote: post #141

pcurve wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"if you've ever driven a German car, you'll realize that the car was built for engineers and not for end users " cracks me up. I once leased a BMW for 3 years. By the time I returned the car, I still didn't what all the cryptic buttons for HVAC and other controls. They just refused to follow established automotive ergonomic conventions. Anyway, my father used to do business with Germans for a long time. He had many i…

I don't know if it's sheer stubbornness or they're just wired differently. As a German I believe it's more about demographics nowadays. The country and all large companies are run by older people who only saw rising prosperity their entire life. They all have settled in a comfortable place and do not seriously care about the future anymore. They just want to keep the system running until retirement. There is no long-…

> there is nothing we can do

The is always something you can do. Sometimes it's hard or uncomfortable but you can still have an impact on the things you care about if you're willing to do enough.