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Mercedes spends $8bn/year on R&D

caranddriver.com

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

#41

Post by qxabdejh »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #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 Volkswa…

Volkswagen has low-cost brands like Seat, which so quite well. I think they are included in the revenue.

If Habeck implements a belated and voluntary Morgenthau plan by de-industrializing Germany, applauding the destruction of its energy infrastructure and by being basically only concerned about increasing Rheinmetall's profits, the German economy will and does collapse.

Habeck runs a tight censorship regime as well:

https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/german-pension...

The Green Party is now both economically incompetent and a warmongering party. It has become the worst of both worlds.

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

#42

Post by panick21_ »

This is kind of crazy, Tesla at peak spent 4 billion $. And they used spend less then 2 billion $. And remember, Tesla is far more vertically integrated. Tesla has large spend in research for their battery and battery materials manufacturing. The make all their own chips, including even some on the data center. They also build robots. And do much of their own AI work.

I must be that Tesla prefers to have some research simply be considered as part of product development. While Mercedes does the opposite.

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

#43

Post by Cumpiler69 »

dsco wrote: post #30
Cumpiler69 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s also a result of German unions. It’s practically impossible to fire people in the auto industry, so effectively what we do at VW is we have deadweight organisations where people end up if they are low performers and refuse to leave. The European auto industry is partly a charade to keep people employed.

>It’s also a result of German unions.

I expect German politicians to defang the unions soon, similar to what they did with Agenda 2010 [1]. Yeah there will be some strikes and riots, but if the unions are causing an industry to be uncompetitive they're causing more harm than good.

It's a shame because while unions are good on paper, over time they seem to default to protecting themselves at the expense of the industry. Similar to communist parties.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_2010

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

#44

Post by porphyra »

mindo wrote: 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.

Out of all the Chinese car companies, the one that owns Volvo and Lotus is probably not a bad choice. They also plan to produce the Smart electric vehicles as a part of a joint venture with Geely. The CLA is also supposed to get self driving tech from Chinese startup Momenta.

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

#45

Post by Ekaros »

6SixTy wrote: post #39
wslh wrote: post #24

The cynic in me is already asking: where are the flying cars? They were at the top in F1 until 2021.

Thing about flying cars is that you can either have a good car or a good aircraft. Having both combined is worse at both and more expensive at both. Not to mention the headache of dealing with the FAA and whoever does vehicles to get it air and road worthy. In any case, we have helicopters which embodies the spirit of a flying car

Either you have light air raft, with everything involved in that. Or a drone with weight of at least a few hundred kilograms... Later of which I would not like too near me. I would even be slightly wary of kilograms of drone, not to talk about tens.

Light aircraft are somewhat efficient, but helicopters point out well the likely efficiency issues with flying cars. We are not getting magic anti-gravity anytime soon... Or jetpacks...

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

#46

Post by encoderer »

Mercedes’ cheapest cars are about the same as a Camry but when you spend more you really do see this r&d spending in the product. I’ve owned 4 - expensive to maintain but wonderful to drive.

I would say, you really only notice it when you leave your Mercedes behind and rent a Kia/Jeep/etc.

I would like a touchscreen though - in addition to the buttons.

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

#47

Post by Cumpiler69 »

wslh wrote: post #24

The cynic in me is already asking: where are the flying cars? They were at the top in F1 until 2021.

>They were at the top in F1 until 2021.

Mercedes F1 team has nothing to do with Mercedes car company other than sharing the same name. Different factories, different management, different workers, different technologies.

It's a marketing exercise designed to sell more road cars ("Win on Sunday, sell on Monday"), that shares nothing with the road cars division.

They can very well sell the F1 team if they deiced it's not profitable anymore.

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

#48

Post by deergomoo »

mindo wrote: 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.

I would imagine fewer and fewer manufacturers are wanting to invest in combustion engine development at this stage, but regulations are getting ever tighter in much of the world. Plus an increasing number of people just want a vehicle as an appliance; if it looks cool and it's nice inside, they don't care what's making it go as long as it's reasonably reliable and doesn't drink fuel.

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

#49

Post by chucke1992 »

I wonder how much of it goes into "pension funds".

As long as Mercedes (and any other old car companies) as not cutting their staff and pipelines, they will never be competitive with Tesla or Chinese companies. They have a lot of inertia but their development processes are too outdated at this point.

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

#50

Post by petercooper »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #26
syntaxing wrote: post #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.

Yes virtually all companies do this but some are very good (or aggressive) at this game. Classifying things as new research is easy to claim and hard to disprove. Think about it from the perspective of an auditor - they can’t do much more than check something off. Like there’s some vague project plan shared as evidence? Alright this checks out. Next company. The real problem is it’s big sophisticated incumbents who a…

Ah, the British tax authorities have a solution for this! They declare that R&D is "an advance in overall knowledge or capability in a field of science or technology" and that an independent expert has to agree with that. This means, of course, quite little is legitimate R&D and proving it is often more effort than it's worth. (It's unconnected that the UK contributes relatively little to major tech advancements nowadays compared to the size of its economy.. ;-))
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