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Germany's car industry faces a perfect storm

handelsblatt.com

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Re: Germany's car industry faces a perfect storm

#71

Post by n1111 »

iamctobitch wrote: post #53
l4u532 wrote: post #8

As a German, I am quite happy about this. What you must know is that German organisations are extremely hierarchical, with little information flowing from frontline management to to top management. Hence, change only happens top down and only if the top managers in their ivory towers deem it necessary. But it’s incredibly important that our automakers reinvent themselves. And here we have the necessary angst to drive…

This is what happens when industry is supported by government and whole ecosystem is created around it, this does give competitive advantages but induces complacemenement. Their final resort is politics (protectionism) to preserve their competitive advantage. In Germany, there is no way for an engineer to become very wealthy through entrepreneurship. Even if you bought a house, you can't make much money from it throu…

HN has a strong civil servant / teacher lobby who have time and money to downvote everything that threatens their privileges.

Re: Germany's car industry faces a perfect storm

#72

Post by AdrianB1 »

Brakenshire wrote: post #64
iamctobitch wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm surprised how these behemoths still function. You haven't seen Brazilian or India companies in comparison with same level of buercracy and lacking in resources and technology. German companies are still working because rest of the world is soo bad in comparison. But this is changing as China/US will compete directly head to head in EV segment and both of them already have massive software ecosystem which did not…

Do those companies really have a problem with software? I’d imagine most of the software in cars is embedded, for controlling different mechanisms for the brakes, steering, cooling, etc. For those, I would prefer a stuffy bureacratic process rather than a Tesla, SV style move-fast attitude, even if that is more productive. I want software in a car to be finished and tested fully when the car is delivered, and then to…

Yes, they do. I am working in a huge company (top 50) where the software we use is from ~ 2000 with upgrades that gets it to ~ 2008-2010. I was offered a higher management position in an automotive company in the embedded software division, I have a friend working there in a peer position and I am going to decline based on the information I received not just from my friend, but from the interviewers: it is corporate incompetence at its finest, with managers with no IT knowledge running IT like a plant floor, choosing external suppliers to do key work based on God knows what (definitely not competence, value or anything useful), paying egalitarian salaries to all developers with no differentiation to productivity, skills or experience. Perfect storm is the perfect description of the situation.

Re: Germany's car industry faces a perfect storm

#73

Post by mpweiher »

xcvvv wrote: post #33
_the_inflator wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely second that as a German as well. Disruption is desperately needed and I am glad that a 16 year old company kicks the German complacency out of business. Reinvention? What sort of? They don't get software, they don't get new business models. That's why they stick to politics who should save their models - which is protectionism. Germany's car makers were never customer first. What kind of innovation did Ger…

While there are probably horrible bureaucratic structures in Germany's car industry, I think this comment isn't quite fair. Mercedes and BMW are still very nice to drive in. The issue is more that German's generally don't believe in fads, and self-driving cars are one of them. I just don't want a self driving car, which takes away the last bit of fun of sitting in a metal box: Being in charge of where the damn box go…

> I just don't want a self driving car

Yeah, markets are different. In the US, manual transmissions are almost unheard of these days, in Germany they have a market share of >70% overall and >90% in small cars.

Re: Germany's car industry faces a perfect storm

#74

Post by Phenomenit »

Is it even possible for the these behemoths to exist when the demand for cars is decreasing and alternatives are exploding with the advent of batteries and electric motors powering every mode of transportation from bicycle(I love my Ebike) to skateboards? And is it possible for the suppliers to survive when you have so many fever moving parts compared to ICE cars? For me the car feels like the horse a hundred years ago. Dirty smelly heavy noisy and soon obsolete.

Re: Germany's car industry faces a perfect storm

#75

Post by ivan_gammel »

xcvvv wrote: post #33
_the_inflator wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely second that as a German as well. Disruption is desperately needed and I am glad that a 16 year old company kicks the German complacency out of business. Reinvention? What sort of? They don't get software, they don't get new business models. That's why they stick to politics who should save their models - which is protectionism. Germany's car makers were never customer first. What kind of innovation did Ger…

While there are probably horrible bureaucratic structures in Germany's car industry, I think this comment isn't quite fair. Mercedes and BMW are still very nice to drive in. The issue is more that German's generally don't believe in fads, and self-driving cars are one of them. I just don't want a self driving car, which takes away the last bit of fun of sitting in a metal box: Being in charge of where the damn box go…

>Germans just have a higher bar for "innovation": It has to be useful.

Somehow they don't find credit cards useful and still pay a lot in cash, when the rest of the world already embraced wireless payments. :)

Re: Germany's car industry faces a perfect storm

#76

Post by dabeeeenster »

edem wrote: post #49

About time. I had the "luck" of working for multiple German companies (including Volkswagen) and I'm surprised how these behemoths still function. As a grunt programmer, it was painful to see how the upper management made decisions based on politics which made no technological sense whatsoever. In my years of working for German companies I saw multiple project reboots, millions of $s thrown out of the window on faile…

You're describing all large organisations, pretty much.

Re: Germany's car industry faces a perfect storm

#77

Post by ben_w »

dirtylowprofile wrote: post #39
ahartmetz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all German organizations are like that. The car industry is especially dysfunctional. I've been watching them fail at software for years now. The problem, as far as I can tell, is as follows: top management is able and motivated to increase the size of the money bag. Developers just want to do a good job for a good salary. Middle management can't change the size of the money bag too much, so it just wants to grab…

I wonder what’s the majority of the source code in German like? Is it mostly in English or German?

Where I’m at, the source code is English even though I’m the only non-German in the company (and I have been learning German for a while). Documentation is a mix of English and German.

Re: Germany's car industry faces a perfect storm

#78

Post by bookofjoe »

I was surprised to find OP didn't cite what I believe to be an even more existential threat: the rise of Tesla's bit-based cabin vs. the atom-based tradition of legacy makers. Compare the Model S with its elegant, minimalist, understandable layout vs. the latest Mercedes-Benz S-Class cabin, which resembles a miniaturized version of the space shuttle: countless dials, screens, buttons, switches, levers, and lights above, in front of, below, and to the sides of the driver.

Re: Germany's car industry faces a perfect storm

#79

Post by AdrianB1 »

iamctobitch wrote: post #52
ahartmetz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are quite a few good German developers who know enough about the car industry to stay far away from it because it's so broken. As a lowly developer, you can't fix it - you'll just get chewed up.

There isn't a job which strictly requires expertise from a "German developer" which a Romanian or Polish or Crotaian Developer can't do.

No, there is. At least the jobs the Romanian gets are the cheap versions of the ones Germans have and the demand is so great that people with no IT knowledge get employed in projects where they do more wrong than right. The good developers are rare these days (most have already emigrated, the rest are in process) and the "cheap by the dozen" ones are not worth considering.

Re: Germany's car industry faces a perfect storm

#80

Post by asymmetric »

mpweiher wrote: post #46
_the_inflator wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely second that as a German as well. Disruption is desperately needed and I am glad that a 16 year old company kicks the German complacency out of business. Reinvention? What sort of? They don't get software, they don't get new business models. That's why they stick to politics who should save their models - which is protectionism. Germany's car makers were never customer first. What kind of innovation did Ger…

> What kind of innovation did Germany establish besides ABS? How about: the car (Carl Benz)? And the motorcycle (Daimler)? All the common (and uncommon) engine types: Otto, Diesel, Wankel. More recently, always-on four wheel drive (Quattro). I am sure I am leaving out a ton of innovation in engine and drivetrain technologies. > Germany's car makers are great at marketing That's a fairly new development. German car co…

> aren't even environmentally superior

I’d be very curious to hear how the would argue for _that_.

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