this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2024
31 points (91.9% liked)

News

23287 readers
3852 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.

2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.

Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.

5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.

6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

7. No duplicate posts.

If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.

9. No link shorteners.

The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.

10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
rjc@lemmy.world
Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world
dezmd@lemmy.world
Tenthrow@lemmy.world
JonsJava@lemmy.world
gedaliyah@lemmy.world
Blackbeard@lemmy.world
little_cow@lemmy.world
jeffw@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
31
Germany’s car industry is losing its famous Vorsprung – and it can’t all be blamed on Trump and tariffs (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by IndustryStandard@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world
1 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

About 50 years ago, a man named Hans Bauer who worked in marketing for a German carmaker came up with the slogan Vorsprung durch Technik or “advantage through technology”. Poetry it wasn’t. The slogan seemed a little clumsy and too heavy on consonants, sounding harsh even to German ears. But it stuck because it captured something that rang true. The Germans had an edge in manufacturing cars and other machines.

The company that employed Bauer was Audi, which has used the slogan ever since. For a long time, there seemed to be no need for adjustment. True, whenever the Germans experienced an economic downturn, they asked themselves whether the all-important carmakers had lost their edge. But then some tweaks would be made, and the engine would roar back to life. This time feels different. And that’s not just because of recent bad news, which includes BMW and Mercedes posting profit warnings, Volkswagen pondering massive job cuts and, on top of it all, Donald Trump threatening to slap steep tariffs on US imports. It’s because the Germans are now realising they may have lost that special something called Vorsprung.

The history of the country’s car industry goes back to Gottlieb Daimler and Carl Benz, inventors whose pioneering work didn’t translate into immediate business success. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, German carmakers were run by engineers who cared more about technology than sales. The production was time-intensive, and there weren’t enough buyers for the expensive and carefully crafted automobiles.

top 1 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago

You have no idea what a pain in the ass it is to develop even a fraction of a car. I have seen the madness first hand. Everything is specified precisely, tested, protyped and tested again. Pretty much every part, microchip, piece of software, you name it. In addition you have designers wanting stuff certain ways, cost cutting and so on.

Now take that, put some old farts in exec position into the equation and imagine you want to totally change how cars work. They may be convinced you are right at this point, but now you need to rethink and adapt all processes, develop and specify and prototype tons of new stuff, integrate that with old stuff, build new supply chains, test all that and repeat.

Comparing a company to a containership was always a great analogy. The current situation is attempting a 360 with one at full speed. Startups have the advantage of being build arround new ideas like centralised computing, autonomous driving, modern entertainment systems etc. They have disadvantage when it comes to cost, quality management, distribution, volume... That said, the technological advantage is very pronounced atm.

I'm sure we will get there eventually, but it will definitely take some more time for the Germans to fully catch up.