Comment by Workaccount2

4 hours ago

I don't know how "German engineering" became a badge of honor. Probably from the people who continually roll new leases every 2 years.

Even 25 years ago working on German vehicles compared to the Japanese counter-parts was a harrowing endeavor.

Germans are excellent at making cool flashy features...that rely on 16 moving parts that cost $700 each, and need to remove the engine exhaust manifold to access one screw to release part #15.

They get a 10 for "Wow!" factor, a 0 for "well thought out", and a 10 for "extremely over complicated". Unsurprisingly this mindset has carried over into EVs now too.

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Workaccount2

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torginus  3 hours ago

Germans are also famous for how hard they work, working a grueling 1350 hours per year, compared to freeloading lazy Greeks, who merely work 2000.

  • nightshift1  1 hour ago

    That's not even 26h /week. All this stat show is that there are probably more jobs in Germany. Need more data to draw any conclusions.

  • nsoqm  3 hours ago

    It’s about productivity, not about the raw amount of hours.

    • torginus  3 hours ago

      I remember on reddit this was pointed under some article once, and there was a consensus about how West Europeans are just more productive.

      Then 2 weeks later there was an article about how much money do Americans make per hours worked, and everyone was falling over each other pointing out how flawed the methodology was.

    • Workaccount2  2 hours ago

      Germany has a stagnant economy, on the edge of shrinking. It's projected to only have 0.2% growth this year.

petsfed  3 hours ago

Nowadays, when I hear "German Engineering", I internally translate it to "German love of complexity and bespoke/manual manufacturing".

The extreme depreciation of BMWs and Germany's loss to the Allies in WWII are both aspects of the same phenomenon; that fact is very funny to me.

gambiting  3 hours ago

>>Probably from the people who continually roll new leases every 2 years.

100% this. BMW's own stats say that something like 90% of buyers of new BMWs keep them for 3 years or less. The fact that parts like oil pans are made out of plastic or that lately all their gearboxes have the oil drain port completely removed is just irrelevant to the buyers because none of them care about keeping the car for a decade like people used to. And the collapse of second hand prices due to these catastrophic repair costs is not really a problem for them either.

>>Germans are excellent at making cool flashy features...that rely on 16 moving parts that cost $700 each

To be completely fair - Mercedes used to do this in their S Class and also it would work for decades despite the complexity. That's German Engineering. But that quality has been missing across all German brands for a good while, it pops up every and now then in specific components that are still extremely well designed and reliable, but it's not standard across the entire vehicle.

  • janc_  3 hours ago

    BMW always had a reputation for frequent & expensive repairs, even as far back as the 1970s (although I guess "typical" BMW drivers aren't the most careful either, so maybe that's also relevant...).