Is it manufacturing? Tesla and Mercedes have factories in china including partnerships with chinese manufactures. Or is it the design of the car? Chinese companies shelled huge sums of money to hire the best car designers from Europe.
Don't let your competition hire away your top talent.
The same way they've fought cheaper ICE brands: delivering higher quality materials, a fancy badge and a great driving experience. Currently the Chinese EVs are cheap, but far from Merc levels of refinement.
I really don't know about that. Mercedes used to mean high, tactile, audible mechanical quality. You'd hear it while closing the doors, you'd see it when looking at perfectly assembled dash, you'd hear it while driving and you'd be happy with it when clocking 500k miles with just regular maintenance. I remember those cars - I think the quality started tanking around late 1990s.
Right now its just ok. My friends S class has visibly mis-aligned buttons (a 200k car). My other friends electric S-class bean-thingy has squeaking doors (a 2 year old, 120k-when-new car) and feels surprisingly cheap to touch and drive. Sure, small sample and all of that but I don't think those are exceptions.
I only drove one Chinese car, and it was just a normal experience - what I'd expect from a volvo, bmw, or audi. Good UI on the infotainment, was below average annoying. No big difference vs. a merc. For sure not a qualitative difference in levels of refinement.
While I am also a fan of having knobs and switches with that nice mechanical quality, I think we're not really part of a majority. YoY sales dropped "only" 9% for Mercedes passenger cars, so people are not that bothered by the lack of knobs.
I'd love to have some of these cars in my local market, but at 3:15 this guy explicitly makes the comparison and says they're not up to Mercedes-Benz level.
Lobbying probably since no one can on manufacturing
Is it manufacturing? Tesla and Mercedes have factories in china including partnerships with chinese manufactures. Or is it the design of the car? Chinese companies shelled huge sums of money to hire the best car designers from Europe.
Don't let your competition hire away your top talent.
Fight? This year, the Chinese Geely turned the largest shareholder of Daimler (MB). They own Volvo as well.
The same way they've fought cheaper ICE brands: delivering higher quality materials, a fancy badge and a great driving experience. Currently the Chinese EVs are cheap, but far from Merc levels of refinement.
I really don't know about that. Mercedes used to mean high, tactile, audible mechanical quality. You'd hear it while closing the doors, you'd see it when looking at perfectly assembled dash, you'd hear it while driving and you'd be happy with it when clocking 500k miles with just regular maintenance. I remember those cars - I think the quality started tanking around late 1990s.
Right now its just ok. My friends S class has visibly mis-aligned buttons (a 200k car). My other friends electric S-class bean-thingy has squeaking doors (a 2 year old, 120k-when-new car) and feels surprisingly cheap to touch and drive. Sure, small sample and all of that but I don't think those are exceptions.
I only drove one Chinese car, and it was just a normal experience - what I'd expect from a volvo, bmw, or audi. Good UI on the infotainment, was below average annoying. No big difference vs. a merc. For sure not a qualitative difference in levels of refinement.
While I am also a fan of having knobs and switches with that nice mechanical quality, I think we're not really part of a majority. YoY sales dropped "only" 9% for Mercedes passenger cars, so people are not that bothered by the lack of knobs.
Are you sure about that last sentence? Plenty of Chinese EVs are as refined as luxury brands, such as seen here: https://youtu.be/xiFmuoBIyjQ
I'd love to have some of these cars in my local market, but at 3:15 this guy explicitly makes the comparison and says they're not up to Mercedes-Benz level.
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How much revenue of German cars comes from China? Maybe they can hike the import tax.
> how they plan to fight Chinese EVs.
Legislatively
> how they plan to fight Chinese EVs.
Mercedes-Benz?
Yep.