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Comment by bflesch | Hacker News Reader

> OTOH the Model S is the most well manufactured anything I've ever sat in.

Have tried out a full-option Audi A8 or an S-Class or 7 series? During my time in the US I was shocked by the bad interior quality of GM.

Apart from the actual software running on the cars, I think German manufacturers still have very high quality interior in their flagship models.

RE: Software: Current Audis take ~15 secs to boot up the navigation, and during that period you cannot input anything / the screen just hangs.

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Re Tesla versus BMW and Mercedes:

It's true the interior of the Tesla is spare, but you could also call it clean. The Mercedes S550 has higher quality materials, but the interior is pretty busy/glitzy I think. BMW is also quite high quality materials, and cleaner design than the Mercedes. Tesla materials are not as nice, I have to say.

However:

1. Both the BMW and Mercedes infotainment systems are _profoundly_ clunky compared to the Tesla. Tesla is far, far ahead - not only with the 17" screen, but also UI. Cannot overemphasize this. The Tesla is a pleasure to use & they are clearly working to minimize # of clicks to get a task done - when will BMW get a clue about this??

2. When you press the pedal, the Model S accelerates _right now_. It is like piloting a UFO: car was there; now car is here. This makes the driving experience totally different in traffic. You see an opening in traffic, and pow, you can take it. It's frustrating to drive a gas car after getting used to this. Likewise handling is excellent - the weight of the battery placed so low in the car makes it stick to the road like a go cart. I used to have a BMW M3... so much noise and fuss to accelerate! In the Tesla, it's silent, you just pull away from people effortlessly. I think Tesla is actually under-marketing the driveability. It is not even the 0-60 time that matters: it's the very low latency.

Wow, OK, good to know I'm not the only one who feels this way about German cars. I don't understand why they're so bad at software. My BMW takes that long to boot up the nav too! One of my biggest reasons to get a Tesla 3 is that they seem to be much better at software and seems to understand general computing and the flexibility that comes with it.

I don't know anything about software engineering in Germany or at BMW, but knowing German culture, I imagine it is due to some combination of waterfall processes, top down management, fixed specifications, and every engineer being required to have a master's or phd.

I know some BMWs have Navigation systems that begin to boot as soon as you unlock the car. It's a clever solution -- although my dad ran into battery discharge issues because of it; if you don't drive much (retired) so the car sits a lot, and then all of your trips are short trips... sooner or later you might kill the battery.

Where might you need navigation on short trips?

I assume you can just turn the navigation off in a BMW so that it doesn't prevent using the rest of the functionality.

Well, it boots (and runs) in the background. I don't think any modern nav system can be truly switched off, even if the display to the radio/nav/etc system is switched off. Again, because of boot times, it makes sense to have it begin booting as soon as the car is unlocked, and to run in the background the entire time the car is running.

I can tell you the reason at Daimler (Mercedes -- did some work with them in Sindelfingen): They care about the car and the driving experience (sound and reliability of the motor, doors etc). The radio and such? Not mission critical, so they just write a spec and outsource it. You don't get any advancement for worrying about those things.

I've owned a bunch of mercedeses over the year and they've generally been pretty good, though expensive to fix when something does go wrong.

My mini, by contrast, has a "sport" button. The documentation says "makes the car more sporty". The current "S" models have a turbocharger not a supercharger. 40% of the manual is on the entertainment system. I think these are all great.

(Of course at the end of the day that mini is a BMW so has all the fit and finish problems I experienced with BMWs before I gave up on them. Fun to drive but never again!)

Thanks, that's interesting. Every time I see someone with iPhone earplugs driving their car I am thinking about the "experience" ;-)

I did some IT forensics on Mercedes models a couple of years ago, and you could retrace the bad guys' routes by looking at the exception log of their Windows CE navigation software. It had an exception ~5 minutes, and always dumping the stack including the filename of the currently played audio file that told the current road to the driver.

The horrible thing I have learned from car shopping during the past year is that all manufaturers are just repackaging the components delivered by continental. If you buy the premium options at Audi or Volvo, you basically get the same component from a third party. There is no secret sauce in the car apart from the engine and the navigation software, and they screwed up both big time.

The extreme case of this was the Boxter which was completely outsourced and just badged Porsche. Well that was the extreme case, now it's increasingly common (e.g. Lexus SUV).

The good news is this increases commoditization of the car business.

> Of course at the end of the day that mini is a BMW so has all the fit and finish problems I experienced with BMWs before I gave up on them. Fun to drive but never again!

It's getting a little OT but I'm generally curious about what those problems might be in Mini's case. A close friend wants to buy a second-hand Mini One, I've heard they've got issues, I was curious what those issues might be. I've also heard they're very entertaining to drive, too.

It is fun to drive but make sure you get a blower. A normally aspirated engine will not have enough power.

"fit and finish" -- the interior trim on one side pillars didn't match (on the other it butted cleanly). Button finish wore off after a short time. And the brakes, timing belt, high pressure fuel pump all wore out rapidly. You could argue that the brakes could be user failure (riding the brakes) except no other car I had had the same problem, and my clutch didn't show the same problem (which is a correlated "naive driver" failure). Rear inside trim (from the back doors -- I have a clubman) keeps falling off.

I only owned two BMWs, though they both had similar problems. Then I picked my dad up at the airport -- turned out he had the same car with all the identical problems. That was the end of it for me.

It's horrible UX and as a German software engineer I am deeply ashamed of the bad practices in the local car industry.

During university there were always these huge talks about the engineering excellence needed for all the fancy embedded systems, but once you get in touch with these systems it leaves a bad taste.

For example with current Audi, if you put it into reverse, the camera pops up and then picture freezes for ~2 seconds.

In every talk with salesmen from the three large German brands I ask about the software issues, but they don't even notice it.

I really feel a lack of focus on UX.

(You could replace "embedded systems" with "human-computer interaction" - car industry was always the big example but once you get more experienced you see they are all hustling, and badly..)

> Apart from the actual software running on the cars, I think German manufacturers still have very high quality interior in their flagship models.

Motor Trend's Chevy Camaro SS vs. BMW M4 review is pretty telling. They rated the $46,000 Camaro better than the $81,000 M4 in almost every category, including interior features.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D87tO7VUs2I

Motor trend??

80k for M4 is also totally overblown. The 4 series is very recent - I've actually never seen one in Germany up until now.

> 80k for M4 is also totally overblown

Really? Even though it was still missing features that a Chevrolet had? Like satellite radio, a heated steering wheel, and ventilated seats?

You can easily get an M4 up to $90k ($100k+ if you make it a convertible).

I actually meant that I think with 80k BMW is overcharging for the M4 by a huge margin. As you said, you can get the same or even more for way less money spent :)

The M4 is basically an M3 - they've been around that price range for quite a while. What else can you obtain with similar performance numbers and fit and finish for "way less money spent"?

Re: software... So the first time you get in it the A8 has a zero to 60 of 20.4 seconds? That sounds about right.

I drove an A4 for a while and the gas response was absolutely terrible. You had to press it gently if you wanted it to respond immediately. If you gunned it or even just pressed a little quick to get across oncoming lanes -- expect about a half second delay. One of the worst cars I have driven. Taking it to the dealer the response was -- "that's normal". My boring ass accord responds to the gas pedal better than the A4. Maybe their higher end cars are better, but I wouldn't get another audi.

My mother has a Mercedes with the same response. I assumed it was a luxury car and/or Mercedes large engine thing.

Whenever I drive it I end up jerking forward trying to manually compensate. I imagine if I just accepted it everything would be much smoother .

I'm not sure if it's related, but IIRC there was a lot of complaining when BMW first introduced drive-by-wire throttles (E46 3 series)

Guesses as I don't know which specific models you're referring to:

The parent's lack of throttle response is most likely due to turbo lag. Modern cars are getting better with variable vein turbos.

If your Mom's Mercedes suffers from poor throttle response I'd guess it's because she purchased one with a small engine relative to the size of the vehicle. A C230, for example, isn't the sportiest of cars. A C63, however, does not suffer from poor throttle response.

No, it's a CLK430 convertible from ~2003. It's got plenty of power, it just feels like it purposefully retards the throttle when starting from stop for a short while to keep it from jerking off the line. In my trying to compensate for that, I give it more throttle, which seems to trigger it to stop the retarding action, and the it accelerates faster than expected. It feels like if I just let it do its thing it would be fine, but it feels slow to me when starting, which causes the whole problem. This isn't a developed problem, it was like this from the beginning, so I assume it's on purpose.

The CLK430 has a 275 HP V8 and the car weighs nearly 4,000lbs. That's not a lot of power for a vehicle of that size and non-AMG models aren't geared for acceleration. The surge you experience is probably the transmission down-shifting. On typical city driving the Mercedes transmissions seem to select gears 2 higher than what would be optimal for acceleration. In the AMG models they don't even use 1st gear unless the transmission is in Sport mode.

Glib solution: Buy an AMG and smile when you put your right foot down, but cry when you go to the bank...

> The CLK430 has a 275 HP V8 and the car weighs nearly 4,000lbs. That's not a lot of power for a vehicle of that size and non-AMG models aren't geared for acceleration.

I alternate driving a Honda Odyssey and a recent base level Hyundai Elantra as a commuter every day. I'll tell you flat out this is not a problem with too little horsepower or torque. I've also recently driven one of the AMG Mercedes variants for a few days, and seemed to notice the same issue in that vehicle, but much less pronounced.

> The surge you experience is probably the transmission down-shifting.

What I'm experiencing seems to be slightly different than what the original commentor started out with. I'm referring to starting moving forward from stop, such as a stoplight.

> Glib solution: Buy an AMG and smile when you put your right foot down, but cry when you go to the bank...

Naw, I still have my 240z sitting out back. It was fairly tricked out prior to it becoming basically useless most the time when I had multiple children. I get most of my jonesing for fast cars satisfied by the fantasy that I'll one day fix it up again. I think it was way more fun to drive than most the modern fast cars, because it's not so much about how fast you go, but how fast if feels like you are going. Driving a small early 70's sports car serves that up pretty well even without actually going all that fast. :)

We're veering off topic a bit but I've come to learn Mercedes pretty well now. I'd put money on your feeling with the Mercedes being two-fold: 1) The gearing: They're long gears and it defaults to selecting a very tall gear. I have 500hp on tap and doing 50mph in 7th gear isn't fun, but that's what it selects as a default in comfort mode. 2) Traction control: It might not be as much of a problem in non-AMGs but the traction control is surprisingly intrusive and very good at hiding that it's engaging because there isn't a mechanical coupling to the drive wheels. It uses the brakes and I assume some throttle limiting. Even in the sport handling modes it's quite intrusive.

I never drive with traction control or in comfort mode - not even in winter. It's a completely different car with them off - if you get another chance to drive one I'd suggest turning it all off. Unfortunately the throttle isn't linear but any more than 20% will spin the tires.

I also have an S2000. It has half the horsepower and weights 1,000lbs less but it's a blast.

I'll see if the traction control makes a difference next time I have reason to drive either of the cars. Thanks for the input.

> I also have an S2000. It has half the horsepower and weights 1,000lbs less but it's a blast.

50% the horsepower but 74% the weight isn't that bad a trade-off. Less top speed, but likely better cornering, which is probably fun. :)

Or the transmission settings. Most luxury cars default in a "comfort" mode which introduces some lag in the down shift until revs build up more, so that the shift is smoother. A C63 is usually left in the sport transmission setting, of which the whole purpose is to jolt you as hard as possible every time you mash the pedal, to remind you what you're paying for :) Also, 4 or 5 speed cars this lag is much more ponounced than say a 7 or 8 speed, especially the newer ones with double clutch.

Turbo lag is a real issue too, although newer cars deal much better with it. Many newer model Audi's for example, it's hard to even identify the lag (not so true 10 or even 5 years ago).

C63's default to comfort mode. They don't introduce any lag in comfort modes, they simply select a higher gear than what would be ideal and up-shift at lower RPMs (1,800RPM in a C63).

Source: I own a C63 and my startup procedure includes completely turning off traction control and putting the transmission into S+ every time I get in the car.

You shouldn't disable traction control for safety purposes. Don't put your life and the lives of others on the road at risk.

No one is at risk. Most people should not disable the nannies. ;)

Stability control is there for a reason. People over estimate their driving abilities. No need to put unnecessary risk for everyone.

You're right.

I will not be changing my behavior. ;)

Wonder if you'd still think the same if someone who is doing the same as you ends up crashing into your car because they think they're too good and disable the stability control systems.

HN Is a lot more combative with posters making broad assumptions than I remember.

In that hypothetical situation I might wish that they had taken some high performance driving courses from me or my colleagues/friends. And spent time behind the wheel of cars at the limit, as I have, so that they had better skills to potentially avoid the accident they caused (with or without ESC).

ESC doesn't save people from bad driving, it masks some of their errors.

There is nothing wrong with disabling traction control. Please don't use the ESC in your car as a crutch. It won't save you.

Even if you did take driving courses, the roads are for transportation, and are to be used with as many safety features as possible. Stability control is another thing to add to the list of safety behavior. Disabling it on public roads is even careless behavior. Yes, it does not save from bad driving, but it plays a very big role in mitigating or preventing certain accidents, which even the best human drivers are not able to react in time.

Sorry, you're misinformed on what ESC and traction control do, it seems, and the rhetoric makes for a difficult conversation.

I didn't take them, I taught them.

We call the driver aids "nannies" in motorsports because they fix some driver errors. They limit control and input. They don't react for the driver. Interesting fact: A driver can out-brake ABS. The vast majority of motorsports competitors do regularly.

I'm not sure why I'm engaging in this, I should probably have more coffee... :)

Which cars don't have a delay? If you have a gas (i.e. relatively low torque) car with automatic transmission, it needs to shift in a lower gear if you want to accelerate rapidly, so that's where the delay comes from.

GP was probably referring to turbo lag.

I love my 2014 Mazda 3's Sport Mode. When I hit that button, the engine goes from being more than adequate to chomping at the bit. It just flies. Love that thing. Paddle shifters so I can downshift without even moving my hands.

Test drive one someday, Mazda isn't kidding around with the "zoom zoom".

As a six pot aspirated driver, screw turbos, automatic gearbox and mileage. I'd either drive this car till it dies or until a volta makes landfall in my country at a reasonable markup.

Let me guess, your boring ass-accord does not have a turbocharger and the A4 did? Turbo lag is hard to avoid if you want the good power/weight of the turbocharged engine.

I mean, if anything the speeder on my 2016 VW Touran 150hp 1.4 TSI is too responsive. That's probably more of an issue with DSG7.

(It has a compressor afaik)

Yup. It was a turbo. I thought that turbo issues had been resolved in the early 2000s with proper transmission tuning and turbo-on. Apparently audi did a piss poor job of it until the the last 2-3 years (according to other posters).

I'll take a few less horsepower with better responsiveness any day. I'm not trying to beat anyone in a 1/4 mile -- i'd much rather the car be enjoyable and responsive. Half a second can easily mean the difference between getting out of the way of someone coming up on you not paying attention and getting rear ended. Hopefully they got their shit together.

TL;DR: .,-' is better than ___/

A turbo is a better driving experience on the highway. So, it's really just about buying the right car for your driving tastes.

There is no way to "solve" turbo lag. The compressor needs torque before it can produce boost. At the high end you can do a twin turbo. Not in an a4. And you could say something similar about having necessary power on the highway to avoid a collision.

Tldr: It's all subjective.

A turbo is a better driving experience on the highway.

How so? I would perceive no difference between a turbo'd engine and a Naturally Aspirated one while driving on the highway at a constant speed. Engine responsiveness as per the parent poster would be the same within the city vs. on the highway.

There is no way to "solve" turbo lag.

I'd suggest researching variable vein turbos. BMW has done it very successfully in their e92 335s. Even resulting in a flat torque curve at very low RPM. It's impressive engineering.

I'm not sure how you drive on the highway, but I don't usually drive at a constant speed. Instead, when I need overtaking power, I have fast throttle response with a turbo that is already spinning.

I'm not familiar with what BMW did for a 335, but I do know that the 335 is quite a bit more expensive than an A4.

Even at idle the turbo is spinning. Engine RPM at highway speeds isn't vastly different than engine RPM at city speeds (perhaps a few hundred RPM in the average car). Therefore turbo lag also isn't vastly different.

Variable vein enables turbos to match engine speeds more quickly. Greatly reducing turbo lag.

Come on; it's not producing boost at idle which is clearly the point. Excuse the slang term "spinning".

And I call bs. You're being argumentative. The debate wasn't highway vs "city speeds" it was highway vs cold stop.

A more advanced turbo solves the problem in a car that is $15k+ more, and I believe you that it can reduce turbo lag. For that price range a twin turbo can as well. But there is still physics that cannot be overcome.

That's an interesting observation. Obviously it doesn't take 20 sec for an A8, but you really need to pay a lot of money for it to have a reasonable acceleration of ~5 sec. And I think this is the most striking thing about Tesla's cars, because right now, every potential Audi buyer knows that every single Tesla car will beat the 5 seconds 0 to 60 you bought with a lot of money (speaking of mainstream models).

I believe what he meant is that it takes 15(to launch the software) + 5.4(0-60) = 20.4 seconds to get from getting into the car to 60 mph.

That is what I meant. And if we count turbo lag it's zero to 1 mph in 15.5 seconds, unless you're on a hill. :) I would like to drive a tesla. That low end immediate torque is probably a lot of fun.

You don't need a Tesla, it's the same even on the low end EVs (and probably many of hybrids). Not having a wax pedal feels amazing.

high end german cars (like the really high end stuff, the AMGs, Ms, RSs, turbo S's of the world) are all nicer than model S's. tesla just attracts the attention of non-car people who don't have much experience with six figure cars.

could it be because it's a 5 figure car

most of the 6 figure cars people are talking about in this thread are 5 figure cars before you spec them out, just like the model S.

AMG (base price of 130,000 USD) and S are not in the same price league, no matter how much you trick the latter out. Sure, extra 40-50k usd can buy you nice leather trim..

C Class AMGs start around $80k.

AMG makes a lot of models with a lot of prices. they're all pretty much nicer than the tesla S.

It you are right - that Telsa buyers buy their near 100k cars without knowing about OR looking at the competition - then you might as well be long on them since their sales & marketing is way more efficient. Your dig is actually a win for Tesla and a bad sign for the ones you mentioned.

I'm not challenging that, in general, Tesla attracts "non-car people" but the suggestion that people that buy AMGs, RSs and 911s are "car people" is nonsense. I'll give you M though.

Regardless of who buys what, because who cares.. let's compare the acceleration performance of a few (0-60 and 1/4 mi):

Tesla Model S P90D - 2.8s / 10.9s Audi RS - 3.3s / 11.5s 2016 Mercedes AMG GT S - 3.1 / 11.2 2017 Porsche 911 Turbo S - 2.8 / 11.1

These cars aren't even in the same retail category and Tesla is outperforming those that cost a lot more.

Very few 4-door cars offer what the Tesla Model S offers. It's a new brand and seen as anti-establishment, there's not many of them yet, they sell direct and they seem to communicate very well with their customers. Their software and in-car technology is great. People are reacting to many things that Tesla is doing right.

It will be interesting to see how they do as they move downward. It hasn't seemed to hurt Mercedes.

How can a car be 'anti-establishment'?

Not being sold in dealerships.

the funniest thing about tesla is it has spawned all these brand new carguy fanboys who are oblivious to the fact that they are literally engaging in the same inane fanboy arguments that rabid fanboys have been having on the internet for decades now.

the more things change, the more things stay the same.

That does seem to be the case, haha.

One aspect that is interesting to me is how Tesla will change the performance category.

The Model S is a nice looking car but it's a rather pedestrian looking car if you compare it to other cars that cost the same or more.

Yet it can beat way more expensive cars and absolutely destroy all the much less expensive tuner cars that fanboys love.

So when soccer moms and boomers everywhere can (and do) smoke these other performance cars, it becomes a rather sad reality for them. Until Tesla makes one they can afford. :)

i don't think you understand. you're the fanboy i'm talking about.

LOL, the software on the 2016 Cadillacs, absolutely shameful. I'd be so embarrassed if I worked on that team. Apple Car Play is the only good thing about the software in those cars.

I haven't actually used a Tesla, but based on just screenshots... they really need a designer for their software. I mean, it had gradients.

That's why I'm kinda hoping Apple ups their game and makes car navigation work. No reason why they couldn't use smartphone hardware and just keep it in low power standby.

Well, I have two (2012 & 2014) and let me tell you: the UI is great; all important touch screen buttons are near one edge of the frame, allowing blind muscle memory to actually work. I really don't care one iota what the color or gradient is. I also have many iDevices and frankly the Tesla UI wouldn't be improved by iOS/CarPlay-style UI.

The great thing about teslas is that they can instantly roll out features like user themes or "flat design". Every time my Audi is at the garage they take ~15 minutes and a special-purpose Laptop to update some arcane piece of software in the car (fixing bugs).

It's such a huge shift in mindset and operations for the incumbents they won't be able to make it. Recent models still come with a sim car slot so you can get real-time updates on the map.

There was some stuff floating around a while back saying that the repair & software update agreement that some mfgrs have would contractually prevent them from even being able to do OTAs.

I've been saying a while Tesla's competitive advantage isn't batteries or electric motors(these are pretty well understood) but in software. They can aggregate statistics across 100k+ cars and determine how people really use cars as opposed to guesses or surveys which are not nearly as accurate. Combine that with monthly/bi-monthly OTAs and you've got a good chance for disruption.

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