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Comment by ff10 | Hacker News Reader

The German car companies already have hired great engineers, but thankfully they couldn't care less about the "rockstar" label. You draw a direct line from software engineering to automobile engineering, without honoring the fact that those two branches are fundamentally different in Germany.

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That automobile engineering is different from software engineering in Germany is kind of agreeing with what I say. That people still think that is one of the major reasons why German car companies will fall behind. And you also agree that a car companies would worry about hiring great car engineers (i.e. the people who build great old-style cars) instead of great software engineers (the people who automate the machines to build the new-style cars).

You need to have 50-50 car engineers and software engineers and they need to work together to make that move happen. Do you think a guy with a black Star Wars t-shirt and an Arch Linux running Thinkpad could get any meaningful say in product development at any big German company, car companies and banks especially? If you would answer that with "no" we basically have the same view on how the German industry looks like. What we may not agree on is if that can succeed any longer in the automobile market.

You have very, very obviously never been inside a german car factory.

Wait, wasn't Tesla just telling that they are buying a small GERMAN company to get factory automation knowledge? I read that somewhere...

What is the point you trying to make? Yes they are buying the smart engineers and somehow a lot of German car companies didn't buy them first. Pretty much the problem as described above.

The point is: the German factory automation business already exists and is huge. Germany already sells this world-wide. Tesla just bought a tiny share into it.

Industry 4.0 - Germany's 4th industrial revolution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y990kaGbJD0

Industry 4.0 in the Volkswagen Group https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTl8w6yAjds

"Industrie 4.0" - Bosch plant in Blaichach, Germany https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKhSTjraHlU

CAR FACTORY: Mercedes-Benz Industrie 4.0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdXRTKy_TrM

German car companies and their suppliers (Continental, Bosch, ...) have already lots of smart engineers in this domain. Their current factories are among the highest automated in the world. Volkswagen invested $15.3 billion in R&D last year, Daimler $7.6 billion, BMW $5.5 billion. Number one, three and seven in the automotive world.

Tesla was spending $0.7 billion for R&D in 2015.

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