Audi's unions demand electric model for main German plant
reuters.com
reuters.com
The reason for the Union speaking out is twofold: The workers want to have the necessary skill set in building EV and they also want the company to stay in front of the market. This kind of communication allows management to actually see those things that they couldn't perceive in their normal view from atop.
curious: What about this is specific to German unions?
It's not something that can be rejected by management.
For someone from North America it can be a challenge to accept but does work quite well once you get over it.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28140594
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/080515/5-deve...
2) They have strong apprenticeship programs and vocational training.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship#Germany
3) Mittelstand - long-term, focused, and sustainable business culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelstand
http://theconversation.com/the-secret-behind-germanys-thrivi...
Trade unions are almost always in favor of minimum wage and increases. E.g.
http://www.aflcio.org/Issues/Jobs-and-Economy/Wages-and-Inco...
https://economics21.org/html/why-unions-exempt-themselves-ha...
This works well in companies where managers don't have a lot of imagination and who's first reaction is to fire staff when the going gets tough.
For example VW wanted to cut 3000 workers. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-redundancies-id...
After talks with the Union they rescinded somewhat and now the losses will be through attrition. i.e. wait for people to retire or leave.
It doesn't surprise me that Audi want to keep what may be seen as a growing product in Germany.
Not really that's US-style or French-style management and the result is hard clashes between labour and management.
If the union cooperates with an uncooperative company it just gets rolled over, if the union is combative it works better (until the union falls below the level of strength which lets them balance the company).
Look no further than Amazon in Germany for a demonstration.
Lower Saxony (German state) has 20% voting control of Volkswagen, Audi's parent company. There are also anti-takeover restrictions such as shareholder ownership caps.
Examples, apart from VW and Deutsche Bahn? After privatization of the Kohl era there shouldn't be much left. When I was a kid I even drank milk from a state-owned dairy plant.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-owned_enterprise#Germany
Other than normal wear and tear, there should be massively less maintenance required for electric vehicles.
In the Teslas, there are dramatically fewer moving parts and consumables.
No rings to dry rot / wear out, spark plugs, fan belts, oil filters, pistons, fuel pumps, etc, etc. I was actually referring to the Teslas. I do however, think the X was too much too quickly. It is a mess from an engineering standpoint. That being said, the drive train will last much longer than a similar ICE. I suspect in the long run, with battery wear, it will be a bit more than a wash.
Disclaimer: I'm long on TSLA and Solarcity Solar Bonds.
Even then it's only at ~45k and runs about $700.
Overall running costs for EVs are incredibly low. At 48k miles right now and my cost in tires($1k @ 30k mi) is actually my highest per-mile cost, even above electricity.
From what I've heard there's some people out there with ~150k and still on the original brake pads(!).
Brake pads should last a little longer, but I'm not sure how much.
Ultimately though I believe electric cars will be much more expensive in the long run. Nissan wants $5499 for a new battery back. I don't know of any study on how long they last, but reading forums and extrapolating I would say you should plan on replacing the battery pack every 100000 miles. This of course depends greatly on how your charge it which in turn depends on how far you drive. If you drive the full range of the battery every charge you probably need to replace the battery every 50000 miles. If you make dozens of short trips per day, charging after each, you could potentially get several hundred thousand miles.
I'm curious about your A4 experience - how many miles were you driving. Unless you are driving 80,000 miles a year I don't see how you can get that high - at 80,000 miles/ year you have timing belt service. If you are driving this many miles the VW diesels (same base platform as the A4, though less luxury) can probably pay for the entire car including maintenance just in fuel savings.
Combine that with expensive Audi parts, expensive and zealous dealership labour, and they are unbelievably expensive to maintain.
I own a 2006 that I bought for a song--I do my own service, so I was willing to take a bit of risk. The cars are very difficult to work on, even an oil change involves special tools and working around a poorly laid out engine bay. It takes me twice as long to do as any other car I've done.
The previous owner of my car put 120,000km on it. I only have the last 50,000km or so of records, but in that time it was towed to the dealer at least twice according to the service records, and she spent upwards of $10,000 on regular service ($250 oil changes? yep) and fixing broken stuff that shouldn't break at that mileage (turbo blowoff valve, ignition coils on more than one occasion, brake lines, the list goes on). She spent over $1000 on every trip to the dealer in that time.
I do not understand anyone who buys a new Audi, or for that matter any German car. It's ridiculous.
https://electrek.co/2016/06/06/tesla-model-s-battery-pack-da...
The only VW in the same platform (B) as the A4 is the Passat, and there's a lot less shared components between the A4 and Passat than there are for platform A models.
Everything is more expensive on an Audi. It's thousands to replace the fan belt, because you basically have to take the whole car apart.
To use a previous example, replacing the fan belt is regular maintenance. The problem is that Audis are very tightly engineered. Good in some response, but not for easy maintenance/repair.
https://github.com/axibase/atsd-use-cases/blob/master/Norway...
In North America VW actually pulled their only hybrid from their lineup for 2017, in the middle of dieselgate when hundreds of thousands of TDI owners who bought their diesel for its fuel economy are looking for a replacement.
They have their e-tron line, and they _look_ nice but they are far inferior to other PHEVs, especially the Chevy Volt and pack only an 8kwh battery.
When I give up my TDI because of dieselgate next month or the month after VW has nothing to offer me.
The dealer told me that they are pushing EVs now to help remake the company's image after the diesel cheating debacle.
The unions probably see this repositioning and reasonably want to secure their members foothold in it.
I briefly considered the e-tron but the battery is too small. And doesn't drive as nice as a Chevy Volt.
The interior and exterior styling are amazing though.
I am also entirely certain the union is entirely correct in how they see the future.
Germany has an unusual knack for making normally inefficient things efficient. You are probably used to unions in America which are often extremely inefficient, to the detriment of the company/government department.
Sigh. This better not be what Audi actually thinks. Let me say it as clearly as possible - ALL CARS will be electric vehicles in the future. So if Audi still comes at this from the perspective of "let's build an EV for environmentalist vegan weirdos...and I guess for some eccentric millionaires", then it will always be 5-steps behind Tesla, and it will fail badly in the EV market (as well as in the gas-powered car market, once the decline begins).
Edit: I'm not sure why I'm getting down-voted over this.
This obviously changes power dynamics quite a bit.
In fact, in modern times, according to Greenspan, there is also a third party: the corporate leadership's interest is at odds with both the employees and the sharedholders, forming a triangle of interest. Perhaps this third only applies to US public corps.
PS: Remember, the best way to keep power long term is to convince everyone else to hand it to you.
Your comment is pretty hard to parse, but that's not a thing that I've ever hard anybody say.
>PS: Remember, the best way to keep power long term is to convince everyone else to hand it to you.
Your phrasing makes me think that you're trying to be sarcastic, but that's exactly how every long term transition of power has ever worked. If people are not convinced that you should have the power, they will take it away on a whim. See, for example, the US civil rights movement vs. the emancipation proclamation and civil war. The South was not in general convinced by the emancipation proclamation, and so the oppression continued in the extreme. The civil rights movement did an awful lot of convincing, and though there are still those that are unconvinced, the power transition was far more lasting and complete. Force only works as long as you have the upper hand. Convincing works as long as the other person is convinced.
Google search "40 hour work week Henry Ford" and it auto suggests "henry ford started 40 hour work week" "henry ford invented the 40 hour work week"
Which takes you to "Does the 8-hour day and the 40-hour week come from Henry Ford, or labor unions?" http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/sep/... "In 1914, at a time when most workers still lacked a guarantee of eight-hour days, the Ford Motor Co. attracted notice for instituting eight-hour shifts and raising wages in the manner the graphic indicates. (For many Ford workers, the work week remained six days.)"
Of note, you can get 24 hours from 4 * 6, 3 x 8, or 2 x 12 hour shifts. But, 8 * 6 is not 40.
And closes with "The claim contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, so we rate it Mostly False."
It's a better example to point out that the the emancipation proclamation didn't even free all the Union's Slaves at the time. Its kind of a no-duh that the South wouldn't follow it because the emancipation proclamation was a war measure against the Confederacy. Edit: It'd also be stronger to point out Jim Crow laws in the reconstruction era
Weekend off? Unions
9-5? Unions
Retirement Savings? Unions
Pension Program? Unions
Health Benefits? Unions
Vacation Time? Unions
Sick Time? Unions
Lunch break? Unions
Work place safety regulations? Unions
Boss threaten to fire you if you don't let him screw your wife? Unions
And who opposed to the socialized health insurance movement? Nearly every medical association (doctors, dentists), the entire insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and even premiers of provinces.
Employers were not willing to give those concessions without a fight.
Today, they don't have to fight. They can offshore, outsource, or automate your job. There are a lot more options these days then there were back then...
These all boil down to the same thing. Firing the offending laborer. So really we haven't advanced far since the 1850's.
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This is why Anti-Unionists get so pissy about Unions blocking people from being fired. It removes the main power owners have over their workers.
http://www.dw.com/en/germany-to-mark-record-year-for-strikes...
Because you first expressed a misunderstanding about what unions are and then expressed a misunderstanding about how this site works.
Because your characterization of unions just sounds like blindly repeating the anti-union propaganda that has been so successful in the US starting from Reagan's time.
Note that unions, management, and investors are often not smart. This is often to their long term harm.
And that's an important point, because a "smart union" only works if management doesn't try to railroad them at every turn. It's not exactly surprising that e.g. US Unions had to be hard rather than smart, given management or investors would call the army on them.
In the nordic model, unions are part of corporate governance and thus can have significant stake in and impact on corporate policy, in the US unions are considered pests to be squashed and only listened to when there's literally no other way.