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Comment by wintercharm | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, there's a clear shift coming in the automotive industry. The auto makers who don't have plans for electrification right now are in big trouble.

Thankfully, the VW group will actually be okay - they've tasked Porsche's engineers with electrification of all the companies owned by the group.

The Taycan will be built on the J1 platform (Porsche controlled/built). Porsche is developing 3 different packages for other car makers: the SPE (Sport platform electric) for Lamborghini, and then they’re developing a PPE (Premium Platform Electric) for Audi and Mercedes, and finally, they’ll have the MEB (modular electrification box) which is a kit for anyone else who wants electric drivetrains (VW, others)

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I will never buy from the VW group again. It's almost like people have forgotten about the whole TDI scandal. They literally lied to the world about dirty diesel. Not to mention the new class action lawsuit for both VW and Audi TSI models where they put bad engine parts into new cars.

After the TDI emissions scandal I would never support this corrupt company. Porsche, VW, or Audi - they're all corrupt and in my opinion create engines that systematically fail to keep you coming in. Look at the reimbursement schedule on the class action lawsuit - if your car's engine fails after 100,000 miles they are not paying for anything, which has personally affected me.

If you were going to draw the morality line, you'd think WWII era things would have been plenty for you on VW.

And Porsche built prototype tanks, other German companies did bad stuff. Lets not forget IBM.

Life sucks, WWII sucked, all of my family, women and men served, but I love Porsches and I will continue to own them.

> if your car's engine fails after 100,000 miles they are not paying for anything

And exactly what car companies will pay for engine if it fails after 100K miles? Come on, 100K miles and you want to complain about reliability?

> which has personally affected me.

And here you've clearly announced that your condemnation of VW has nothing to do with morals or ethics and everything to do with your personal inconvenience. Your indignation about the diesel scandal is a front to mask your self-serving agenda.

> And exactly what car companies will pay for engine if it fails after 100K miles?

Hyundai/Kia will, at least up to 100k. I think Suzuki tried to promise a 10/120 warranty for a little while before they went out of the US.

> And exactly what car companies will pay for engine if it fails after 100K miles?

Chrysler (incl. Jeep and Dodge) has a standard lifetime powertrain warranty.

Thanks, that's pretty interesting. I wasn't aware of that.

Which doesn't cover their diesel engines, hybrids nor SRT variants of petrol engines.

And just for completeness, Porsche "only" sold 55,000 cars in 2017. Tesla shipped 30%+ more automobiles in one quarter, yet there is debate about whether Tesla is a viable company and no-one is predicting the imminent demise of that tiny car company, Porsche.

Bias + old thinking dies hard, it seems.

Volkswagen is the world's seventh-largest company by revenue. Porsche isn't going to disappear overnight because they're backed by a massive corporation. They're at "too big to fail" scale; if they have problems the German government will have to bail them out.

Tesla, even with Elon's ability to raise money, does not have that sort of back up.

Did you just compare a subsidiary of Volkswagen to some singular Silicon Valley startup in terms of production capability, available resources, expertise and infrastructure?

Also, define Porsche:

"Porsche AG is headquartered in Stuttgart, and is owned by Volkswagen AG, which is itself majority-owned by Porsche Automobil Holding SE." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche

I'm a bit skeptical whether Tesla will survive a behemoth like Volkswagen shifting gear towards main focus on electric vehicles.

Tesla has a head start on serious automotive EV technology, and as a result, has: https://patents.google.com/?assignee=Tesla+Inc

No matter what happens, anyone wanting to build serious EVs will at some point be licensing patents, especially the stuff they do which really is cutting edge around their battery packs.

Head start is no guarantee of success.

History is full of examples of this to be the case. Has Apple ever had a head start on any industry ?

My point is that they have a lot of patents around this tech in actual real EVs. Other competitors would have to license it from Tesla.

Has Tesla reneged on the "open patents"?

https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you

    Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.

Define: Good Faith

>>Has Apple ever had a head start on any industry ?

No, and that is also why the iPhone is so expensive.

Almost everything in the iPhone has Apple paying some licensing fees to Qualcomm.

Late entry is not free.

>>I'm a bit skeptical whether Tesla will survive a behemoth like Volkswagen shifting gear towards main focus on electric vehicles.

Its more like the other way. Imagine a behemoth having to toss out all that IP, know how, patents, manufacturing, factories, assets, product lines and what not all to compete with a start up.

Why do you think Microsoft can't compete with Android? Doing so requires tearing the Windows Operating system and there by the whole company.

Imagine somebody like Volkswagen being made to do that.

Porsche was in bad shape not that long ago and they were pretty much selling cars to fund racing. Today that is certainly not the case and they are making the most profit per car.[1]

I would like to see what Tesla’s profit per car is in a few years once the Model 3 production lines have settled.

[1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-20/the-porsc...

Fun fact: Porsche almost bought VW*. From memory (don't hold me to this) I believe the recession of 2008 nuked these plans, and instead VW bought out Porsche!

https://www.automobilemag.com/news/porsche-and-volkswagen-wh...

There was a lot of interesting things going on between VW and Porsche 10 years ago. First Porsche silently tried to buy VW by accumulating shares and call options. They ended up with 42% of the shares and call options for another 32%. Since the German state of Lower Saxony owns 20% and would never sell, only 6% of the shares were floating and it created a short squeeze. For a short time, VW was the most valuable company in the world. (1)

Just a year later, after the global recession and the resulting decrease in Porsches sold, they were facing problems repaying debt and ended up being purchased by VW.

(1) https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/business/worldbusiness/30...

I feel like Porsche has much room to grow. Tesla has made a car that is both sensible and sexy. In the past you had to choose. Anyone in the market for a Tesla might also consider an electric or electrified Porsche. Like a plug-in hybrid Macan.

I for one never considered buying a Porsche. Not a fan of the style. Tesla is another story

I think it was at least something to consider, whether tesla would ramp up manufacturing and sales enough to become profitable. All signs were looking good, but if they failed to make them in volume they could have failed. It was stunning to me how many financial analysts just looked at the company and said something along the lines of "they just lost 2 billion dollars in q1, x billion in q2, they will be bankrupt by q3 or q4". But they were spending on improving their infrastructure, they were ramping up. I just expected more in depth analysis than that - I guess they just don't see companies selling expensive products with such a slow painful ramp up in production much; they should just feel embarrassed.

For a bit more completeness, Porsche AG group delivered nog 55,000, but 246,375 cars in 2017, and made an after-tax profit of just over €3 billion (https://newsroom.porsche.com/en/annual-sustainability-report...)

And the funny thing is this wouldn't have happened and VW would've likely been one of the bankrupt carmakers in the future if they hadn't been caught cheating on emissions and then forced by both the US government and the public to switch to EVs.

Musk was actually one one of those asking the US government to force VW to build EVs instead of just taking a large(r) fine from them.

If VW hadn't been caught they would've likely continued to be among the very last to switch to EVs because they knew they could rely on the cheating software to pretend that their cars are super efficient and can avoid penalties against new pollution laws longer.

I have no doubt that Porsche can make an excellent car, I think the main question is will they live within the box of limitations that old-line automakers seem to tie themselves into when designing electric vehicles. The main area being self constraining thinking that shows up via limitations in battery costs and logistics. That's not car engineering that limits them, its supply chain inflexibility to really expand or secure a supply to the extent that Tesla has done for itself. As a result, makers like BMW builds these odd little toasters instead of anything like a Tesla or a regular car.

But Mercedes is not part of VW group

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