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Comment by hbosch | Hacker News Reader

I just want to say that this is exactly the type of thoughtfulness, design, engineering and research that justifies the price difference in something like a Mercedes and something like a Honda. There are so many small triumphs like this in class-leading, high-end vehicle manufacturers that go unnoticed and unsung and allow people with 2019 Accords to say things like "why would I pay $45,000 for that when I get better auto-steering for half the price?".

Certainly there are subtleties to high end cars like road feel, steering, throttle feedback, and ergonomics that are only apparent to "car people" and thus work the premium versus something that is more "point A to point B". I applaud Mercedes for not only putting the effort into deploying a feature like this, but also for marketing it.

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How about the difference in long-term cost of ownership, serviceability, and overall reliability?

It's certainly one kind of car person that wants the latest and greatest nearly all the time. Some like to patronize particular auto makers, like fashionistas patronize fashion houses. It's quite another, equally valid kind of car person to take used examples of far simpler, utterly reliable cars and add suspension, brakes, forced induction, tuning, and so on far beyond what any manufacturer fits on any mass-market vehicle. They patronize component makers, often race- or restoration- oriented.

As for the non-enthusiasts, if you plan to lease a vehicle or trade it in every few years like clockwork, the eventual cost of added complexity might never affect you, apart from resale value. But the virtue of combining good mechanical QA with simplicity and serviceability is also much unsung, and cheaper, not more expensive.

> How about the difference in long-term cost of ownership, serviceability, and overall reliability?

Long-term owner of a 2004 Mercedes W211 E320 CDI in Europe, with 420k kilometers on the clock.

The inline 6-cylinder engine and the 5-speed auto transmission still work buttery smooth and the car pulls like a train without ever smoking. No interventions have ever been done to the engine and trans, apart from changing consumables on-time. The car still has a very solid feel to it, without any interior rattles and squeaks, with very few wear-and-tear signs on the interior. The original paint is still gleaming. The thickness of the paint and the metal is easily noticeable. A Honda of the same age and miles would probably still run, but will feel sub-par in most of these respects.

The car has a lot of electronic systems controlled by dedicated electronic units, the most notable of which is the brake-by-wire SBC system. It had been causing problems in early production, but the issue was fixed and that unit was replaced under warranty on almost all cars. It was a big reputation hit for Mercedes, though. That system was very innovative in the sense that it provides a common architecture for implementing traction control, ABS, brake-hold, etc.

So far, none of these systems have failed on my car, apart from the need to replace a few failed sensors for which I got warnings on the dashboard and were diagnosed easily while in the repair shop.

Just wanted to share that I am a proud owner of a 2005 W211 E320 as well, gas however. 235k miles on the clock and it still starts up with the same 2 cranks and woosh as it did new and pulls on the highway just fine. Definitely a quality vehicle that has not only held up but hardly degraded since new.

I once talked to a taxi/cab driver about, why (in germany) almost every taxi/cab are a Mercedes. He said, that is is because of the insane durability of Mercedes cars. Plus it's easier for them to maintain them, since even for older cars there are plenty of repair parts (is that the correct term?) available.

> repair parts (is that the correct term?)

"spare parts" (more common) or "replacement parts" (more formal)

Mercedes in Germany tend to be made in Germany, and there's a network effect in having so many around. I imagine Merc spares availability in Germany is a bit like Ford or Chevy parts availability in the US. With cabs, it's not a question of whether there will be issues, but when, and for how much. Here in the US, cabs routinely do full engine swaps to stay on the road. So many US fleets, like police departments, favor American cars.

I own a 2003 Mercedes W203 C230 and it has 400k km.

No problems with the engine and transmission other than the valve cover gasket blows every once in a while and starts leaking oil. Simple fix.

Some of the other parts on the car aren't quite as robust. I had to get the front end rebuilt. The key fob died. (That was a fun day since the steering column was locked, and there was no way to get diagnostic codes out. The only way to diagnose that it was the key was to buy another key and see, so that required a trip to the dealer with the title in hand.) The starter failed twice. It started leaking oil from a gasket around the oil level sensor and got onto the wiring harness, and had to replace the wiring harness. The transmission gear in the panoramic sun-moon roof wore out, not worth fixing---just keep it closed. The motor actuator units under the seats both died a year apart from one another during a cold snap and started drawing 1A all the time, replaced the drivers side, and just disconnected the passenger side.

As long as there aren't any major problems with the engine/trans, I'll just patch it up. People just want too much money relative to the value of the cars. We'll see if there's a correction in that market once this next recession hits. Convincing people to finance $50k vehicles for 144 months, so that their payment is roughly $500, isn't a sustainable market.

I drive a Honda and, as most Japanese cars, it’s virtually indestructible.

The Japanese makers still have that reputation. I think it's still mostly deserved, with one big exception: continuously variable transmissions. Toyota has done well on reliability there, thanks to their big head start with Prius. Honda might be catching up. But the other Japanese makers that merged with foreign rivals---Nissan, Mazda---have had more trouble.

Toyota and Honda have also had duds, of course. In particular, their up-spec engine options have often sacrificed a lot of reliability and serviceability, compared to the ubiquitous base options.

This is super common with Mercedes. They put a lot of whiz bang features into their eclass. Some, Like night vision camera heads up diaplay, don't take off, others trickle down and are or will be everywhere now like side curtain airbags or Lane keeping assist.

If you flip it on its head though, why is Mercedes only protecting people who pays 3-10x the price for their car for what in this case is just a software fix? Same with other cars and pre-collision breaking (vs a warning noise).

But you do need some features to justify that price tag.

One might liken it to how drug companies are charging $1M+ for new treatments and slowly cutting the cost as they walk the economic supply demand curve.

> [...] just a software fix?

They paid for research, marketing, engineering, etc. By that logic one could also argue, that Amazon shouldn't store safety related products in their warehouses, but instead give them away for free.

Even the C-class is pretty impressive (I got one and optioned it up because the E class is a bit too big for my city garage). I really, really appreciate just how freaking quiet it is inside when I’m driving downtown and how road noise is low even at freeway speeds. That’s got to be good for one’s hearing. And the safety record is impressive, not a single recorded fatality according to US government records despite its popularity. I hope they come out with an all-electric car soon (no I don’t mean their Smart cars).

The EQC is set to launch as a 2020 model, meaning it should be available soon.

Won't be in the market for a new car until at least 2021 but it's great to see this, getting all-electric experience under their belt will really help them polish it (although I have a feeling they've been polishing the EQC for a while).

I mean, the actual implementation of this feature could have been a few hours work...

Let the media center detect airbag deployment on CAN bus, then play a pre-saved quarter second audio sample at a fixed volume.

There might be complexities if the audio system is turned off and needs to boot up, but my guess is on all modern cars, the audio amplifier etc. is always turned on, even if the radio appears 'off'.

> the actual implementation of this feature could have been a few hours work...

Yeah, but nothing in the car world is that easy. First you need to fit this to all cars. Then you need to test it (not that cheap), document it extensively (safety level, failure states, activation conditions, ...), check that it actually does what it's supposed to do instead of for example worsening it and then you need to get it certified for all the automotive markets which alone is probably as expensive as all that came before.

Of course the theory is simple, but the practice includes so many departments and agencies that it probably cost several millions. And you need to earn those back, after all.

You need certification to go FSHHHHHHH?

And it's the kind of feature where if it only activates 98% of the time, or sometimes triggers incorrectly, it's not really a problem.

Still feels like it could be an OTA update in a Tesla. The "car world" needs to change and change has begun.

> Let the media center detect airbag deployment on CAN bus, then play a pre-saved quarter second audio sample at a fixed volume.

That would be too late, according to the description in the OP.

I'd say a comparison to Tesla would be way more apt than to Honda.

> this is exactly the type of thoughtfulness, design, engineering and research that justifies the price difference in something like a Mercedes

I don't know. I get into a Mercedes, and it all just feels so unintuitive to me. Not to mention cheap, like everything I touch is going to break off in my hand. And don't even get me started on the touchscreen that looks like it was taped to the dash as an afterthought.

I'll stick with my Acuras. I find them to be just as innovative and much more cost effective.

The C-class and most of the smaller SUVs are developed and built to a budget at plants mostly outside Germany, including USA, South Africa, Brazil. The relative lack of experience from the workforce shows in early engine failures, squeaky interior fitment and so on.

The heart of the range is still the E-class, which is built almost exclusively in Germany with a development budget of a few billion euros. A 4-cylinder diesel E-class is the archetypal long-distance cruiser in Europe, with many cars easily reaching over 600k kilometers on regular maintenance, while maintaining a fuel consumption of 5 litres per 100 kilometres during highway driving.

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