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Comment by azinman2 | Hacker News Reader

You say that, but I actually love my VW ID.4. I test drove Audi's eTron, Tesla 3 & Y, and ultimately bought an ID.4. I liked that it wasn't a Tesla (especially in the Bay Area where it's gotten BMW-asshole status.. and I say that as a previous BMW owner), was more comfortable, bigger interior, had CarPlay, more like a traditional car (no single middle screen), and was quite a bit cheaper. Were there things I liked better about other cars? Sure. But they largely weren't the important factors for me. I also got 3 years of free charging with the Electrify America network, which is no small thing, although I primarily charge at home now.

I wouldn't downplay any competition. It can take a while to catch up, but cars are fickle things that people buy for all kinds of reasons. It's not like pre-Tesla everyone owned only one brand.

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> I liked that it wasn't a Tesla

And that is why everyone expects them to own the car market in the coming years. When the competition's best marketing opportunity is selling to people who've pre-decided to buy something else, you've already won. No one decides to buy a car because it's "not an Audi".

(As a Y owner, btw: the ID.4 absolutely does not have a larger interior.)

"It's not a domestic" is basically the entire value prop of the Toyota pickups and SUVs these days (last 5yr) though they have fancy marketing ways of saying that.

I mean, people don't really buy not-domestic for the sake of it, they buy non-big-3 cars because the big 3 have a terrible reputation for quality control and reliability.

This is an unusual take. Toyota pickups and SUV's are generally chosen because of their reputation for being the most reliable manufacturer bar none. Tacoma's and Land Cruisers are near indestructible. It's why out in the most remote places in the world with scant access to parts, terrorist orgs and the UN drive Hiluxes and Land Cruisers, respectively.

And ordinary Afghans apparently can't get enough of Corollas.

Got a source on the "terrorists drive Hiluxes" comment? Genuinely curious. We don't get Hilux in North America so I've never been in one, and I wonder what makes it terrorist-friendly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Hilux#Use_by_militant_g...

It's not just wikipedia though, you can find it all over.

Hiluxes are extremely durable and widespread is why. Tacoma is the closest we get to a Hilux in NA. They use to be the same, but NA market likes things a bit bigger and luxurious so the Tacoma's just don't come in single-cab and generally have more amenities.

Which is ironic since Toyota pickups and SUVs are all made in the USA due to bizarre outdated tariffs on importing consumer trucks that have never been repealed.

I’m not entirely sure they are more bizarre than any other tariffs are they?

But I say good anyway. We should manufacture things here. Tariffs are one way to accomplish that.

The tariffs are bizarre because they don’t apply equally to passenger cars. Just pickup trucks. I believe they don’t apply to the new unibody crossover SUVs, making the situation even more confusing.

I mean, Android's entire selling point was "Not an iPhone". Seems to have done well for Samsung.

And if you disagree, it's enlightening to read the very first opening sentence in Google's first response to the Epic Games lawsuit against Android Play Store. No, not the case against Apple (which Apple largely won) and not a case which has anything to do with Apple—but the case against Google and their Play Store.

INTRODUCTION

Android, Google’s open-source mobile operating system (“OS”), is a critical source of competition against other operating systems, such as Apple’s iOS.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36...

This wasn't really the case early on. The early android phones had LTE before the iPhone and also had turn by turn nav which was a critical feature. They also supported more networks than just AT&T.

With the iPhone 5 Apple caught up (and arguably has continued to increase its lead since then).

I thought it would have worked for Windows Phone. Those Nokia's were actually nice phones at the end and the UX was decent enough...but it was too late.

The App Ecosystems were too developed by the time Windows Phone arrived. I think they should have either (a) added the ability to run APKs in a well optimized emulator or (b) spent literal billions getting app developers to compile Windows versions.

That's for sure. Still, I held on to my Nokia for longer than I would have thought. Ultimately, I needed the Didi taxi app to have any decent chance of hailing a taxi in Beijing, so switched back to an iPhone. My MIL then got it and used it until she broke it.

We talked about all those things in Microsoft at the time. Even the running android app solution, which I might have been roped in to work on if it wasn't shot down. The reasoning being that "running android apps would discourage people from writing WP apps", which wasn't wrong. My feeling on this is that Microsoft was just way too late, you need the right thing at the right time.

> Apple takes 75% of smartphone profits, despite fewer sales than Samsung

https://www.cultofmac.com/755598/apple-smartphone-profits-q2...

Per this link, the BMW has more trunk space than the Model Y:

https://www.volkswagenofdesmoines.com/model-comparisons/2021...

but it hardly matters, it's comes in 2nd to the Model 3/Y in every other category. If ugliness was a category, the ID.4 would certainly win that though!

I haven't seen that number before, and seems somewhat spun having looked closely at both cars. The most commonly cited metric in EV circles is Bjørn Nyland's "banana box" test[1]. Both cars held 9 boxes in the back in a standard configuration, but the Y went up to 26 with the seats folded vs. 25 in the VW. And the Y has a frunk which holds another, where the ID.4 skipped that feature (somewhat inexplicably).

The Tesla is also just a somewhat larger car, to the tune of 8cm of width and 17 in length. It's definitely "bigger" for basically all reasonable consumer use cases. I'm sure there's something that fits in it that won't in the Tesla.

[1] So-named because, well, it's obvious. Nyland is probably the single best source for EV comparisons out there Definitely a must-follow youtube channel if you're into this stuff.

* >and was quite a bit cheaper*

There are reasons why your ID.4 is cheaper than the others (and it always boils down to quality of the parts).

Take a look at this Tesla, Ford, & VW's Electrical Architectures for instance. There are other tear-downs that can confirm

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRkm6-bBk4U

Thanks for linking to this nice 40-minute deep dive by Sandy Munro with help from his peers at https://www.3isinc.com

It takes 30 hours for VW to build an ID.4 vs 10 for Tesla to build a Model 3. That won't be an easy gap to close.

Seriously, does anyone really care about how many hours it takes?

The manufacturers no doubt. Musk, and by extension Tesla, has been seriously focused on ease of manufacturing. Probably since the huge problems Tesla faced in the late 2010s.

They should be. The longer the build cycle the more errors there will be in the build.

Each job is a dependency for the next job. A long build time either indicates that individual assembly technicians have too many steps in their job (it is much harder to remember 25 steps than 5 steps) or that the plant is assembling more parts locally than their competitors. If you have an engine shipped in complete from your supplier that is less time your plant spends assembling a dependency at build time.

Electric cars should in theory assemble much faster than gas. Fewer parts. Less complexity in the mechanical assembly of the drive train.

When corporate overlords dictate that an assembly plant meet production numbers that it isn’t capable of accurately producing they shell out complete garbage. Inspection lines flag errors that managers ship with disregard in order to meet numbers. Every time.

The economics of scale trickle down into cost savings for the consumer, even if it is by only a fraction of what the manufacturer saves. There's a reason the id.4 costs about the same as a base Model 3 and you get less of a car for it (not factoring in federal tax credit, which might be returning to Tesla soon anyways).

Does that include how much they have to fix after the fact because of non-existent QA?

..and you can tell by the fit and finish too!

https://jalopnik.com/watch-a-pro-detailer-point-out-all-the-...

Does it matter how long it takes? Doesn't just total output matter?

Heck, "throw more servers at it" has been an accepted practice. Who cares if it takes 30 hours as opposed to 10 if you can have 3x the number of cars under construction at one time.

First of all worker 30 hours of labor * factory workforce is a significant fraction of the cost of a car, and not easy to improve.

Additionally a plant that takes 30 hours per car is typically going to have less output than a plant that takes 10 hours per car. Typically each minute during production the car is taking up space, being worked on humans or robots, etc. Additionally efficiencies favor shorter pipelines. Generally a 10 hour pipeline is physically shorter than a 30 hour. Parts, staff, troubleshooting etc is easier on a smaller pipeline. Additionally having each car bridge 4 working shifts for the workers has overheads of it's own compared to 1-2 shifts. Doubly so if you are trying to iterate quickly.

Imagine an assembly line moving at 0.5 mph, for the same physical foot print you could have 3 lines that are 10 hours each instead of a single line that runs for 30 hours. Now imagine there's a issue that shuts down a line for an hour, it's better if it's 1/3rd of your capacity down instead of 100%. If you try an improvement, it's better to put 1/3rd of your production capacity at risk instead of 100%.

For a typical car, only about 10-15% of the manufacturing cost is labor. And that's talking about Toyota Corollas and euro econobox hatchbacks. For a premium electric car, it's probably a single digit

Also, the whole claim would really need a citation, and careful parsing of the methodology. 3x difference in a mature industry like car assembly is very unlikely, and requires a very strong proof to back that statement up.

The proof? VW CEO statement.

The 10% difference pays the next factory.

Tesla gives tours, and frequently discusses optimizations in reduced part counts, design tweaks for manufacturing, etc. I'd think someone with some expertise could tell if Tesla's claims are true.

Some highlights: front 3rd of chassis is one piece, rear 3rd of chassis is one piece, the glass roof is a huge piece and before that's installed things can be installed by robot (steering wheel, dash, seats, etc). Many things are radically simpler, like the interior, dash is basically a aluminum bar the width of the car with an arm for a 15" monitor. Even the ventilation system is simple, few parts, and easy to install. Most cars spend quite a bit of complexity for gauges, displays, buttons, vent controls, temp control, fan control, fans, emergency brake, air valves, etc.

Monroe on youtube (engineer with significant experience, used to work at Ford) took apart an early model 3 and wasn't impressed, didn't recommend it, and called out many details that were expensive, labor intensive, etc. He did a new model 3 and model Y and left quite impressed. Many innovative changes to make things easier to produce, cheap to reduce, reduced parts counts, etc. Monroe claims tesla is iterating their production faster than anyone else he's looked at, and he's looked at a very wide variety of cars (and other products for that matter).

Monroe also reviewed the VW ID.4 and left quite under impressed. Ironically he didn't expect much from the Ford Mach E, but was very pleasantly surprised to see innovative engineering, impressive design, and overall was quite impressed. Although he was horrified by the complexity of the cooling system and has serious doubts about it's long term reliability.

30 hours does not necessarily mean 30 man hours. And part of the difference seems to be that parts are assembled before they get to the line with Teslas (the front and rear 1/3's) , so it could be that they have the same labor costs baked in there.

Meanwhile, I assume that space is the cheapest part of the car factory, dwarfed by robotics.

I mean, the VW is cheaper than the 3, so that implies they aren't spending that much more.

I’d be curious to know what’s QA in that breakdown, or where you got that data, and what Tesla’s numbers have been over time.

But let’s assume that’s true. Tesla has been building electric cars for how long? VW is basically just getting started for real (modular platform for all their cars unlike the eGolf), and still makes ICE cars as well.

It’s never a good idea to discount your competitors. I doubt Elon does even if comments on HN do.

We aren't seriously thinking that Tesla beats the likes of VW in mass production of cars, are we?

Teslas are much simpler designs to build at scale, while traditional automakers have perfected the ICE design and manufacturing, they see everything through that eye and bring the warts and complexity from the devil they know (as an example, most non-Tesla EVs do not have a floor battery architecture). It is not at all inconceivable for Tesla to leapfrog the traditional automaker in building EVs they design. That does not contradict VW's ability to produce ICE at scale.

Yes, listen to Herbert Diess.

Why not? Once you switch to building EVs you can instantly throw your 100+ years of experience building internal combustion engines out the window.

Engines? Sure. The actual FAL where all comes together? The logistics that come with it? Not so much.

You mean labor hours? Time in the factory from beginning to end?

How many Id 4's have water in the trunk due to poor build quality?

Of course there will be other brands. The iPhone is by far the most successful phone brand, and they ship less than 30% of new phones each year. Something similar could happen here, where GM loses share like Nokia did, and new companies like Lucid take a market segment, like LG does with phones.

Important to note though that Apply extract a great deal more than 30% of the profit from the market

The most recent numbers I've heard of is 75%. So android is typically a battle to the bottom, with various mostly failed efforts, consolidation, various vendors giving up on markets, etc. Motorola (bought and then sold by google), Sony, HTC and many others are not making much profit. Samsung is doing better, but constantly fighting cheaper competitors. Seems like Samsung is doing as well as it is, because of synergies relating to their production of CPUs, having a chip fab, screens, dram, flash, and cameras for the world wide market.

Android's a tough market to be in, you are competing with Google (who makes pixel phones), numerous low cost manufacturers, Apple, and your ecosystem taxed by google through the app store and the market is split among many companies in the android system so it's hard to catch google's services, play store, etc. Not that android manufacturers aren't trying. Amazon made an effort, but seems to have largely given up on calling their devices android.

I wonder if driverless cars could follow that same android lath with Waymo being the alternative car OS that all the other companies have to use - but this time having to also pay google a lot more!

Possible, I would see waymo providing a autonomous driving solution ... as long as they could show ads during the trip.

Please, please - could people stop making this analogy?

Cars are not phones, and will never be. American lower class or Chinese middle class are not going to shell out $70k for a new toy every two years. Cars are not going to be made with 60% margins. You cannot wear a car in your pocket to show it off to your relatives or business partners.

Apple's business model, in short - is selling mediocre hardware for premium prices, and mask it with excellent software. Optimizing software to make it 10x better, faster, using less battery - fairly common. For any activity that interfaces with the physical world - forget it - we're tapped out, making 2-5% improvements per year. No amount of refinement will make a $20k econobox sellable for $60k

(also, ironically, LG dropped out of phone business)

>You cannot wear a car in your pocket to show it off to your relatives or business partners.

There's a few striking errors in your post, and this one is the most glaring - in that it's very visual, and also very wrong.

Consider the photo of the Tesla (Model 3) key fob [1]: it's a small car that one does, in fact, wear in one's pocket to show it off to one's relatives or business partners.

Similar with the Tesla App [2] - it shows a desirable car on your phone's screen for the very same reason; the rest is nice extras.

[1] https://imgur.com/a/L4AwONf

[2] https://imgur.com/a/oBw64Dy

This sounds like an Android take (although apparently you are an iPhone owner).

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