Comment by screye | Hacker News Reader

Comment by screye | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Volkswagen confuses me.

The new e-Van shows the strength of brand nostalgia and a pretty great engineering core for building solid cars with a perfect match for the target market.

At the same time, I haven't seen 1 positive take of Volkswagen's terrible new touch UX. They seem truly clueless about how to make physical systems coexist with smart-intefaces. How does something like that get past so many executives ?

Porsche is in a wierd predicament right now. They reached perfection. The cars handle perfectly, they are faster than any human can handle and the classic look practically defines the brand. The sports cars sell themselves faster than they can manufacture. The other big way to make money is SUVs, but Audi is already in that market..... they'd cannibalize each other.

The future for the cornering sports car is bleak. You can't build light cars anymore because electric vehicles are all dead weight. Pure-unassisted-ish steering feels terrible in electric cars and leaning into the weight for handling will make you into a Tesla, and you absolutely don't want to compete with Tesla on their own turf.

Tesla is plastic car, poor build quality and 0 garage available when you have a problem, same with Rivian, all these new EV company are dead on arrival, you have to send them somewhere, and wait many months for repairs

I never said Volkswagen is dead, i said German car industry is dying, Volkswagen brand will live by itself and continue to improve

I am worried on the current leadership, not on the cars or the brand

Don't try to twist what i said to promote your agenda, i can see what you are trying to achieve

Last, the problem of EV is specially their interface, nobody wants to drive their car and TOUCH a FLAT SCREEN, you want physical interfaces, and that's where Volkswagen excels at, and where the brand new american EVs fail at, including Tesla, they have a poor UX and a poor tactical/physical feedback, that's the proof of poor build quality, poor taste and lack of experience, which Volkswagen don't have, they just need better software, wich they want to solve by using android/iOS, and that's why i believe the "GERMAN" car industry is dying

> promote your agenda, i can see what you are trying to achieve

I must ask, what is my agenda? I think you'll be very surprised, because my stance on things is likely very different that what you might have assumed.

> their interface

Exactly what I said

This Porsche hot-take is about 20 years past due. Porsche practically invented the sports SUV in the early 2000s with the Cayenne. At the time, many Porsche enthusiasts were against the idea of a Porsche SUV, but many in the market point to that decision as one that basically saved the brand. They also have a line of EVs that compete directly with the higher end Teslas.

https://www.hotcars.com/truth-behind-why-porsche-cayenne-suv...

You’re making it sound like the problems define the brands today. In fact everyone faces nearly identical set of problems just that their approach to solve them are unique. Almost all EVs will weigh very high over 5k lbs and will have motors that produce instantaneous torque. The vehicle segment is merely defined by what body you put on a skateboard modular frame.

> SUVs, but Audi is already in that market..... they'd cannibalize each other.

Almost all of the VW car brands have SUVs in their portfolio. This includes Bentley, Lamborghini and, indeed, Porsche. I would not be surprised to learn that Porsche sells more SUVs than non-SUVs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com