Mercedes spends $8bn/year on R&D | Hacker News Reader

Mercedes spends $8bn/year on R&D

caranddriver.com

58 pointst23104 comments

I haven’t worked in a revenue positive company for over 5 years. But prior to that, once a year, someone would sit at my desk asking for anything I did was “new” and how so. In the states, any “research” work is a tax write off. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mercedes is using this as well.

It's not just taxes, it's also important for your balance sheet. Which I imagine is important to a publicly listed company like Mercedes. If you pay someone $100.000 and they don't create anything, that's money you lost. But if you spend $100.000 on research or development (two subtly different things) there is the expectation that they created at least $100.000 of value that will be realized in future years. You didn't lose money, you converted it from cash to intangible assets, simply a different line on your balance sheet.

The tax benefits more or less derive from that, along with the general consensus that we should encourage companies to invest into the future.

I don’t understand the tax implications. Employee salary is subtracted from gross earnings and not taxed. You have employment taxes but you have to pay those regardless. So how is an employee salary categorized as r&d a tax benefit?

R&D expenditure often let's you write off more than 100% of the cost for tax purposes, to encourage it.

I have worked at a very ubiquitous large tech company and the file all data science team salaries as a tax write-off. because we are part of the r&d team, you might see yourself as being in the rnd team in your company HR management tool specifically for this reason

I doubt that a German company is doing that. In addition spinning up a new car is a multi billion dollar enterprise and for 50 years Mercedes have released “the car of the future” in the shape of the new S class. Automotive journalists routinely call it the best car in the world and it’s where innovations start to trickle down from.

Other car companies do great things but it’s easy to see how Mercedes could be spending that much when you factor in that every car has to be completely new at least once a decade.

Chrysler built their biggest hit vehicle on obsolete mid-range Mercedes technology they were able to borrow.

Yes virtually all companies do this but some are very good (or aggressive) at this game. Classifying things as new research is easy to claim and hard to disprove. Think about it from the perspective of an auditor - they can’t do much more than check something off. Like there’s some vague project plan shared as evidence? Alright this checks out. Next company. The real problem is it’s big sophisticated incumbents who abuse this system. Young scrappy startups that are actually doing R&D often underutilize these tax breaks.

Ah, the British tax authorities have a solution for this! They declare that R&D is "an advance in overall knowledge or capability in a field of science or technology" and that an independent expert has to agree with that. This means, of course, quite little is legitimate R&D and proving it is often more effort than it's worth. (It's unconnected that the UK contributes relatively little to major tech advancements nowadays compared to the size of its economy.. ;-))

> The 800-volt battery used in the upcoming new CLA has its 912 cells wired in series. That means that if one cell is subpar, the entire string loses efficiency. If each cell were attached to one of these new converters, its four-volt output could be increased to 800 volts and they could all be wired in parallel. And a deficient cell would have a much smaller effect.

This is wrong in so many levels.

It's probably 4x 228 in series so each cell would have about 3.5V nominal voltage to get 800V

We put more and more in series for a reason, EV have peak power like 200kW, it's 250A already for 4V that is claimed here it would be 50000A, cables to handle this would be heaviest thing in the car.

I don't think this converter is able to boost voltage, that would be waste of components, it's for sure meant for stepping down 800V to 12/24/48V used for the rest of the car in low voltage system.

I get it that journalist cannot be specialists in every topic but I feel that they should consult it with someone before publishing

Mercedes’ cheapest cars are about the same as a Camry but when you spend more you really do see this r&d spending in the product. I’ve owned 4 - expensive to maintain but wonderful to drive.

I would say, you really only notice it when you leave your Mercedes behind and rent a Kia/Jeep/etc.

I would like a touchscreen though - in addition to the buttons.

Same with the BMWs I've owned (2009 to 2019 MYs). Is cost of ownership (maintenance & tires) cheap? Not really. Do they have a lot of mechanical issues? Not really. Does it feel like a rock solid, purpose built machine that is enjoyable to drive with a great infotainment system? YES.

I will say the little electrical gremlins can be annoying and pricey to fix, but I'm okay with it. I've owned Mazdas too which were 80% as great and don't have those problems, but with a little bit less "solidity".

The fundamental problem is building a good car and letting customers changing a new Mercedes every couple of years are very different goals.

Csaba Csere (''Shobba Shedda'' will do in a pinch) has been writing for Car And Driver for ~44 years!

I wonder how much of it goes into "pension funds".

As long as Mercedes (and any other old car companies) as not cutting their staff and pipelines, they will never be competitive with Tesla or Chinese companies. They have a lot of inertia but their development processes are too outdated at this point.

This is kind of crazy, Tesla at peak spent 4 billion $. And they used spend less then 2 billion $. And remember, Tesla is far more vertically integrated. Tesla has large spend in research for their battery and battery materials manufacturing. The make all their own chips, including even some on the data center. They also build robots. And do much of their own AI work.

I must be that Tesla prefers to have some research simply be considered as part of product development. While Mercedes does the opposite.

Well, Tesla is way more streamlined than the large, old, over-bloated ship that is Mercedes. Love or hate Musk, he knows how to run a very tight ship.

While a lot of Mercedes's budget goes to armies of overpaid managers who do nothing except waste time in endless meetings where they either argue and backstab each other, or high-five and backstab each other, in order to advance their careers. Not an environment that breeds innovation and creativity at a high pace.

Whatever is left goes to engineers that do actual work.

Mercedes might be bloated, but they also make over a dozen different vehicles including some commercial vehicles. They also, in my opinion, make vehicles at a level of quality and experience that Tesla can’t match especially at the mid to high-end.

Quality has to do with production and checking. Mercedes uses much the same methods and tools as everybody else. And in terms of interior quality, are you gone tell me they spend billion on research on how to make the interior nice? That literally makes no sense.

More different vehicles doesn't really make sense either. If you go watch some teardowns on YT, you will see that most vehicles are on the same platform, and use very similar methods. More vehicles increases your cost, but not that much in R&D.

What does cost if they are pushing, ICE, PHEV, EV and HEV at the same time.

Apart from the sinister assumptions one could make about the spending, I assume that Mercedes is obviously waisting a whole lot of money on this. Why? Because trying to merge electrical technology with mechanical technology in a highly safety-demanding environment means rigorous testing before 5 year old tech makes its way into the market only to be superseded by newer technologies that can be installed separately.

The culture of invent and fail fast just doesn’t work here.

They've been doing this for 139 years so have probably figured that. Come a long way from the Benz Patent-Motorwagen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benz_Patent-Motorwagen

> spends the equivalent of $7.4 to $8.4 billion every year on research and development

Wonder what portion of this is opex masquerading as R&D, hiding behind “equivalent of”

Equivalent of here just means they converted the number to dollars.

With those kinds of burn rates there would likely be quite a lot of such overlap.

Honestly? So far the most problematic EVs I've seen are from Mercedes, Tesla and South Koreans EVs suffer much less, Chinese EVs much, much, much less... I do not know who much investments have all automakers but...

> The most mechanical innovation we saw was a new type of brake for EVs. Although Mercedes says that EVs typically use regenerative braking for 98 percent of their decelerations, they still need friction brakes for that last 2 percent—which tend to be critical needs. The reason is simple: typical EV regen can provide a maximum of 290 kW of braking power, while a maximum 1G plus stop might require 2200 kW.

>But because these friction brakes are not used much, their rotors tend to rust, leading to noise during application, as well as degraded appearance. And they still produce brake dust.

>To solve these problems, Mercedes is developing what it calls In-Drive Brakes. The idea is to move the brakes from the wheels to inside the electric drive motor at either end, where the half-shafts emerge. The prototype is shown on the rear axle, but the concept could work at both ends.

>The brake would not be a conventional disc brake but rather something that looks like the clutch in a manual transmission. There would be a disc that spun with the half-shaft connected to each wheel. This disc would have friction material on most of each side near the periphery and with something that looked like a non-rotating flywheel on each side. An annular hydraulic cylinder would press the assembly together causing the rotating friction disc to drag on the two fixed plates to slow the car.

> Since this assembly would be fully enclosed in a housing at each end of the motor housing, the two fixed plates would have liquid cooling passages to remove the heat generated by the braking. A small sump at the base of each brake housing would serve to collect the brake dust generated. mercedes benz innovations future technologies 2024, in drive brake Mercedes-Benz

> The goal would be for these brakes to last for the life of the car. Being enclosed, they would be quiet. And being inboard, they would leave the wheels clean, reduce unsprung weight, and allow greater freedom for wheel designers, who would no longer have to worry about getting cooling air into the brakes.

This is NOT an innovation. The initial mentioned problem of brake discs possibly rusting because they are rarely used can be easily address by the car computer periodically using the disc brakes rather than regenerative brakes if those haven't been used recently. Applying the disc brakes a few times every couple of days should not impact the range measurably.

They are making an easily reparable wear item such as brakes, almost cost prohibitive (labor costs) to replace by putting it inside depths of the electric drive unit. You now have to disable and disconnect high voltage battery , pullout the electric motor (usually include the motor, differential gear units, inverters in the same unit so it is similar to pulling out an engine in a ICE car), then take apart that engine, replace the friction clutches used for breaking, and then reverse the whole process to put it all back together.

The only thing this is designed to do is to sell more cars every x years by making cars harder to repair. The funny sad thing is; this is clear anti-consumer activity ironically developed with consumers (tax payers) money using tax write-off for R&D.

This type of thing is also why electric cars have a bad reputation at the moment. They depreciate so fast because the the greedy companies design them to make it impossible to repair economically, and insurance companies write them off after the tiniest accident/issue.

The cynic in me is already asking: where are the flying cars?

They were at the top in F1 until 2021.

Thing about flying cars is that you can either have a good car or a good aircraft. Having both combined is worse at both and more expensive at both. Not to mention the headache of dealing with the FAA and whoever does vehicles to get it air and road worthy.

In any case, we have helicopters which embodies the spirit of a flying car

Either you have light air raft, with everything involved in that. Or a drone with weight of at least a few hundred kilograms... Later of which I would not like too near me. I would even be slightly wary of kilograms of drone, not to talk about tens.

Light aircraft are somewhat efficient, but helicopters point out well the likely efficiency issues with flying cars. We are not getting magic anti-gravity anytime soon... Or jetpacks...

There are a lot of companies going after the big people-carrying drone concept. Some try to brand them as flying cars, but really they are cheaper helicopter alternatives. Which is useful but will hardly be ubiquitous, except maybe for rural ambulances and such.

Jetpacks on the other hand might finally be getting out of the "possible but not useful" state, moving quickly towards "useful in some niches" and maybe further on from there.

Unless energy becomes significantly cheaper we are unlikely to see personal flying cars, and that’s also before you put all the car crashes that happen today and put them above people’s heads.

> we are unlikely to see personal flying cars

There's already a few being developed, but that's not going to be for the peons e.g. pal-v started taking orders for Liberty this year, and apparently the price tag is somewhere between half and a mil.

Please take it as a metaphor of how you can spend USD 8b/year.

https://www.pal-v.com/en/

>They were at the top in F1 until 2021.

Mercedes F1 team has nothing to do with Mercedes car company other than sharing the same name. Different factories, different management, different workers, different technologies.

It's a marketing exercise designed to sell more road cars ("Win on Sunday, sell on Monday"), that shares nothing with the road cars division.

They can very well sell the F1 team if they deiced it's not profitable anymore.

... which is valid for many if not most F1 contenders, ever saw some F1 tech at latest Renault?

OK, Ferrari for example may take some cues from F1 for their hypercars, but how much is just PR statements and how much actual reality we'll never know.

Cars already kill two million people per year, plus another two maimed, plus pollution. Are you sure you want flying cars? :)

Mercedes have figured those out already.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e21ZjwZGjiQ

They're called helicopters.

Hopefully it's about how to make their cars more reliable. /s

Somehow Mercedes owners I know always have their car in the shop complaining how expensive it is to own a Mercedes and how often the fancy little features they have always break down.

Obviously there are exceptions, but it's a common theme that expensive cars are expensive to own. You get to beta-test all the fancy new features before they trickle down to cheaper cars, and ease of construction or maintenance take a backseat to other concerns.

Of course you can always get the worst of both worlds by buying a used formerly-expensive car. You get all the difficult and expensive maintenance for features that either didn't pan out or that everyone already has the more robust version of.

My one is packed with not strictly necessary gadgetry and while well made, replacement bits are not terribly cheap.

Like the first thing was the rear left ride height sensor broke and I've never previously even had a ride height sensor on a car.

… and VW drops 23 billion on RND each year, but I’m not seeing 6x the output compared to Tesla.

If you knew VW, it has way more people on payroll doing nothing for huge salaries than Imma-fire-80%-of-people Elon. Love him or hate him, he gets shit done.

It’s also a result of German unions. It’s practically impossible to fire people in the auto industry, so effectively what we do at VW is we have deadweight organisations where people end up if they are low performers and refuse to leave. The European auto industry is partly a charade to keep people employed.

Where is there a higher quality of life and are there better cars than in Germany? Maybe Japan?

Germany is arguably the most successful economy in the world, with the most successful manufacturing. And it benefits others besides the shareholders and executives. Maybe others should be following their model.

>Germany is arguably the most successful economy in the world

Care to argument? The numbers disagree with you. Germany's share of global GDP decreased massively in the last 30 years loosing to US and China. That's the opposite of a successful economy.

>And it benefits others besides the shareholders and executives.

Who does it benefit? German workers have the lowest median wealth per capita in Western Europe being some of the poorest citizens of the richer developed countries, have some of the highest wealth inequality in EU, and saw the highest drop in purchasing power in the last ~2 years, while many German companies are making layoffs and relocating abroad.

>Maybe others should be following their model.

I don't think making yourself poorer while resting on a glorious industrial past, is a model people and countries want to follow. I'd say Poland's growth is a model to follow, not Germany's decline.

>It’s also a result of German unions.

I expect German politicians to defang the unions soon, similar to what they did with Agenda 2010 [1]. Yeah there will be some strikes and riots, but if the unions are causing an industry to be uncompetitive they're causing more harm than good.

It's a shame because while unions are good on paper, over time they seem to default to protecting themselves at the expense of the industry. Similar to communist parties.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_2010

> protecting themselves at the expense of the industry

Don't management and shareholders and finance do that? German car companies are among the most successful in the world - Germany and Japan sit at the pinnacle of car manufacturing.

>German car companies are among the most successful in the world

Nokia and Blackberry were also the most successful phone companies in the world till about 2007. Then they stopped.

Similarly, there's no guarantee German companies can keep their positions for long with increased competition from US and Chinese companies.

There's never any guarantees, of course, but on the basis of current events, there's no reason to expect a big shift on attitudes towards unions.

Certainly the USA isn't going to be a relevant part of the discussion on this, as the only US brand I see enough to even notice here in Berlin is Tesla, and they have an actual factory just outside the city itself.

China is a much more likely threat, as they are increasingly "the factory of the world", and their internal cars prices are wildly lower than even the cheapest (new) cars here[0], and their high-end stuff is also really impressive.

(It may not surprise you to learn the EU has substantial tariffs on imported cars… but it was a big surprise to people in the UK who voted to leave the EU in the hope of boosting UK economic prospects).

Increasing automation is also a bigger threat to unions than US imports, as that allows new firms that may never hire union workers in the first place.

[0] https://electrek.co/2024/03/06/byd-launches-cheaper-seagull-...

> Love him or hate him, he gets shit done.

That's the strongman argument, also used for people like Mussolini. The world besides Musk, before Musk, and after Musk (unless he destroys it) gets plenty of things done. 99% of Silicon Valley did it without him.

They get things done for some, and destroy and kill others. If he's so good - or even basically capable as a manager and leader - then like the others he can really get things done, by meeting all the goals and requirements, which includes the rights and welfare of everyone else.

And Twitter has worked out very poorly - possibly the most money-losing deal ever?

he bought full and entire control of America for measly $44bn, likely will be viewed later in history as the greatest investment ever made :)

he didnt buy twitter to make money off it, he bought it to control the masses and swing election - mission accomplished

Plutocracy unveiled.

look at where democracy got us - maybe time to try something else? :)

> look at where democracy got us

It's gotten us far beyond anything humanity imagined before it - or than any other form of government has achieved - in terms of freedom, justice, security, prosperity, health .... It's like early Google investors saying, 'look where that investment got us' - as a criticism!

Name any non-democratic country that compares!

Ranked voting, for a start!

ohh that would be the day! not to sound all pessimistic on this fine saturday but people are too stupid to see the benefits of it

Many places in the world use it now.

many places are not America…

https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2024/11/18/ranked-choice-voting...

Places in America use it too.

Maine uses it! Not on federal level.

https://www.sightline.org/2024/09/13/maines-lessons-in-ranke...

> 99% of Silicon Valley did it without him.

Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, the entire PayPal Mafia, all of SV's big players did the same things or worse than Musk to create their trillion dollar empires, except more low-key and with less public exposure. They were all ruthless strong men. You don't get to build empires by "being nice".

Musk is the hate poster child of SV due to his excessive personality and massive social media exposure, but he's no worse than the other SV giants that don't leave the shadows and stay out of the limelight.

>That's the strongman argument, also used for people like Mussolini.

I should have stopped responding to you right here. Comparing a controversial tech entrepreneur to Mussolini is the ultimate -200 IQ exaggeration since comparisons like these denigrates the actual suffering people under Mussolini and other dictators had to endure.

Who did Gates publicly call a pedophile? Who did Zuckerberg incite mass harassment against in order to terrorize them and drive them out of their workplace? Which of those people spread and incite hatred against Jewish people, immigrants, trans people, and endless more? Which of them openly backed a political candidate? Which openly and intentionally lied to their shareholders and the market?

In fact none of them did any of that - all these people succeeded, on incredible levels, without doing any of those things Musk does.

>> That's the strongman argument, also used for people like Mussolini.

> I should have stopped responding to you right here.

Why? Just address it on its merits.

>Why?

Because it's waters down the massive suffering of people living under these dictators had to endure. Musk may not be a good guy by modern ethical standards, but he never caused millions to die or suffer like Mussolini so please lay off comparisons for which you don't understand the historical context.

You basically show you have no idea what you're talking about with such gross comparisons.

Fair enough point, but do we wait until millions suffer and die in order to call it out? Causing widespread suffering is a means fully embraced, planned, and enacted by Musk and the team Musk is on. How much more warning do you need?

And they justify it by saying 'we get things done'.

>Fair enough point, but do we wait until millions suffer and die in order to call it out?

Reading mean comments on Elon's social media platform is not "suffering". You can just turn it off and stop using it. You also don't have to work for Elon's companies, you are free to work anywhere else.

Stop comparing it to life under dictators. Talk to people who lived under Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao or Ceuasescu. Comparing Elon or his tech companies to those is a huge disservice to millions who saw actual suffering.

Comments like these come from people in positions of extreme privilege who never knew actual suffering and think they're doing the world a favor with their thought.

Dictator for a day?

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-trump-has-said-he...

> Reading mean comments on Elon's social media platform is not "suffering". You can just turn it off and stop using it.

The comments have a real-world impact - does anyone claim otherwise? Why would we even imagine that people magicially forget what they read on X when they log off? The hate spreads and is inflamed, people are conditioned to cruelty, and we know very well where that leads in the real world: brutality, oppression, and harassment. Musk's goal is to terrorize federal workers into leaving their jobs - not just in their X feeds.

How do you not stand against that? How do you spend time defending this person?

> Stop comparing it to life under dictators. Talk to people who lived under Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao or Ceuasescu.

Only life under Pol Pot, Stalin, etc. is bad enough to be a problem and nobody else can be criticized? (And I didn't compare anyone to those people, you did.) That's an extreme standard. And again, do you wait until people are dying and being oppressed? They already are victims of hate, violence, and oppression in record numbers.

He does get shit done.

Sometimes it's good shit, other times it's just shit.

That cost-cutting approach worked with turning Tesla from the butt of (quite reasonable at the time) jokes about "Death Watch" because they kept needing more and more investment money, into the success they are today.

It utterly failed with Twitter, which has lost most of its revenue and is constantly running into legal issues.

By your own statement, people said the same things about Tesla in the past which they do about Twitter today. That alone should be pretty strong evidence that it's too soon to tell if his approach with Twitter has failed. Maybe it will fail, maybe not, but either way I think it's too soon to call.

It's not comparable, and it is certainly not too early to make that judgement about Twitter. I can say that confidently as a longtime read-only user of the platform who has largely been driven off by the incessant bots, boosted bluecheck replies and rampant racism and other toxic content. You can also make this same judgement based on the fact that advertisers and users alike are fleeing the platform.

Not really comparable:

People were negative about Tesla owing to a long history of making negligible sales before Musk took over as the third CEO.

Twitter was occasionally profitable, and now it has so little income it can't cover the loan he saddled with it even if literally every other cost was entirely eliminated.

Now, that doesn't mean that Musk can't change course on Twitter, nor does it mean that he can't just burn money with Twitter for as long as he wants to, but it's still a thing where if I were somehow a shareholder, I'd be trying to sell.

I don't see the failure in Twitter. It's a platform capable of influencing elections, that's definitely worth more than people think.

It lost revenue since advertisers don't like the platform's freedom of speech, and Elon won't give them control of what's allowed on the platform. Advertisers want control, they don't want free speech. Why do you think You tube removed the downvote counter? Advertisers pay not just to how their stuff but to also be able to control the narrative. If crowds of people are allowed to freely light a brand on fire on Twitter, why would they pay to advertise there?

Meta paid like 22 Billion for WhatsApp which is hardly bringing in revenue.

Yes advertisers want control, wouldn't you? But it has nothing to do with "free speech". Try "good speech". Elon reduced the amount of subjective "good speech" and increased "bad speech". Advertisers have the freedom to do what they want. Elon, on the other hand, has absolute control of the words on his platform.

>Yes advertisers want control, wouldn't you?

If they would have control, people would stop going to Twitter and it would die. Similar fate to the TV mainstream media where they only parrot the opinions of their money overlords, and people are tired of that. That's why they go on to Twitter instead, to look for comments conforming to their own world views rather than what some trillion dollar corporations and out of touch celebrities tell them. Same thing that makes Joe Rogan popular.

>Elon reduced the amount of subjective "good speech" and increased "bad speech".

What is "good speech" and what is "bad speech" for you? Let me guess, "good speech" is the opinions you agree with and "bad speech" is the opinions you disagree with?

Elon didn't reduce or increase anything. He just disable the "nanny" moderations, so now on Twitter you're seeing exactly what the people really think (probably what you consider "bad speech"), instead of what advertisers and the mainstream media would like them to think (probably what you consider "good speech").

That's why people come to Twitter, because it's one the few places left with relatively unmoderated free speech. It's what makes it valuable.

> What is "good speech" and what is "bad speech" for you? Let me guess, "good speech" is the opinions you agree with and "bad speech" is the opinions you disagree with?

What happens if this pseudocode is run, targeting your account?

  while True:
    requests.post(api_url, json={"username": "@Cumpiler69", "message": "hello"})

Answer: you can't see any other content because you're jammed with someone else's absolute freedom to speak to you.

Signal, noise.

Signal keeps you engaged, noise doesn't. What counts as which depends on the person, but you can't function in an environment that allows anything.

Thing is, the exact thing that makes social networks useful, that it's the edges not the nodes, means it is very easy to be jammed by actual humans and not just stupid scripts like the one above.

Ironically, very simple things like I've just shown you, are also how propaganda works: jam people's perception by overloading them with The Message. And any attempt to be "absolutist" about free speech, if he really was (which he isn't really despite what he says), is just a power vacuum into which those that seek power can project their propaganda.

There's no fancy good way out with this, for anyone, much as I'd like there to be. There's no "your side or my side" distinction here, nor would there be if the world were really so parochial as US politics.

And who gets to decide what is is noise/propaganda and what is not? You? Morally and ethically bankrupt mainstream media and advertisers like MSNBC, Amazon, Nike, Apple, Chevron, Nestle, Disney and WB who are gladly using slave labor, destroying the environment and people's lives on the other side of the planet for the sake of profit? These are who you want to be your judges for free speech on online platforms?

What if what you're seeing as noise/propaganda is just other people's opinions who outnumber you? You being outnumbered by different opinions is NOT noise/propaganda, but a natural function of democracy. You can either deal with it and accept you're the minority opinion, or you can keep being ignorant about it and call it propaganda while the emperor obviously has no clothes. Your choice.

Here's another hint: Trump won the elections despite the majority of the mainstream media being against him and pro Kamala (propaganda or not). He won because that's what the majority of people wanted.

That sounds like you seriously do not understand the point?

I specifically said:

> There's no fancy good way out with this, for anyone, much as I'd like there to be. There's no "your side or my side" distinction here, nor would there be if the world were really so parochial as US politics.

Even if you gave me personal control over everything, even to my own standards I wouldn't be able to get this right. I know what buttons push me, but I cannot rewrite my mind to be free of them — do you know what buttons push you, or do you think yourself immune?

Thinking yourself immune is the easiest way to get fooled.

> These are who you want to be your judges for free speech on online platforms?

If I wanted an example of a straw man, what you wrote would be a strong candidate.

Hint: one of my previous partners was literally a communist, and proud of it. I'm not myself, because I think communism makes the same fundamental error as free market capitalism about the human condition and how the powerful exploit basically anything, not because I think any particular corporations are aligned with my interests.

> You being outnumbered by different opinions is NOT noise/propaganda, but a natural function of democracy.

1) I didn't say "outnumbered" I said "jammed".

2) Jamming can be many things, but it's by definition noise.

That noise can be many things.

Mere disagreement isn't sufficient — I find disagreement quite engaging, hence the fact that I'm replying to you at all.

For other categories, of noise: spam jammed the unbounded free speech of usenet and is a big part of why it fell out of use, and constantly threatens to do the same to email despite increasingly capable filtering;

Also consider the algorithm behind YouTube: 75% of what it recommends is stuff I actively get annoyed by, and last I checked all bar one of the remaining items that I was interested in were literally already on my "watch later" list. That is "noise" which is neither spam (because I was not counting the adverts on YouTube) nor was it political.

There is also "noise" in the sense of being constantly insulted: some thrive in this, others do not, and those who do not will leave places which allow this. Musk is free to do whatever he wants (within the law) regarding the rules of conduct on Twitter, that doesn't mean the people who don't like it will bother putting up with it — and indeed, they don't put up with it, they leave.

This is why 4chan, for example, never became what Twitter was before Musk bought it.

Nevertheless, my specific example was you getting spammed (in the non-commercial sense of the word) by someone saying "hello" on a tight loop, which ought to be clearly non-political, non-commercial, and as far as possible from an insult.

If someone did that to you, on any unfiltered stream, you literally would not be able to use that stream. Doesn't matter the service or the context, if it was someone in real life saying that constantly in your ear then your brain would eventually filter it out for you… or you'd snap.

Furthermore, "being outnumbered by different opinions" is not special to democracy, but also commonplace in dictatorships where the opinions are manufactured — in exactly the same way you complain about prior to Musk having bought the site. The exact claims you make work against you, the exact arguments you make can be used in reverse to claim that it is Musk not Disney et al who are judging you, e.g. with: https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/x-cisgender-slur-cis-elon...

If "majority" really meant "free from bias", it would mean the exact claims you just made about being outnumbered prior to Musk's takeover would force you to acknowledge that you were in fact the minority before hand — but unlike your argument I do not think (or rely on) the idea that "free from bias" is even possible.

> or you can keep being ignorant about it and call it propaganda while the emperor obviously has no clothes

Bonus irony: in that story, the population (and the emperor) was cowed into silence by shame, the majority claimed to see clothes that were not there.

> Trump won the elections despite the majority of the mainstream media being against him and pro Kamala (propaganda or not). He won because that's what the majority of people wanted.

If either of the claims "propaganda or not" and "because that's what the majority of people wanted" were correct, then your other claim that twitter is "a platform capable of influencing elections" would be false.

To the extent that Twitter is capable of influencing elections, it is one of many tools of dictators — and those outside your country who want to influence your politics.

>> exactly what the people really think (probably what you consider "bad speech")

That is a large, opinionated assumption you are making, but be aware we're not discussing "me" but rather advertisers.

As for "me" I consider "bad speech" to be enabled by "unmoderated free speech", which Elon freely chose to allow on Twitter. So yes, he chose to increase it. "Free speech" is NOT synonymous with truth or facts. I will stay away from people and places that I consider to use "bad speech". Yes, it's subjective, and that's the point.

> I don't see the failure in Twitter. It's a platform capable of influencing elections, that's definitely worth more than people think.

In a functioning democracy, every platform influences elections. Twitter isn't special in this regard.

> Advertisers want control

They want things that don't actively damage their brands. That's not the same thing.

> Why do you think You tube removed the downvote counter?

My guess is "seeing downvotes lead to less engagement". But as I've not seen the discussion, that's a guess.

> If crowds of people are allowed to freely light a brand on fire on Twitter, why would they pay to advertise there?

They could do that before he bought it.

> Meta paid like 22 Billion for WhatsApp which is hardly bringing in revenue.

The actual revenue is not published, but is claimed to be at least $1 billion/year based on the preceeding quarter:

"""Alice Newton-Rex, WhatsApp's vice president of product, told the Financial Times in late September 2024, that "paid messaging is a bit earlier in the journey, but it's also doing well, and we've passed a $1 billion run rate."""" - https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/04091...

That said, nobody's going around saying "gosh what a great investment decision by Zuckerberg, he nailed this one", if they're saying anything at all it's usually along the lines of "huh, is this a monopoly issue?"

I was just watching a youtube video comparing the driver assist between Tesla and VW group (specifically an ID.3 in the video but commenters mentioned other group vehicles) and somewhat surprisingly to me, the consesus was that the VW tech was far better.

Measuring by cars sold it's actually close to 5x. In 2023 I see 9.2 million from VW, and 1.8 million from Tesla.

OK WTF ist most of this? How about not targeting the upper market during inflation?

> If I had had this tool when ordering my Porsche 911 a few years ago, I probably would have made a different color choice.

Why not focus on what normal people want, like affordable reliable cars, instead of luxury cars with a dozen computers and screens in it where you need to get something fixed twice a year.

Look at fucking Volkswagen being a whiney bitch about sluggish sales when they focused on the upper market too for the past couple years. They just fired a huge amount of staff. Obviously just from the lower ranks, you know, the folks who actually get shit done, to ensure the coke-sniffing managers can still pay themselves huge bonuses for being dumb idiots making the wrong calls.

In 2019 Robert Habeck (green party) famously said in an interview[1], addressing head of Volkswagen Herbert Diess: "if you can't offer an EV for under 20,000€ by 2025, I fear you'll fail" - seems he was way off - by about a year.

> Volkswagen AG revenue for the twelve months ending June 30, 2024 was $351.396B, a 10.2% increase year-over-year.

But of course VW has enough buddies in politics that we'll probably just get a huge bailout package for poor Volkswagen, and all the managers can congratulate each other and keep going.

[1] https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/robert-habeck-...

I don't know why the parent post is being down voted. I think it makes a solid argument about creating a car that normal people can afford.

That is exactly what Chinese car companies is doing. Here's a video by Caresoft of the BYD Seagull which s apparently sub $12k. (Caresoft AFAIK do professional level car teardown reports for the auto industry) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izvdO-zdlKg&t=2s

I'd love to buy something like that at that price point.

Volkswagen has low-cost brands like Seat, which so quite well. I think they are included in the revenue.

If Habeck implements a belated and voluntary Morgenthau plan by de-industrializing Germany, applauding the destruction of its energy infrastructure and by being basically only concerned about increasing Rheinmetall's profits, the German economy will and does collapse.

Habeck runs a tight censorship regime as well:

https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/german-pension...

The Green Party is now both economically incompetent and a warmongering party. It has become the worst of both worlds.

Nuclear exit was decided by the previous government; if anything the green party accelerated adoption of solar at least, thanks to the Russian invasion and exploding natural gas prices.

The problem is that the other major parties are even worse. At least Habeck has something going compared to the other candidates regarding the next election.

>OK WTF ist most of this? How about not targeting the upper market during inflation?

Why? The upper class is the one least affected by inflation. Just look how the stock market is doing. Even in bad times, luxury brands are selling just fine, this has been proven time and time again. Have you seen sales of Bugattis, Ferraris or McLarens slowing down?

The problem is, VW is not a luxury brand, it's an expensive commodity, making it the first thing avenge people axe in tough times.

Then how did we end up with Volkswagen's situation?

Selling 100 cars for 20k each sounds better than selling 2 for 200k.

>Then how did we end up with Volkswagen's situation?

Upper class don't buy VW.

VW is a posh brand for the middle class which has now been wiped out by inflation and rising CoL, that's why they aren't selling.

I'm surprised I have to spell out obvious stuff like this.

Bugatti and McLaren are in the same league as Mercedes?

Mercedes has always been the car for the middle class to aim for to show you made it, if that was the kind of thing that was important to you. Sure they also serve the upper class, but then again Volkswagen has Audi for that. And I'd be surprised if sales of the expensive models made the lions share, but I have to check.

But at least in my bubble I see even folks with money turn away from these kind of cars. It's like the car is losing its role as a status symbol.

>Bugatti and McLaren are in the same league as Mercedes?

I never said that. You're going with offtopic parallels instead of addressing the arguments I'm making.

Lol I see why your username is green. Guess I've fallen for a troll again. I addressed them all and you get hung up on the fact that you didn't explicitly spell it out and ignore the rest of my post. Enjoy your meal.

Car manufacturers barely make money on the smaller high volume cars - eg. Mercedes only makes real profit starting with the E-class and up.

Yet they are rumored to be sourcing 2026 CLA engine from Chinese Geely. Nothing agains Chinese companies, but aren't MB suppose to be luxury brand? Geely will probably offer vehicle with same engine, more tech for half the price.

Mercedes is pushing some pretty awful motors, like the new C63 4cyl turbo hybrid thing. Of course, a lot of this is driven by regulation, not Mercedes being cheap.

That R&D budget hasn't resulted in Mercedes making good engines. For example the M271 was notorious for going through timing chains, a supposedly lifetime part, in about 100 000 km.

I've also owned two Mercedes and both have had the rear brake lines rust away. Thankfully in the latter they were replaced before they rusted through.

I would imagine fewer and fewer manufacturers are wanting to invest in combustion engine development at this stage, but regulations are getting ever tighter in much of the world. Plus an increasing number of people just want a vehicle as an appliance; if it looks cool and it's nice inside, they don't care what's making it go as long as it's reasonably reliable and doesn't drink fuel.

Out of all the Chinese car companies, the one that owns Volvo and Lotus is probably not a bad choice. They also plan to produce the Smart electric vehicles as a part of a joint venture with Geely. The CLA is also supposed to get self driving tech from Chinese startup Momenta.

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