VW seems to be panicking...

[dxg]

Well worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2hdSMlaoBg

[Flooble]

They'll be fine. Their eGolf was a bit rubbish and arrived half a decade behind the Leaf while their ID range have received a bit of a luke warm reception, but the fact they are still here and kicking shows how little impact that meandering has had.

There are huge numbers of people who will happily get back in their preferred brand, defining themselves by being "Audi drivers" or "Dubheads" etc. And obviously immense loyalty in Germany to a German manufacturer.

Tesla is now a toxic brand among the chattering classes, who loathe Musk for buying Twitter (amongst other things) so there is a huge warehouse of people who will be back in Audi/VW/Seat regardless of how bad or expensive the VAG EV range is. And it really isn't that bad.

Can you really imagine the average Marketing Director turning up in a Kia?

I think the biggest threat to VW is BMW, who have built lots of different EVs (i3, i8, various types of 3, 5 series) and seem to be a lot more together with any pivot that is needed. So I think it's going to be a bit like going back to the late 1940s and discussing the prospects for Austin and Rover ...

[jjones]

China is doing to the car industry what Japan did to the bike industry. EV has added another a layer of complexity to this which the Chinese manufactures seem to be able to use as an accelerator for their market share increase via price and rapidly improving quality. The British bike industry sneered at the Japanese rivals and look how that ended for them.

[coetzeeh]

You'd expect every CEO worth his salt to focus the minds regularly and drive down cost. It happens in every industry.

[Nickbrapp]

Sounds more like he’s worried that they’ll have to invest so much money they’ll go into loss for a while, which is pretty standard business behaviour

I have no sympathy. All the ICE brands have had decades to look into the future and see electric cars coming, then even when Tesla came along with the S they ignored it and then really took notice when the 3 came along and started really bringing them to the forefront.

vw bought out a lack lustre product with the id3 and marketed it as the next big thing like they did with tje beetle and golf, but of course, by the time they did, the Koreans where miles ahead, the Chinese where hoovering up the cheap market with MGs and then you couldn’t actually get hold of a id3, then they killed off the cheap one, so now you’re faced with paying £40k+ for a flawed ugly car when there’s so much alternative on the market now.

Even the chip shortage they could have seen coming, old tech goes obsolete and they didn’t bother bringing our their own. And now they’re paying the price

Same thing happened to Ford and the fiesta and focus, they used to be good to drive and cheap, now they are neither and they’ve lost their market share to Kia and hyandai and MG.


I doubt VW will disappear and they’ll come back with a range of decent cars but the ID Family is just a pile of crap and not worth the price they want

[kambites]

Nickbrapp said:

Sounds more like he’s worried that they’ll have to invest so much money they’ll go into loss for a while, which is pretty standard business behaviour

It's quite depressing how short-termist many big businesses have become these days though. Whilst obviously efficiency is good, cutting back on R&D when things get tough in a fast-changing market is pretty stupid when you think about it.

The sad thing about the ID cars is that they are not fundamentally bad products at all. VW just completely screwed up the details and not even in ways which saved them a significant amount of money.

Edited by kambites on Sunday 23 July 11:34

[Nickbrapp]

kambites said:

It's quite depressing how short-termist many big businesses have become these days though. Whilst obviously efficiency is good, cutting back on R&D when things get tough in a fast-changing market is pretty stupid when you think about it.

The sad thing about the ID cars is that they are not fundamentally bad products at all. VW just completely screwed up the details and not even in ways which saved them a significant amount of money.

Edited by kambites on Sunday 23 July 11:34

Yes exactly, people always pick up on the small things you use all the time, and that’s why them being unerganomic is so bad, I think every ID3 driver I’ve met has moaned about the volume slider not being lit up at night. Simple to have just stuck a LED under it, but has cost them a lot of negative press.

And the extra engineering in making the window switches 2 switches plus a button to do the rears when they could just have used one of the other several switch assembly they fit in every other car is the VAG group which has 4. Seems pointless to me!

[Newc]

jjones said:

China is doing to the car industry what Japan did to the bike industry. EV has added another a layer of complexity to this which the Chinese manufactures seem to be able to use as an accelerator for their market share increase via price and rapidly improving quality. The British bike industry sneered at the Japanese rivals and look how that ended for them.

Yep.

[Whataguy]

Nickbrapp said:

Yes exactly, people always pick up on the small things you use all the time, and that’s why them being unerganomic is so bad, I think every ID3 driver I’ve met has moaned about the volume slider not being lit up at night. Simple to have just stuck a LED under it, but has cost them a lot of negative press.

And the extra engineering in making the window switches 2 switches plus a button to do the rears when they could just have used one of the other several switch assembly they fit in every other car is the VAG group which has 4. Seems pointless to me!

I've had an id3 and agree, the touch panels and weird two button switches for the windows were awful.

Thankfully I believe they've fired the person responsible for the infotainment.

They are going back to physical controls and there will be a new infotainment system coming. With a light on the volume and temperature controls.

I think the id2 is their great opportunity to make up for past errors.

[Tophatron]

The problem is VW faces pressure from all directions by companies that currently make arguably better EVs.

Tesla going after Audi, Kia/Hyundai for VW/Seat and the Chinese brands such as MG for Skoda.

I wouldn't write them off, but the road ahead for them is bumpy.

[DaveGrohl]

VW have really fekked up their own company for reasons best known to themselves. I still have one of the original Mk7 Golf Rs. Absolutely fabulous bit of kit. They hit the sweet spot right there. Then they fiddled and made the Mk7.5 which I was distinctly meh about. I might’ve changed but decided it was a tiny step in the wrong direction.

Then came the Mk8. It’s just nasty, cheaper to make, big jump in prices, horrific user-interface, never mind ugly. I lost interest in VW at that point. Then came the ID3. Awfulness on four strange wheels. What happened to all the people at VW that knew what they were doing? They seem to have vanished off the face of the Earth.

[hunt123]

DaveGrohl said:

VW have really fekked up their own company for reasons best known to themselves. I still have one of the original Mk7 Golf Rs. Absolutely fabulous bit of kit. They hit the sweet spot right there. Then they fiddled and made the Mk7.5 which I was distinctly meh about. I might’ve changed but decided it was a tiny step in the wrong direction.

Then came the Mk8. It’s just nasty, cheaper to make, big jump in prices, horrific user-interface, never mind ugly. I lost interest in VW at that point. Then came the ID3. Awfulness on four strange wheels. What happened to all the people at VW that knew what they were doing? They seem to have vanished off the face of the Earth.

I own a mk7 Golf R too and agree they are really good cars, great allrounders, fast and practical, not bad on mpg. I don't like the mk8's either. I just hope mine doesn't go walkies, so many of them seem to get stolen and usually by scumbags breaking into the home for the keys.

[Sheepshanks]

Was quite surprised to see the new ID.3 in the showroom of our smallish local dealer yesterday - I thought it was still a while away. Was next to an old model - they’re going to be tough to sell now.

[TheDeuce]

DaveGrohl said:

VW have really fekked up their own company for reasons best known to themselves. I still have one of the original Mk7 Golf Rs. Absolutely fabulous bit of kit. They hit the sweet spot right there. Then they fiddled and made the Mk7.5 which I was distinctly meh about. I might’ve changed but decided it was a tiny step in the wrong direction.

Then came the Mk8. It’s just nasty, cheaper to make, big jump in prices, horrific user-interface, never mind ugly. I lost interest in VW at that point. Then came the ID3. Awfulness on four strange wheels. What happened to all the people at VW that knew what they were doing? They seem to have vanished off the face of the Earth.

I'd love to know that too.

I had a stopgap Mk7 GTD for a year and I was really impressed with it tbh. It wasn't the sort of car I was used to, but for a golf, it was a blessed step up from the Mk6, it felt like the golf was back on the correct evolutionary path.

Then we saw the mk8 and it seemed to be the same car but ruined a bit

And the ID range is just a bunch of 'some cars' which fail to have any joy, any uniqueness, and don't seem to have made very much out of the potential a pure EV platform hands to the designers.

Just 'meh'. The Chinese are going to make life tough for all European manufacturers, but VW seem to have spent the last decade ensuring they're squarely in the Chinese crosshairs.

[Dynion Araf Uchaf]

TheDeuce said:

I'd love to know that too.

I had a stopgap Mk7 GTD for a year and I was really impressed with it tbh. It wasn't the sort of car I was used to, but for a golf, it was a blessed step up from the Mk6, it felt like the golf was back on the correct evolutionary path.

Then we saw the mk8 and it seemed to be the same car but ruined a bit

And the ID range is just a bunch of 'some cars' which fail to have any joy, any uniqueness, and don't seem to have made very much out of the potential a pure EV platform hands to the designers.

Just 'meh'. The Chinese are going to make life tough for all European manufacturers, but VW seem to have spent the last decade ensuring they're squarely in the Chinese crosshairs.

DO you not think that EU legislation on ICE and transport generally has had the biggest impact on China's gain in the EV space?

[Sheepshanks]

kambites said:

It's quite depressing how short-termist many big businesses have become these days though. Whilst obviously efficiency is good, cutting back on R&D when things get tough in a fast-changing market is pretty stupid when you think about it.

The sad thing about the ID cars is that they are not fundamentally bad products at all. VW just completely screwed up the details and not even in ways which saved them a significant amount of money.

Compared to ICE, the drivetrain development of an EV must be massively simpler.

[untakenname]

Europe is going to have to implement some pretty stringent anti dumping laws otherwise it's likely to be flooded with Chinese EV's due to state subsidies far undercut the prices of what other countries can manufacturer and sell cars profitably for.

Interesting video here showing dumped EVs built solely to gain subsidies that stretch as far as the eye can see (3 minute mark).

[kambites]

Sheepshanks said:

Compared to ICE, the drivetrain development of an EV must be massively simpler.

In isolation, certainly, but the big manufacturers also have far less prior experience to lean on.

[TheDeuce]

Dynion Araf Uchaf said:

TheDeuce said:

I'd love to know that too.

I had a stopgap Mk7 GTD for a year and I was really impressed with it tbh. It wasn't the sort of car I was used to, but for a golf, it was a blessed step up from the Mk6, it felt like the golf was back on the correct evolutionary path.

Then we saw the mk8 and it seemed to be the same car but ruined a bit

And the ID range is just a bunch of 'some cars' which fail to have any joy, any uniqueness, and don't seem to have made very much out of the potential a pure EV platform hands to the designers.

Just 'meh'. The Chinese are going to make life tough for all European manufacturers, but VW seem to have spent the last decade ensuring they're squarely in the Chinese crosshairs.

DO you not think that EU legislation on ICE and transport generally has had the biggest impact on China's gain in the EV space?

No, I think that's an argument made chiefly by those (especially manufacturers) that are seeking a way to justify delaying the established ICE 'bans'.

The real cause of Chinese growth is price. We, either as part of the EU or outside of it, demand a very high standard of living and human rights across western Europe. Perhaps even an unaffordable and definitely sometimes unrealistic level. The Chinese don't maintain such high rights levels and as such they can produce cars and everything else for cheaper than in Europe.

The latest EV's to come from china at the c£30k mark are enough to make the likes of VW shudder. But look a little deeper, those same cars are sold domestically in china for c£10-15k. That's how cheap china can go Vs Europe manufacturers if it wants market share, and as the factories scale up that price will drop further. We in the west shunted all manufacturing of cheap tat to China so we could have all the tat we're used to whilst raising rights and working conditions at home. The Chinese now no longer just make tat though, they make cars which can go toe to toe with the likes of VW and easily compete at a lower price. We created that problem..

[wyson]

kambites said:

It's quite depressing how short-termist many big businesses have become these days though. Whilst obviously efficiency is good, cutting back on R&D when things get tough in a fast-changing market is pretty stupid when you think about it.

The sad thing about the ID cars is that they are not fundamentally bad products at all. VW just completely screwed up the details and not even in ways which saved them a significant amount of money.

Edited by kambites on Sunday 23 July 11:34

They didn’t have much choice because of the dieselgate fines. $30B to $40B USD depending on the source, I think investigations are still ongoing, so could go higher.

Edited by wyson on Thursday 27th July 10:09