boemJob losses likely at VW as the people’s car brand becomes uncompetitive
Funny how job incomes don’t scale similarly when brands become “competitive”
I’m fairly neutral about my 2017 VW, it’s not the best car I’ve owned, but it’s comfy, gas mileage is good, it still has physical knobs/buttons for everything, and it hasn’t had any major issues yet.
But VW decided to switch their newer vehicles to the digital cockpit gauges with a goddamn screen in your face - so now I’ll never buy another VW.
Reliability is either stagnating or declining, complexity is increasing, costs are increasing, and new features being added are either useless or straight up anti-user. Why would anyone continue to make the choice to subject themselves to that?
I want to say companies that enshittify get what they deserve, but realistically we’ll just be left with fewer companies that are free to make worse products because there aren’t many alternative options. Google and Amazon both come to mind.
Late stage capitalism isn’t fun.
I had a '16 eGolf, loved everything about it except the range. Eventually when my commute got longer I had to upgrade, would go for a 300mi eGolf any day, but they killed it in favor of the bland AF ID.4. No thank you.
I have a 2019 e-golf which has slightly better range, and I love it! The adaptive cruise and CarPlay make it an excellent commuter car.
It really truly is a great car! Fun to drive and the perfect size. After moving, however, my commute was landing me at home with 5 miles of range left, figured it’d only be a couple of years before that ran down to 0, so I upgraded before I had to deal with it. If VW still had an eGolf for sale, I would have picked it up without question.
I feel pretty similar about the changes at VW. We bought a used 2020 Golf this year and are really happy with it so far. I was kind of tempted by the SportWagen, but we don’t need the extra space right now. I’d consider that as our next vehicle, but here in Canada they discontinued that a few years back. They had the Alltrack which might still tempt me but this year they stopped selling that as well as the baseline Golf. So now the closest options to what I would want in the future are the ID.4, the Golf GTI, or the Jetta, none of which appeal to me!
Volkswagen has always been garbage, long before any “late stage capitalism” influences. They’re even worse than American cars (well, Chrysler is about as bad as VW). At least American companies embraced influences from Japan starting in the mid-70’s, with Ford and GM partnering with Japanese companies, bringing some of the quality influences in from them.
I’ve worked on most brands since about 1975, VW has never changed quality. There’s a reason VW is a meme in the repair biz - their electrics are so bad they always have a light out/dim. Similar to Chrysler in this way - they market shiny/features, but the systems are poorly designed.
Oddly Honda and Toyota don’t have these issues, even today.
Ameritrash vehicles are by and far the worst. Japanese > German > Korean > “American”
I want to say companies that enshittify get what they deserve, but realistically we’ll just be left with fewer companies that are free to make worse products because there aren’t many alternative options. Google and Amazon both come to mind.
In other words, enshittification is a direct consequence of failure to enforce anti-trust law.
No one wanted touch buttons.
Also, a 4-cylinder engine for atlas is a joke.
downpunxxThe Nazi Peoples Car, developed by Hitlers Third Reich, employers of Concentration Camp Jewish slave labor including from Auschwitz
The original VW died with the Nazis.
Current VW was basically founded by Ivan Hirst, a British Army officer, who came across the bombed VW factory and saw the opportunity to use old stock (parts) to build cars for the British military.
You keep making these really angry comments. Are you ok? You know getting into arguments online isn't going to make you any happier, right?
bunnyfcthey got billions to invest into new drive technologies and didn't
they have really tight contracts with all of their suppliers but didn't act in time to get the electric vehicle suppliers into similar contracts
Imagine that. Get a reputation for cars that are precisely engineered to have expensive parts fail shortly after warranty expiration, and cement that with a brand-wide emissions cheating scandal, and then wonder why no one trusts you.
Boomers only bought your air-cooled offerings because they were cheap. You got no brand goodwill out of the deal.
brand-wide emissions cheating scandal
To be fair, didn’t it eventually come out that pretty much everyone was cheating? VW just got caught first.
At least in North America I think they were the only brand selling passenger vehicles diesel engines.
To be fair, didn’t it eventually come out that pretty much everyone was cheating? VW just got caught first.
Which other manufacturers were cheating?
…m.wikipedia.org/…/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
Check the “Other manufacturers” heading.
Basically all of them.
But this is what happen when you have rules set by people that think they can ignore physical laws and somehow make it work.
To be even fairer, having such overly-strict emissions standards for diesels was a bad idea to begin with. Destroying diesels and forcing everyone into gasoline cars instead saved a little bit of pollutants like soot, NOx, and SOx, sure, but came at the expense of much lower efficiency/higher greenhouse gas emissions.
The worst part is that biodiesel burns much cleaner than dino-diesel, but isn’t compatible with the fancy injection systems and emissions equipment on “clean diesel” engines. If we had let them keep building the same circa-2000 engine tech, we could’ve cleaned up the whole fleet at once simply by switching out the fuel (while still keeping the same high efficiency and reducing GHG emissions to net-zero because biodiesel is part of the short-term carbon cycle instead of the long-term one), but now we can’t because all the new engines break if you use more than 10% or so biodiesel in them.
WashedOverThat was their identity that made them a high volume seller. It was simple and it was clear what their market position was. The line extensions into higher end never worked and required a new brand for these higher level offerings in the end. They never learned from this lesson. Brand identity can win the day but also lose it all for you when you try to shift from a popular product.
A part of the issue is younger generations don’t necessarily know what goes on behind the scenes of their phones or laptops. They are shiny disposable products and this extends to their cars. If the product looks like the similar tech they interface with daily on their phones, it’s good for them. They won’t have the experience of simpler complex cars that broke down constantly from one thing or another or functions that just don’t work period because they cost way to much to fix.
As much as I think vehicles should be made less complex and easier to service it might not be marketable beyond farmers or trades that do their own work on these things. Shiny and the latest tech is sexy and where sales are driven from.
Dacia sales keep increasing every year. This does show there is an increasing demand for simple cars.
Or just cheap ones. VW and every other maistream cars are getting unaffordable.
Isn’t just a rebrand cars?
Their duster model is a copy of Renault Duster. They didn’t even bother to change the name.
I had never heard of Renault Duster before (nor seen one), so I looked it up. The Renault Duster is apparently a Dacia Duster with mostly cosmetic changes, for sale outside the eu, typically released later than the Dacia Duster is released in the eu. So it’s the same car, but different brand badges + cosmetics depending on the country were it’s sold. They are so similar, that I’d just call it the same car, not a copy.
Interesting, I thought it’s the other way around.
The line extensions into higher end never worked and required a new brand for these higher level offerings in the end. They never learned from this lesson. Brand identity can win the day but also lose it all for you when you try to shift from a popular product.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Are you saying that VW didn’t understand they needed a luxury brand for higher-end cars? 'Cause they’ve got Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini and Bentley…
Yes but at first they tried to release the high end product under the VW brand. The Phaeton was one of the best engineered vehicles failures ever produced as many did not want to buy a higher end car with the VW economy badge on it. Brand does count for a lot even when a lower economy brand has a superior made product, the masses cannot always move beyond that. I’m sure there are many that lived that VW Phat on and were happy for owning it, but commercially it didn’t fit.
The Phaeton was a weird aberration that I agree should’ve been a different brand, but it definitely wasn’t “at first.” Audi had been owned by VW for decades before the Phaeton came out.
Well that’s a more blatant recent model. Paying $70,000 for a VW wasn’t something many would even consider in the early 2000s and yes Audi existed so it was a really odd double down on line extension of the VW line.
The earlier creep was from the original identity of VW with the it may be ugly but it gets you there marketing. For it’s time was a great way to describe the brand and the place in the market. Think of the older VW buses, rabbits, Transporters, etc. Not beautiful in relation to cars of their day but bloody practical.
Due to markets and human conditioning they weren’t going to show up and copy Ford or GM designs and expect to have a chance at taking market share. Their positioning in the lower end of the market made it their’s for a long time like the upstart Japanese.
They all came in with smaller, economical to run cars and the big 3 struggled to compete. And when the big 3 tried, they were terrible at it for quite a while. The mini Mustang comes to mind along wth the Monza and the Pinto. Cult vehicles but not market darlings. AMC tried different things due to the success of their Jeep brand with luxury 4x4s and 4x4 cars. New markets. They only survived for so long due to the Jeep brand.
Now all the brands overlap with models and offerings a great deal more but there are still things they are all respectively good at. Full size trucks are mostly a Big 3 market despite excellent product from Toyota. There’s a large segment of the US population that doesn’t consider Toyota products to be real trucks despite many saying they are far better quality. The list goes on…
I know this is more about switching from ICE to electric, but this is kinda hilarious
Feedback about the company’s new capacitive multifunction steering wheel was so overwhelmingly negative that last year, Schaffer promised to ditch the design. Meanwhile, much of the range—both electric and gas-powered—is saddled with temperature and volume controls that are touch-sensitive but not backlit, making them all but impossible to use at night.
Every car I’ve ever bought had had glaringly terrible design choices that make it obvious nobody in development actually drove the car. This has got to be one of the worst examples of that though.
2015 Ford Fusion, the touchscreen is pressure-sensitive, but the physical "buttons" for HVAC right below that are, for some reason, capacitive. Which means you can't really use either one while wearing gloves; you need a bare finger for the buttons, and gloves are too bulky to accurately press the little touchscreen things.
snooggumsThis is why I will never own a car without knobs or paddles for AC and heal controls.
The Fusion of the 2010-13 generation was peak for this car in my opinion. I owned a few from this generation and earlier. While I still after 12 years of ownership on my 2011 Fusion still need to look down at a block of buttons to figure out which climate control option I’m choosing it’s not this nightmare or the newer touchscreen nightmare either.
It’s too bad Ford left behind the simpler but trusty tech for flash and glam that wasn’t practical but this has been a repeating cyclical pattern for them for a long time.
When I think back to older Fords it was slide controls. Jeep had the twist knobs along with others. Those knobs honestly are still the best controls for safety and ease of use but it’s form over function these days.
We had a 2013 as well, the dome lights were weird capacitive touch. They made those physical buttons in the next iteration, which was an excellent idea.
Has this as a rental car a few years ago…
guess which knob I kept reaching for to turn down the volume…
The one clearly labeled volume?
Labels are not safe. Drivers need to keep their eyes on the road.
Maybe you are right, but it better not be because of a label
garretbleMan, that’s a yikes.
I hate those knobs, but I’m also lucky to just drive a simple standard car right now. It has a touch screen for sat nav (Carplay/Android Auto), but volume and climate controls are all physical.
AopenWhat does bigger one do?
I used to own a 2003 Hyundai Accent (of all things) that I was surprisingly impressed with in terms of interior and interface design. I particularly liked how they managed to fit cup holders suitable for 20oz plastic bottles into the door pockets.
You kind of get used to it. It’s not as bad as it sounds. At the same time they should absolutely get back to regular buttons. The only thing that should be touch sensitive in a car should be the infotainment screen when it’s displaying Android Auto or CarPlay.
Even then I think I’d like it to be a backup.
It’s not that they didn’t know it wasn’t very good. But it was a money saver, and they thought people would accept it because “modern”.
capacitive multifunction steering wheel
Mercedes has those too… They suck.
LinkerbaanI hate car manufacturers so much. First they whine about touch tech not being reliable, then after 10 years they implement the worst possible version of it.
The one thing I can praise Elon for is that he wasn’t a dumbass that wanted to use bad 10 year old tech. He does make his fair share of unreliable car but most of that seems to actually not be software related.
nicetriangleI really liked how the car drove but after owning a 2001 Jetta I'd probably never buy another VW. That car had the worst quality control of any car I've ever seen. It was insane how much stuff broke in that car. I'll stick with Japanese cars if I was in the market for one.
That's how I feel about my 2010 Tiguan. It is just such a piece of shit. I like how it handles but every other day something on its breaking or the electricals acting up. Never again
BlackoutI test drove one of those when I was in-between Mazdas just to see if it was better and was disappointed with the handling and power. Plus it was $8k more at the time. The Mazda I bought instead has only needed brakes and tires once in 8 years.
Tou definitely should be replacing your brakes and tires more than once every 8 years
I drive around 6k mi a year and get them checked often. I rode my bike to work instead.
Yeah it was crazy what went wrong in this thing in the space of a few years before we got rid of it... Just off the top of my head:
- Pulled too close to one of those parking dividers and the bumper barely scuffed up onto it. All the plastic attachment clips in the front bumper snapped and the bumper sagged a couple inches from there out. They quoted me something like $500 to replace some plastic clips.
- Fuel injectors sprayed gas onto the engine block causing smoke to come out from under the hood
- Recall on the turn signals
- Fabric in the roof of the car bubbled up and sagged down
- Labels on the center console (radio/climate control/etc) started peeling off
- Lid of the center console broke
- Glove compartment door broke
- Stereo broke
- Cupholders broke
- Driver side door speaker went
There was some other stuff too but it's been a while now. My last car was an Accord that I had for many years and that thing was rock solid. I still miss it but had to sell it when I moved out of the country.
VW quality has been shit for decades. Having worked on most every brand of car, you couldn’t give me a VW.
There’s a meme about VWs that you can’t get all lights to work simultaneously. There’s always one that’s out/dim, because their electrics suck.
An example of the nonsense they do: on one model the AC circuit had an ecu in the drivers door, which also controlled the door locks and windows. So if your door lock controller died, so did your AC.
No reason for this, there wasn’t any automation between windows and AC. Just crappy VW design.
VW quality has been shit for decades. Having worked on most every brand of car, you couldn’t give me a VW.
There’s a meme about VWs that you can’t get all lights to work simultaneously. There’s always one that’s out/dim, because their electrics suck.
An example of the nonsense they do: on one model the AC circuit had an ecu in the drivers door, which also controlled the door locks and windows. So if your door lock controller died, so did your AC.
No reason for this, there wasn’t any automation between windows and AC. Just crappy VW design.
VW quality has been shit for decades. Having worked on most every brand of car, you couldn’t give me a VW.
There’s a meme about VWs that you can’t get all lights to work simultaneously. There’s always one that’s out/dim, because their electrics suck.
An example of the nonsense they do: on one model the AC circuit had an ecu in the drivers door, which also controlled the door locks and windows. So if your door lock controller died, so did your AC.
No reason for this, there wasn’t any automation between windows and AC. Just crappy VW design.
VW quality has been shit for decades. Having worked on most every brand of car, you couldn’t give me a VW.
There’s a meme about VWs that you can’t get all lights to work simultaneously. There’s always one that’s out/dim, because their electrics suck.
An example of the nonsense they do: on one model the AC circuit had an ecu in the drivers door, which also controlled the door locks and windows. So if your door lock controller died, so did your AC.
No reason for this, there wasn’t any automation between windows and AC. Just crappy VW design.
VW quality has been shit for decades. Having worked on most every brand of car, you couldn’t give me a VW.
There’s a meme about VWs that you can’t get all lights to work simultaneously. There’s always one that’s out/dim, because their electrics suck.
An example of the nonsense they do: on one model the AC circuit had an ecu in the drivers door, which also controlled the door locks and windows. So if your door lock controller died, so did your AC.
No reason for this, there wasn’t any automation between windows and AC. Just crappy VW design.
jordanlundI can’t help but wonder how much of this is still fallout from “DieselGate”.
IHeartBadCodeAt least they have the id.buzz coming. I've been waiting to replace my minivan, but so far nothing is better than the wearing out one we have.