New VW film by Financial Times

[jon87]

This is an interesting watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb-SEJxaa20

I have a Golf GTI PP 7.5 and a BYD Dolphin. I bought the BYD as a cheap lease car in December due to the free electric chargers at work, I wasn't expecting much from it, but I have been so impressed with it. Yes, the GTI is more fun, but they are different types of cars. The build quality of the BYD is solid like how VW used to be and the doors feel heavy. The battery is amazing and the main reason I picked a BYD, unlike other EVs, it's not an issue to keep charging to 100% and I always get 220+ miles from a full charge. I've had VWs for the past 20 years but this 7.5 will be my last, unless they go back to their previous build quality. Things are going to change soon, the quality coming from China is a step above. German automakers have been cutting corners for too long in terms of quality.

[fredgroves]

Germans are getting reemed by the Chinese for several reasons:

1) The advantage they had in complex engineering such as engines and gearboxes are not applicable to EV's - EV's are very much less complex things to design. The only really clever bit is the battery... and the Chinese developed the battery tech to start with.

2) Germans (and other European car makers) made a massive mis step in EV's by making them premium (priced) vehicles and not focusing on cheap mass market first. They ended up with millions of unsold vehicles which in turn dragged down their financial state.

3) The Germans assumed the Chinese market would want their cars and not Chinese made ones and similarly assumed Europeans would feel the same.

Basically German ubermensch superiority hubris has killed them.... and it probably has killed them.