Comments by "Michael Nurse" (@michaelnurse9089) on "DW News" channel.

  1. In the past, superior German engineering justified a higher labour cost. Now engineering from both Tesla and China (who has a low labour cost) has left German Engineering in 3rd or 4th or even 5th place. Of course, it is nearly impossible to tell union workers they must reduce their salaries to 50%, so the company then enters a death spiral and sheds customers. It is far from over and tariffs result in counter-tariffs.
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  2. Good work Iya Ibrahim
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  3. At a certain point in the 2000s Germany realised that they could outsource nearly everything to China and just do the engineering. Recently, China realized they can just do the engineering better and cheaper themselves. Many countries were once exceptional are no longer so - Italy, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, South Africa, Argentina.
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  4. You can only invest if you cut money elsewhere. Which social programs will you give the chop to?
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  5.  @puchatek5584  Germany was allied with and part of the West. You took a big gamble in striking a deal with the traditional enemies of the West - Russia and China.
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  6. North Korea too.
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  7. None of these. Problem is VW uses 2x labour to make a car compared to Toyota and 4x compared to Tesla.
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  8. Think of it as a tax on bad drivers.
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  9. GM, Ford, Stellantis and soon Toyota will be in the same boat.
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  10. Its not free-market when government subsidizes the companies. It is mercantilism.
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  11. There is a saying "Don't shoot the messenger". Well, in my experience, simple people always shoot the messenger.
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  12. It still has brand power, but that is not enough.
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  13. You can easily shield them in a bunker. Also, you pop a nuke and then Russia will pop 7000 nukes - 100 on every major western city.
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  14. Teslas last more than 300 000 miles. New batteries from China will have million mile/km guarantee so then they will last even longer. No gearbox, no engine failure, no rust if made from aluminium.
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  15. Russian energy comes with Russian politics.
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  16.  @wolfswinkel8906  That's all fine and well, but at one stage Germany was ahead of the World with regards to wind and solar and then it fell flat when presumably the pipelines came marching into town.
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  17. Nobody is asking for a ban. They want rules. Rules on design (e.g. no launch and forget assassin drones), production (e.g. disallowing corporations to stockpile private armies) and use (e.g. you may only use them once you have been invaded by a substantial enemy force and sustained x amount of damage).
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  18. Tesla automate everything. They also make cars people want.
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  19.  @lv7603  It was relevant because it shattered a myth held Worldwide that VWs were the best alternative for someone who couldn't handle the boring design of Toyotas.
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  20. German innovators moved to the US.
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  21. Nope. Armenia lost all their AA without a single kill to drones. That is how they lost the war.
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  22. Unions are not incentivised for long term survival. They just have a one year outlook - what raises and other concession can we get in the next 12 months. Tesla did well to keep them out.
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  23. Would you nuke your own city to stop a drone attack?
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  24. Sure. But they will also let you go for other reasons, like to bump the stock price before they exercise their options.
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  25. Calling them blackouts is racist. Don't do that.
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  26. "Tesla is not a well made vehicle" Once upon a time this was true. Now they have the lowest running costs and longest life with no more panel gaps.
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  27. By definition all AI are trained by humans. We conceptualize them, choose the data and training criteria. Morally, anything we can do they can do.
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  28. You post is lost on most people. But it is spot on!
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  29. Countries, or companies, can have two mindsets - value creation or value extraction - the former leads to Tesla today, the later VW today.
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  30. "with the company assembling its vehicles in far-flung areas across the globe. My golf was assembled in South Africa. " Nope. Research shows car quality has everything to do with the design of the manufacturing process and nothing to do with where it is assembled. Blame zee Germans.
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  31. Adjusted for inflation it is the same price. Difference is the one from the 90's you could buy cheap parts and fix it yourself.
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  32. Yup. In the 90's after the Berlin Wall fell it looked like we were in for a war free world. Instead, the US, China and Russia just retooled and got ready for the next round.
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  33. Toyota will be like VW in 5 years time. They have no EVs and no plans to make them. Already they are losing market to BYD in Asia.
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  34. There was no choice. If Germany did not tow the line then the US will sanction them too.
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  35. Solar panels have never been cheaper.
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  36. It is the wrong term. It should be "Launch and Forget" as autonomous systems can identify targets, lock onto them and decide when to fire. All you have to do is decide how many to launch and where.
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  37. Depends on the the government.
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  38. No. AGI is not possible - the technology does not exist in any form. What is possible is that humans using narrow AI f up the World with machines becoming intelligent.
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  39. They can sell their cars to Russia, North Korea, Pakistan.
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  40. millions?
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  41. Did 2 billion just die? 75 million cars a year and 10 year life with 4 people sharing the average car. Roughly half can afford to travel by car.
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  42. Exactly what anyone not US, Russian or Chinese should be thinking.
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  43. Stop looking for hard evidence - look to the behaviors. If China had found proof that it came from animals they would have thrust all evidence into the face of the rest of the World. If they know it came out the lab they have no option but to obfuscate and stonewall. This is how the CCP behaves in all matters so why would it be different this time?
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  44. War crimes are a convenient fiction. Watch the film "A Judgement at Nuremburg" to see why.
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  45. These things are allowed in terms of the rules.
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  46. They used AI to make the vaccines. Initial proposals are AI driven.
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  47. Matrix 2 and Matrix 3.
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  48. As a Tesla shareholder, I really, really like the way VWs look.
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  49. VW employees make more than anyone. They also vote.
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  50.  @deaffeb  Innovation takes time, capital, and will. VW has no will to innovate. When Tesla arrived they mocked them while the Chinese got to work copying them.
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  51. They can't. They lack the battery technology because they refused to invest in it. Only America and China have invested enough into battery technology to compete in this space.
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  52. Check your facts. They are now cheaper to buy than ICE. And 3x cheaper to run. In China EV sales have passed 50%.
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  53. That is not so bad. After WW1 was far, far worse.
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  54. It fixes it for VW pensioners. Robbing Peter to pay Paul.
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  55. Since WW1 major wars have largely been 'out of control' already. You are right of course, that takes it up another notch.
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  56. US Airforce drones use max stealth technology. They look like small B2 bombers. Small things have very limited range.
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  57. China is ramping solar panels and batteries. No Russian oil needed.
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  58. So slow. Probably the Air Force by 2030. Probably the Conventional Army by 2040.
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  59. So pretty though...
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  60. In WW2 nuclear weapons were used to secure a 'diplomatic advantage' over Japan.
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  61. In a nutshell - US military companies soak up all excess taxpayer money and invest it into these systems. A full 50% of the population actively and vocally supports this (GOP) and the other 50% support it silently (Democrats). China and Russia not much different. This is how the Cold War happened, ditto for WW2, WW1 and all the wars before.
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  62. It depends. If your hostile neighbor is the one doing the developing - the sill 100% never launch a nuke at your on a 1st strike basis - because the rest of the World will retaliate. On the other hand, if they invade you with these things only nobody cares - see Armenia/Azerbaijan.
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  63. They never said that.
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  64. To follow your advice would mean outsourcing production to China.
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  65. They did. For like 15+ years. The adapted and laid low until the cost was prohibitive.
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  66. China is running their manufacturers at a big loss paid for by the government - who wholly or partially owns all the manufacturers. Nobody is managing to compete with them other than Tesla - and even for them it is tough.
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  67. Really? 150k views? Cat videos get 15m views and gangster music videos get 150m views.
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  68. They are corrupt because they are in the pay of corporations. The biggest payers of campaign donations are military companies. The biggest supporter of unnecessary war - Tony Blair - just got bust with billions in secrets funds with no obvious source for them.
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  69. A good idea, but people need to get around and trains/buses are hard work to use.
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  70.  @SK-kh2rs  Nothing funny for German taxpayers who don't work at VW.
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  71. Except in Germany workers can vote - so any attempt to cut labour costs would be shot down.
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  72.  @emilsohn1671  But what about the high salaries and pensions. Germany still lose because of that. As do Ford and GM.
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  73. China use every tool available. Good engineering, automation, cheap labour, government subsidies, capital availability, burning the boats, copying Tesla, casting, battery innovation.
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  74. Can't 1. They will be voted out 2. EVs are taking over - in 5 years ICE will be nearly gone. Reason is EV prices keep dropping while ICE technology is already at a cost minumum.
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  75. There is no such thing as an EMP. A nuclear blast creates an EMP but now you are shooting flies with a cannon. You will have to wipe out your own city to stop the attack. Shielding electronics is not hard to do.
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  76. No. If your shareholder goes bankrupt it does not mean anything for you.
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  77. Did your rocks travel 7000km below radar, then loiter for 4 hours till it spots a specific vehicle and then launch a JDAM at a specific man, before returning to base for refueling?
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  78. How old are you? What companies do is artificially lower prices using government subsidies for say a decade, they then get all the market share, the mind share, the technology, the know-how, the talent and so on. Once their competitors are dead they jack up margin to Apple levels and profit like are Al Capone. The consumer might 'win' for 10 years but they suffer for '50' thereafter. This is why WTO bans government assistance to companies. They still do it, just real sneaky-sneaky.
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  79.  @maestrovso  Only way to pay for the repairs.
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  80. Synthetic fuels by pathetic fools.
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  81. Recycling is not working anywhere. It is cheaper to make new plastic.
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  82. Bah. In the 80's engineers ruled Porche but their price was 3x the competition and quality was bad. Managers are needed as well.
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  83. Naïve. After your bot army is wiped out you will be wiped out - probably through an engineered civil war.
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  84. The World has moved on since 1938. Teslas cars are neither inexpensive nor simple - yet they sell, and sell at a profit.
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  85. Their range is low. So you will deploy into an area - say a 10km x 10km geofence. Within that zone there will be false positive and false negatives. It will be messy when they take out your kid sister because she was holding a long pole like object.
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  86.  @kamsunleong6648  BYD has 60 000 engineers. How many engineers are working on BEVs in Germany?
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