>How can they have made this car this bad?

Typical German beancounter MBA run company treating SW like a cost center.

"We need to add interactive computers on cars because that's the latest hip trend, but we need to outsource it to the cheapest bidder because SW development is not a "real" engineering discipline and we don't like paying for good SW developers."

Then a manager from another division hears there's computers in cars and decides to improve his KPIs by forcing ConnectedDrive signup in every car and gets a massive promotion.

When I saw Mercedes' "HyperScreen (TM)", and read that EQS doesn't recommend you pop the trunk and hide the latch behind a screwed cover, I decided that I'd never approach them for a very long time.

BMW lost its (not only visual but whole company) soul when they decided that catering to Chinese aesthetics will be their global image forward, and the details of how the car behaves is... nuts.

VAG lost my trust with DieselGate already.

Zee Germans.