"if you've ever driven a German car, you'll realize that the car was built for engineers and not for end users "

cracks me up. I once leased a BMW for 3 years. By the time I returned the car, I still didn't what all the cryptic buttons for HVAC and other controls. They just refused to follow established automotive ergonomic conventions.

Anyway, my father used to do business with Germans for a long time. He had many interesting stories to share, but one that has always stayed with me is, his disdain for how cheap / penny pinching his German companies and their employees were when doing deals. This was in the 90s, so definitely passed the West Germany glory days.

My take is, in the era of global competition, Germans didn't know how to strike the right balance and effective allocate resources. Where to compromise, and where not to. I don't know if it's sheer stubbornness or they're just wired differently.

I wonder if anybody's manufacturing was great before the Japanese quality revolution. It took Germany longer than the US to adopt modern quality control. Granted, Germany did a lot of it, for instance their chemical industries were staggering.

I've formed the impression that every country's engineering and design cultures are essentially aesthetics.

BMW's most recent infotainment is a big step backwards to me in both areas - aesthetics and UX. Its previous generation was one of the best in the market also in both. I literally don't consider buying the newest 4-series just because of it, especially of the ultrawide driver's "monitor" - it's just so ugly, and I regret it, since on the outside the car appeals me so much more. I'd rather spend the same on previous year model with better specs.

I think Germany got infected by the shareholder value and privatization virus but doesn't really understand it.

> if you've ever driven a German car, you'll realize that the car was built for engineers and not for end users -- weird little user-hostile features pop up everywhere

I drive a German car, all be it one from 2015, I don’t recognise this statement at all.

I find it quite well designed.

This sounds more like over generalised FUD to me.

Maybe they found the PostIt notes worked better than whatever software they tried.

I distinctly remember reading that the entire bill of materials for building a Boeing 747 was managed in Excel. I have not been able to find that claim since then but it was so amazing to me that I remember it.

It doesn't really make sense as I think about it now, because the 747 design predates Excel by many years so maybe it was BS.

It's always funny when HN users comment that there are no more opportunities for startups and it's too hard to compete against large, wealthy corporations. The reality is that most of them are so badly managed that competing against them is easy if you're actually competent.

I have seen this way to often in other areas. That is the push here as well AI can sort through it. Too many people are held to account for not meeting what amounts to made up numbers.

Someone intentionally doesn't want those numbers seen or applied.

It's not how it works. You suppose to contract a consulting company that contracts some offshore company to connect you to SAP.

I agree and it's quite resilient to digital outages/downtime (at least in terms of hours, probably not more than a few days) so your manufacturing productivity won't drop to zero when the ERP system goes down. The paper logs can also be entered later when the system comes back up.

As we've seen in the Iran conflict, datacenters are a target and result in extended outages.

true absolute dogshit software

Well....

Before you say SAP is terrible, have you tried the competition?

It has some data entry screens that are super efficient, cursor always goes to the right place, tab moves you to the right place etc. 15 years and lots of ERPs later I have never seen better

When you are viewing a purchase invoice on the ledger you can see the PO it is matched to, click on it and it goes to the PO. Click a line on the PO you can see the GRNs related. Click on them you go to the actual GRNs

Oracle ERP can't do any of that.

I agree with your opening paragraph -- hot take! What would be more interesting, would be to see humanoid robots un/packing and moving boxes in their warehouses. That to me seems like one of the first logical places to deploy humanoid robots to replace (or assist) human workers.

Cars are in the intersection where you have large parts that need to be moved around where other things happen with them and large scale of standard designs that is worth automating.

I expect that when we manage to do automated construction, it will use robot arms in several places too. But it's very rare that those two happen at the same time. Usually, large things are not standard.

All of the robot arms where I work are stood idle. Humans are so much more agile, so much more adaptable, so much easier to train, give better feedback, their moving parts last much longer. We focus instead on making the humans as productive as they can be, MES, kitted parts, intelligent tools etc.

Edit: We do have robots btw. But they are not arms. They are super specialised, high precision machines that are designed to do a job humanoids could not

You reminded me of the hilarious SV pizza making robot startup which has its own robot arm.

In this video you see the unnecessary robot arm move the pizza to the oven: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN45bTsBUW8

For contrast a How it is Made video of frozen pizzas being created at dozens (hundreds?) per minute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UrSIOtv8a0

I agree and for me personally this is very easy to see and understand.

Why do you think the vast majority of people fail to see it like this? Guys like Musk obvious hype it up as he now has tied the valuation of the firms he owns and operates to this story.

Vertically upright humanoids have a lot going for them: they don't occupy a lot of floor space, they can pull an object right into their center of gravity to manipulate it, and because they're familiar they're relatively easy to prototype actions for because they're our actions.

People always asser without evidence that humanoid isn't the best design, but there's a paucity of alternatives that don't make some type of tradeoff: humanoid might not be the best at anything, but it's clearly very good at a lot of things.

I toured a major US OEM assembly plant recently, and there were a TON of humans working insanely repetitive tasks.

The most kind numbing of all were the easiest (sit in chair and put bolts upright in holder so robot can pick them up) and the highest paid thanks to union seniority.

The UAW will kill all the US OEMs before that let robots replace all the humans.

Not if they trained on driver data. Will come with tailgating, lane swerving and flashing high beams as standard. Sonar will be used to judge the minimum distance you can ram behind someone and when to activate high beams.

Tesla beat Hyundai and BMW to this meaningless announcement a year ago, and have already progressed from that to the inevitable “oh yeah, this doesn’t actually work yet.”

Give Hyundai and BMW time.

Posted elsewhere in this discussion...

>The Automation Factor Tesla’s response to labor pressure has always been more automation. In 2026, Giga Berlin is the pilot site for the "Optimus" Gen-3 integration—humanoid robots performing repetitive tasks in the battery pack assembly area.

https://www.teslaacessories.com/blogs/news/the-giga-berlin-s...

It's coming, next year, there will be a million of them.

Give it time: at some point nobody will be consumer except for the equity lords. Savings will reach them.

So... a dwindling, dying market?

This take might have been true years ago, especially for cheaper makes, but modern EVs from china use high-quality components and designs that often surpass european automakers. The premium brands - Nio, Zeekr, Polestar, Lotus, etc - have design and R&D offices in Europe, and source parts from suppliers all over the world. Nio uses Nvidia Orin chips, Qualcomm SoCs, Brembo brakes, Bosch controllers, ZF suspension systems, Continental/Pirelli tires, and ClearMotion (in their flagship model); can't get any better than that.

The driving feel is definitely a thing, the chinese cars are very soft and 'boaty' which is not as desirable elsewhere. They are also on average much larger and heavier than their western counterparts, cities in China have road infrastructure built in the past 20-30 years with spacious lanes.

Feel free to ask for more details if you have specific questions! I worked in robotics for many years, I have some decent familiarity with this space. Here’s some more detailed thoughts “for free”:

Humanoid robotics are largely a publicity stunt. Our actuators, sensors, and algorithms are better adapted to other form factors. The nice thing about humanoids is that you (in theory) don’t have to change the interface, since they can use the same interface humans can use. In practice that doesn’t hold well, because we don’t have great force/pressure sensors to cover large areas like human skin. Likewise, it’s difficult to apply the fine forces that are sometimes needed (grabbing an egg, moving a joystick, etc). And there’s risk of the robot doing something unpredictable, so you always have to set a good safety bound around it anyways. In the end it’s often better to adapt the process to modern robotics, rather than the other way around.

There are many good practitioners that write about these and other limitations, I think Rodney Brooks has some good discussion of it, eg. https://rodneybrooks.com/why-todays-humanoids-wont-learn-dex...