
Volkswagen will kill the Beetle, squashes plans for a successor - oblib
https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1115668_volkswagen-will-kill-the-beetle-squashes-plans-for-a-successor
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Lio
The is a very personal opinion and subject to taste rather anything
quantifiable. It’s also possible for VW to cater to more than one type of
customer so take the following with a pinch of salt.

To me there’s something intellectually dishonest about these retro models.

In the original Beetle and Transporter they started with function and then
gave it form. Doing it the other way round will not produce a truely desirable
classic only something momentarily fashionable.

The same goes for their T-Rock model, mentioned in the article.

Instead of designing for offroad performance they’ve taken a road car and just
added enough shoulder pads, fake pockets and redundant zips to puff it up to
look like a small off-roader.

It’s for people who think they need to go off road but really know they never
will. Its size is just large enough that they won’t feel intimidated by other
vehicles when sitting traffic jams. That extra size of course come as a
compromise to the vehicle real purpose as a road car.

Personally I’d much rather have a new and improved Golf or
Transporter/California.

~~~
izacus
>Instead of designing for offroad performance they’ve taken a road car and
just added enough shoulder pads, fake pockets and redundant zips to puff it up
to look like a small off-roader.

This is actually an extremely popular segment these days (see Audi Q1/Q3,
Mercedes GLA, BMW X1, Mazda CX-3, Škoda Karoq, Peugeot 1008, Kia Stonic, etc.
etc.) which apparently outsells the previously most popular "Golf" class of
cars. By a lot.

People seem to like the higher sitting position and feel safer with more
puffed up form of these cars. Even if they have significantly less space
inside.

~~~
ivanhoe
IMHO the looks play the most important role in the popularity of the "fake
SUVs". They look sexy and robust and higher class...

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Don’t discount sitting position as a major benefit for many consumers. When
everyone else is driving them, you feel at a disadvantage in a normal car when
it comes to seeing the road in traffic. An arms race so to speak.

I find the Q3, X1, GLA as well as the MDX and so on absolutely gaudey in
appearance. They don’t look nice at all.

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colordrops
This reminds me of Nokia's demise. Before they were sold to Microsoft,
everyone was saying how they'd all buy Nokias if they would just adopt
Android. We all know how that went.

It's clear to everyone at the moment that a moderately priced electric beetle
would sell like hotcakes. But just like Nokia made the wrong call, it looks
like VW will do the same.

~~~
gonvaled
Nokia not doing android was a political decission by M$ to push Windows phone.
It was not an economical decission.

~~~
macspoofing
And Android was not a ticket to success. Approximately one company outside of
China actually made money with Android.

~~~
StudentStuff
Funnily enough, Nokia is #3 in sales among Android vendors. They literally
outsell everyone (Google included) except LG, Samsung and Apple, quite
impressive: [https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/13/17007498/nokia-hmd-
phones...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/13/17007498/nokia-hmd-phones-sales-
google-htc-oneplus-report)

Turns out there is a market for a well built phone that gets security and
Android updates in a rapid manner!

~~~
macspoofing
The actual sales numbers put them way in the back of the pack. And are they
actually making any money? Because LG moves 5 times more units and cannot make
any kind of profit.

~~~
StudentStuff
4.4 million phones is a good clip, esp. with how few devices Nokia has. LG has
hundreds of models on sale (which is part of what bleeds their profits) while
Nokia has a bit over a dozen. Much lower R&D cost, plus a smaller maintenance
burden.

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mc32
I think the orig beetle lived on in overseas plants --Brazil, for example. But
with today's global manufacturing, I guess when they say they will kill this
model, they mean it will disappear everywhere.

And, I suppose it must. It had mustered all the nostalgia it could, but in the
end, the well ran dry and the model had become a dead end. For a revival
model, it actually remained longer than most.

~~~
ascorbic
It lived on because it was small, cheap and simple. The new model was neither.
Like the new Mini, it was just another premium hatchback living off the name
of a classic.

~~~
Lio
This is exactly the point I wanted to make.

I add that the original Beetle also lived on because VW were able to extend
the life of the original tooling, which they’d replaced when they moved to the
Golf in Germany.

~~~
ascorbic
Fiat had the right idea with the new 500, which is small, cheap, fun and
stylish. An electric Beetle the size and price of a Renault Zoe would have
been something interesting.

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teh_klev
As an former owner of a 1972 1602S Beetle, these travesties were never
"Beetles", they were just glorified Golfs. So no love lost here.

~~~
CodeWriter23
More like a Golf minus the pesky body roll. We have a 99 Turbo Beetle, I can
corner 15-20 MPH faster than my ‘03 GTI VR6. It stays flat where the GTI would
have the inner rear wheel 6” off the ground.

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pasta
I owned an old Beetje and the experience is all about the smell of petrol, the
noise, the lack of power steering and breaking, and ofcourse the most
important: the design.

The first versions of the new Beatle didn't match that design more that most
Porsches imho.

Maybe nostalgia should not be used as a sellout.

I mean, the new 'mini' is bigger than my car and a familie can fit inside the
new Fiat 500...

------
Froyoh
Missed an opportunity for a juicy pun there

------
bonestamp2
Build the BUS. They did the beatle. Now they need to bring back the bus!!

~~~
Animats
The article has drawings of a proposed new Microbus. They will have to make it
more crashworthy than the original. The original had the driver so far forward
it had near-zero crush depth.

~~~
hinkley
The blind spots on that proposed design are crazy bad. I can’t see that
surviving productization.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
So blind spots matter so much these days when cameras and sensors to mitigate
them are cheap?

~~~
yellowapple
Well yeah. If the cameras and sensors fail, then you'll probably want to
replace them with your own eyes. That's kinda hard to do when there's a bunch
of car body in the way.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Do they actually fail in practice? Seems very unusual for what is most likely
a pretty discrete component. Also, does failure have to be so graceful? For
example, if my windshield wipers fail during a heavy rain, I have no choice
but to pick t my hazard lights on and move off the road. If my car tells me my
sensors are broken, I can see doing the same for that.

Driving with technology is so much safer anyways, it’s like constant awareness
without needing to look backwards (and consequently not look forward).

~~~
yellowapple
"Do they actually fail in practice?"

There's not enough data for cars specifically to know if they do _anything_ in
practice, let alone fail. With other things, though, cables come loose and
voltages get spiked/sagged and so on - yeah, not common failures, but common
enough to be forseeable.

My point, though, is more that if these sensors do indeed fail, I'd much
prefer to be able to have at least enough ability to sense my environment to
still safely navigate, even if I have to do so with much greater caution. That
is: losing my sensors shouldn't be as catastrophic as losing my windshield
wipers in a heavy downpour.

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oculusthrift
meh, it’s a nazi holdover anyway. good riddance

