German car manufacturers need to start taking Chinese competitors and BYD in particular way more seriously. For the past two decades they have been able to coast and keep their sales numbers up by minimally tweaking their old designs.
German car companies are not vertically integrated and are bad at software. They will get beaten badly on price and software quality, and consumer loyalty won’t last. They will have to reinvent themselves if they want to survive.
I generally agree with that. Though I'm not sure it's the right focus when it comes to what makes a car desirable. Looking at BMW's I series cars or Mercedes EQ(X) cars, they are absolutely solid and attractive offerings with the "traditional German" qualities of built quality and refinement. Yes, their software may be lacking, but I'm not quite sure that's the differentiator when it comes to cars.
Software isn't just a pretty UI. It also covers (partial) autonomy, emergency breaking, traffic sign recognition, drowsiness monitoring, automatic parking, air bags, voice control and much more. It's not a differentiator today because all premium car brands are very bad at software. Cars are not computers on wheels yet, but that's the direction. Sensors are dirt cheap now so cars get loaded with them and software becomes a big differentiator.
BMW makes pretty good cars, but most Europeans can't afford them. In Germany (which has favorable taxes on cars) the average new car costs €36,000. BMW has nothing at that price. Chinese cars will probably first compete in the budget segment. Only after having established a reputation for making good cars will Chinese brands try to compete directly in the 50k-100k segment, which has consumers who have car ownership as a big part of their identity.
If you look at the best braking cars (fastest 60 to 0 and smallest distance), excluding the supercars and hypercars, it's all Audi, Mercedes, BMW and especially Porsche.
A lot can be criticized about german cars but not braking well isn't part of it.
> In Germany (which has favorable taxes on cars) the average new car costs €36,000. BMW has nothing at that price.
A BMW 1-series start at 30 K EUR. Sure it's a "little" car but so are many of the cars people shall buy at 36 K EUR.
Unsurprisingly the BMW 1-series is nearly the best selling BMW series in the EU: neck to neck with the 3-series.
There are sure a lot of BMW 1-series where I live now (a country neighboring Germany).
I don't think BMW, VW and even Mercedes are going to give up that easily. They are trying to shift to EVs and I wouldn't rule out a country who's been producing the finest cars for decades yet (especially jot VW, who's not exactly been the first to adapt new technologies).
German car companies are not vertically integrated and are bad at software. They will get beaten badly on price and software quality, and consumer loyalty won’t last. They will have to reinvent themselves if they want to survive.