Germany’s carmakers are now trying to shift engineering east, both to stay competitive in the Chinese market as well as to integrate technologies developed there into cars sold abroad.
Volkswagen said a year ago that it could now design cars from start to finish in China at its centre in Hefei.
Both BMW and VW have said they hope to export vehicles from China into other parts of the Asia-Pacific region.
The low-cost Volkswagen ID.Every1, slated for European launch in 2027, will meanwhile have an electric motor made in China.
Modern cars are pretty much all enshittified. There’s no way anyone repairs anything but the manufacturer themselves, because there’s proprietary software in every tiny part. They spy on you and your location 24/7. You gotta bring in your car for updates, of course preferably to a licensed partner who paid some 5digit $$ for the software to connect to the car. There’s paid subscriptions for the satnav and more recently for all kinds of shit.
But it’s not like they invented that recently. They’ve always made sure to upsell on some extra add-on packages because every bit of comfort is like 400€ extra so you’d rather just pay a few 1.000 for the entertainment addon, the winter package and the heavy-smoker addon and a driver-assistance XY. Because it’s kinda nice to have a proper cruise control, 12V for camping and a somewhat nice stereo. On the downside you now also got 5 ashtrays, cruise control with 5 bazillion features you never need, and you paid more than you wanted.
The German brands are just at the top of the game and experimenting how much shit still flies with the customers. Reportedly BMW designed custom screws so you need to buy a screwdriver from them as well. Mercedes now has cars you can’t open the hood, because only the repair shop is allowed to access it. And making people subscribe to cruise control and heated seats on a monthly basis is an old trick by now.
They won’t sell you the screwdriver, unless you’re a licensed BMW workshop.