Is it me or unions on Germany are a species of their own kind? I mean I'm expected the union to do strikes to raise salaries, protect laziness and unproductive workers, counter automation and firing of current workers...
Edit: I'm not sure why I'm getting down-voted over this.
I would love to see this in the US. The german economy doesn't seem to be suffering the same sort of financialization problems as the US/UK, perhaps due to historical memory.
Someone downvoted this anti-union sentiment but I think the real question addresses the balance of interests of the workers (continued jobs) versus the company (profitability).
In fact, in modern times, according to Greenspan, there is also a third party: the corporate leadership's interest is at odds with both the employees and the sharedholders, forming a triangle of interest. Perhaps this third only applies to US public corps.
Many people and organizations with a lot of power have spent a lot of time and money giving you that impression. Unions have done a great deal of good worldwide, but no 'it's Henry Ford that's responsible for the 40 hour week' etc.
PS: Remember, the best way to keep power long term is to convince everyone else to hand it to you.
>it's Henry Ford that's responsible for the 40 hour week etc.
Your comment is pretty hard to parse, but that's not a thing that I've ever hard anybody say.
>PS: Remember, the best way to keep power long term is to convince everyone else to hand it to you.
Your phrasing makes me think that you're trying to be sarcastic, but that's exactly how every long term transition of power has ever worked. If people are not convinced that you should have the power, they will take it away on a whim. See, for example, the US civil rights movement vs. the emancipation proclamation and civil war. The South was not in general convinced by the emancipation proclamation, and so the oppression continued in the extreme. The civil rights movement did an awful lot of convincing, and though there are still those that are unconvinced, the power transition was far more lasting and complete. Force only works as long as you have the upper hand. Convincing works as long as the other person is convinced.
> that's not a thing that I've ever hard anybody say.
Google search "40 hour work week Henry Ford" and it auto suggests "henry ford started 40 hour work week" "henry ford invented the 40 hour work week"
Which takes you to "Does the 8-hour day and the 40-hour week come from Henry Ford, or labor unions?" http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/sep/... "In 1914, at a time when most workers still lacked a guarantee of eight-hour days, the Ford Motor Co. attracted notice for instituting eight-hour shifts and raising wages in the manner the graphic indicates. (For many Ford workers, the work week remained six days.)"
Of note, you can get 24 hours from 4 * 6, 3 x 8, or 2 x 12 hour shifts. But, 8 * 6 is not 40.
And closes with "The claim contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, so we rate it Mostly False."
It drives me crazy that PolitiFact, which publishes its work on the web, cannot manage to include citations and sources beyond Such-and-Such-Authority-Told-Us-So-When-We-Asked. It's not that I don't believe PolitiFact, but if they bothered to interview a bunch of college professors, surely they could have gotten primary or secondary sources too. I mean, that's basically a professor's job!
> The South was not in general convinced by the emancipation proclamation, and so the oppression continued in the extreme.
It's a better example to point out that the the emancipation proclamation didn't even free all the Union's Slaves at the time. Its kind of a no-duh that the South wouldn't follow it because the emancipation proclamation was a war measure against the Confederacy. Edit: It'd also be stronger to point out Jim Crow laws in the reconstruction era
Even in Canada where citizens are prideful about socialized health insurance, we owe a debt of gratitude to Trade Unions who, alongside social workers, farm groups, and labour federations, advocated on behalf of working Canadians for socialized health insurance, arguing private health insurance was significantly more limited than what the insurance industry boasted.
And who opposed to the socialized health insurance movement? Nearly every medical association (doctors, dentists), the entire insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and even premiers of provinces.
> Employers were not willing to give those concessions without a fight.
Today, they don't have to fight. They can offshore, outsource, or automate your job. There are a lot more options these days then there were back then...
The German model of trades unionism is built on co-operation between union and management; the history runs deep. One consequence is that workers are screwed over less. Another consequence is that industrial action is rarely necessary.
There's a mindset in much of europe that labor and capital are partners in determining a company's or even industry's future. In fact, the unions often sit down to negotiate with the government and industry leaders as equals to set industry policies.
This collaboration is a very good thing. All participants in the economy should have a stake. It kind of scares me that although Trump got elected by a lot of workers in his administration only business people get heard. They will shape policy for themselves but I don't think workers will get any benefit.
"Much of europe" is a bit too generalising, that's more specifically the german and nordic model, labour relations in e.g. France have historically been much more combative and closer to the US's.
> Edit: I'm not sure why I'm getting down-voted over this.
Because your characterization of unions just sounds like blindly repeating the anti-union propaganda that has been so successful in the US starting from Reagan's time.
Not really, I'm not from the US and I don't know the US history with unions. I'm speaking from practical experience in my country and several other countries where unions where responsible (or a cause) for the collapse of several companies and industries.
Would you say the same things about executives as you did about unions? There have been a few failures of companies and industries at their hands as well.
A "smart" union needs to consider the health of the company. If they get a salary of $1million per yer for each employee it is obvious that no company cannot afford the salary and will go out of business in a few months and all employees get 0 after that until they find a new job. (This is a strawman argument, but it makes the point clear) A union that is smart should force the company to do things that will keep the company in business.
Note that unions, management, and investors are often not smart. This is often to their long term harm.
> Note that unions, management, and investors are often not smart.
And that's an important point, because a "smart union" only works if management doesn't try to railroad them at every turn. It's not exactly surprising that e.g. US Unions had to be hard rather than smart, given management or investors would call the army on them.
In the nordic model, unions are part of corporate governance and thus can have significant stake in and impact on corporate policy, in the US unions are considered pests to be squashed and only listened to when there's literally no other way.
I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted either. Unions do operate a bit differently in Germany, which takes manufacturing capability seriously as a national goal and treats industry as a cooperative venture of labor and capital. It's a pragmatic approach that seems to consistently pay dividends. The Economist has some excellent coverage of the differences, look up one of their periodic special reports on manufacturing or Germany.
Companies and unions are in a prisoner's dilemma, the german/nordic model works because both parties cooperate, historically US or French companies have not been cooperative (many a US labor movement or union was put down by private armies — pinkerton was a big one — or even the US army).
If the union cooperates with an uncooperative company it just gets rolled over, if the union is combative it works better (until the union falls below the level of strength which lets them balance the company).
Look no further than Amazon in Germany for a demonstration.
Germany has a lot of govt. financed/controlled businesses.
Lower Saxony (German state) has 20% voting control of Volkswagen, Audi's parent company. There are also anti-takeover restrictions such as shareholder ownership caps.
>Germany has a lot of govt. financed/controlled businesses.
Examples, apart from VW and Deutsche Bahn? After privatization of the Kohl era there shouldn't be much left. When I was a kid I even drank milk from a state-owned dairy plant.
That doesn't seem to be excessive? I find it a pretty short list of names that are just quite highly visible. It's mostly enterprises that provide some form of public good (infrastructure).
It's not an exhaustive list. At that, IMHO, it's too general to say these firms (sampled) produce public goods (i.e. nonrivalrous and nonexcludable). For example, I don't get the benefits from intermodal shipping via Hapag-Lloyd without paying.
In my university days the statistics showed that a lot of more strikes happen in France and USA compared to Germany. Theory was that the German model had more build in mechanism to deescalate problems between booth parties regulated by law.
From my perspective the unions are really weak these days.
IIRC, Japan also has more cooperative unions where Unions and businesses seek the long term viability of a company as well as worker welfare, even when that results in people idling at the windows.
Hmm. I live in Belgium and I believe being famous for their strikes isn't a good indicator of their real weight. Media and journalists makes much more noise covering the strikes than strikers actually do.
As a former Audi owner, I wonder if the "audi service position" will be applicable to their electric cars. Tangental I know, but I would be curious to know if they will make their cars easier/cheaper to service. I never really had much trouble with my A4, but maintenance costs upwards of 1k per 6 months(I was driving a lot of miles at the time) turned me off to the ownership experience.
I decided I wasn't rolling the dice on build quality and reliability enough so I got a Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT. :) So far Ive been pretty lucky with its reliability, and parts/service are orders of magnitude cheaper.
Electric cars are far from perfect, but the simple fact that they have less moving parts than an ICE vehicle. No fanbelts to stretch, no flywheels to break, no fuel injection pump, etc, etc.
Other than normal wear and tear, there should be massively less maintenance required for electric vehicles.
I know the Nissan Leaf doesn't put much stress on the oil either, so changes are extremely rare. And regenerative braking takes a lot of stress off the brakes, so Tesla's brake pads are rated for 100,000 miles. No spark plugs or air filters either.
I mean, yes that's probably true for mass market vehicles, but not true for luxury cars. Look at Teslas. Yes, the drivetrain is vastly simplified, but I can't imagine things like those gull wing doors, power door handles, air suspension, etc. will be inexpensive to maintain.
Well I should have clarified I was referring to the engine, which is the part that generally has the most problems over the life of most ICE vehicles.
In the Teslas, there are dramatically fewer moving parts and consumables.
No rings to dry rot / wear out, spark plugs, fan belts, oil filters, pistons, fuel pumps, etc, etc. I was actually referring to the Teslas. I do however, think the X was too much too quickly. It is a mess from an engineering standpoint. That being said, the drive train will last much longer than a similar ICE. I suspect in the long run, with battery wear, it will be a bit more than a wash.
Disclaimer: I'm long on TSLA and Solarcity Solar Bonds.
Gull wing doors are about the only thing there that are more complicated than features in other higher end cars. Air suspension's been in luxury cars for several decades, and there are all sorts of complicated locking mechanisms for doors, including pneumatics in various mercedes vehicles. When you start getting into the luxury lines, you start seeing all the added complexity because everyone needs some signature feature to distinguish themselves from just being a nice comfortable ride.
There's a cooling system(at least in the EVs where you don't want fast battery degradation) so that is the only "large" maintenance item.
Even then it's only at ~45k and runs about $700.
Overall running costs for EVs are incredibly low. At 48k miles right now and my cost in tires($1k @ 30k mi) is actually my highest per-mile cost, even above electricity.
Depends on a lot of factors. There is no engine oil, so the first scheduled maintenance will probably be the cabin airfilter (20000 miles in every car I've had that has one), and I would guess that anything in the suspension that needs grease will get the same interval (many cars have nothing to grease today but it is a possibility). Then there are tires.
Brake pads should last a little longer, but I'm not sure how much.
Ultimately though I believe electric cars will be much more expensive in the long run. Nissan wants $5499 for a new battery back. I don't know of any study on how long they last, but reading forums and extrapolating I would say you should plan on replacing the battery pack every 100000 miles. This of course depends greatly on how your charge it which in turn depends on how far you drive. If you drive the full range of the battery every charge you probably need to replace the battery every 50000 miles. If you make dozens of short trips per day, charging after each, you could potentially get several hundred thousand miles.
I'm curious about your A4 experience - how many miles were you driving. Unless you are driving 80,000 miles a year I don't see how you can get that high - at 80,000 miles/ year you have timing belt service. If you are driving this many miles the VW diesels (same base platform as the A4, though less luxury) can probably pay for the entire car including maintenance just in fuel savings.
There is a large difference between charging from 70-100% regularly vs 5%-100% regularly. However, while the battery pack seems like a maintenance issue, it's really a question of fuel. In most places your saving 5+k on gas to refuel with electricity, so getting a 5k bill to replace your battery just means there is no real fuel savings.
A4s (and to a slightly lesser extent all other Audis) have been, up until very recently, among the most unreliable new vehicles for sale since the model's inception.
Combine that with expensive Audi parts, expensive and zealous dealership labour, and they are unbelievably expensive to maintain.
I own a 2006 that I bought for a song--I do my own service, so I was willing to take a bit of risk. The cars are very difficult to work on, even an oil change involves special tools and working around a poorly laid out engine bay. It takes me twice as long to do as any other car I've done.
The previous owner of my car put 120,000km on it. I only have the last 50,000km or so of records, but in that time it was towed to the dealer at least twice according to the service records, and she spent upwards of $10,000 on regular service ($250 oil changes? yep) and fixing broken stuff that shouldn't break at that mileage (turbo blowoff valve, ignition coils on more than one occasion, brake lines, the list goes on). She spent over $1000 on every trip to the dealer in that time.
I do not understand anyone who buys a new Audi, or for that matter any German car. It's ridiculous.
A smear piece. While condemning the whole of BMW engineering the author is putting more effort to use the words "sht" and "fck" than he is to disclaim even once transparently that all of his "experiences" are based on cars that were 20 years or older at the time.
Tesla's batteries appear to be holding up very well to cycling degradation (batteries also degrade with time so there hasn't been as much of a span to evaluate how that factors in to the real world). 92% at 100k miles.
>If you are driving this many miles the VW diesels (same base platform as the A4, though less luxury) can probably pay for the entire car including maintenance just in fuel savings.
The only VW in the same platform (B) as the A4 is the Passat, and there's a lot less shared components between the A4 and Passat than there are for platform A models.
Not the OP, but that's certainly including regular maintenance.
To use a previous example, replacing the fan belt is regular maintenance. The problem is that Audis are very tightly engineered. Good in some response, but not for easy maintenance/repair.
Was thinking the same. Have driven cars in the same price range and while maintenance is indeed expensive, I've had a hard time even coming near 1k a year.
It's not clear whether the workers are afraid they will find themselves in the age of EVs without the necessary skill set, or whether they are afraid that as Audi makes the switch to EVs they will open plants outside of Germany. There was already a lot of hype about German auto makers opening plants in China.
Audi has plants in Hungary, Belgium, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Slovakia and Spain. They also own Lamborghini of Italia. The German plants are in Neckarsulm and Ingolstadt.
I have a 2017 Audi Etron PHEV. For our single car household it's nearly the perfect car. Given how refined it seems I'm surprised that Audi/VW took so long to bring a PHEV to market.
The dealer told me that they are pushing EVs now to help remake the company's image after the diesel cheating debacle.
The unions probably see this repositioning and reasonably want to secure their members foothold in it.
The competition in EVs is heating up. In Norway, the share of Tesla in net new EV registrations has fallen to 11.5% in 2016 compared to 18.7% two years ago.
> but the success of Tesla and arch rival BMW's "i" series of electric cars has convinced Audi there is a market for electric luxury vehicles after all.
Sigh. This better not be what Audi actually thinks. Let me say it as clearly as possible - ALL CARS will be electric vehicles in the future. So if Audi still comes at this from the perspective of "let's build an EV for environmentalist vegan weirdos...and I guess for some eccentric millionaires", then it will always be 5-steps behind Tesla, and it will fail badly in the EV market (as well as in the gas-powered car market, once the decline begins).
Research before you write. Audi is part of the Volkswagen Group, which consists of VW, Audi, Porsche, Skoda, Seat, Lamborghini, Bentley, Bugatti, Scania, MAN and Ducati.
So they all produce for different niches of the Market. The cheap small electrical Vehicle is currently produced by VW, with the e-up!. You must not forget, that the institutional knowledge from the Hybrid Systems used in the LMP1 Class in Le Mans won by Porsche and Audi is huge.
Audi/VW has been dragging their feet bigtime on the EV movement and wasting a whole bunch of energy shoving money down the turbodiesel pipe.
In North America VW actually pulled their only hybrid from their lineup for 2017, in the middle of dieselgate when hundreds of thousands of TDI owners who bought their diesel for its fuel economy are looking for a replacement.
They have their e-tron line, and they _look_ nice but they are far inferior to other PHEVs, especially the Chevy Volt and pack only an 8kwh battery.
When I give up my TDI because of dieselgate next month or the month after VW has nothing to offer me.
This is impressive, and I'm usually not a fan of unions, but they actually thinking ahead and switching to a electric vehicle must mean that at least some of their members will have to either drastically change what they do become unemployed, possibly both, which can't be an easy sell.
I am also entirely certain the union is entirely correct in how they see the future.
> This is impressive, and I'm usually not a fan of unions
Germany has an unusual knack for making normally inefficient things efficient. You are probably used to unions in America which are often extremely inefficient, to the detriment of the company/government department.
This is absolutely why German unions are awesome, read this:
"Labor leaders at Volkswagen's (VOWG_p.DE) luxury Audi brand have asked top management to assign production of an all-electric model to the carmaker's main plant in Germany, concerned they might lose out as electric cars gain in importance."
The reason for the Union speaking out is twofold:
The workers want to have the necessary skill set in building EV and they also want the company to stay in front of the market. This kind of communication allows management to actually see those things that they couldn't perceive in their normal view from atop.
In all my travels I've never seen quite a union as German unions. They have a seat at the board and are involved with decisions the board makes. This creates a drastically less antagonistic relationship between capital and labor.
1) Germany did not have a minimum wage until recently. They just enacted a minimum wage in 2015. Minimum wage erodes the strength and bargaining power of trade unions. Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and Sweden do not have a minimum wage but have strong trade unions.
Yes, American unions are very destructive. They have devastated industries by sapping the very last bit of juice out of them. German unions have a cooperative relationship with the business. They understand that killing it off isn't an intelligent strategy.
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[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 238 ms ] threadEdit: I'm not sure why I'm getting down-voted over this.
This obviously changes power dynamics quite a bit.
In fact, in modern times, according to Greenspan, there is also a third party: the corporate leadership's interest is at odds with both the employees and the sharedholders, forming a triangle of interest. Perhaps this third only applies to US public corps.
PS: Remember, the best way to keep power long term is to convince everyone else to hand it to you.
Your comment is pretty hard to parse, but that's not a thing that I've ever hard anybody say.
>PS: Remember, the best way to keep power long term is to convince everyone else to hand it to you.
Your phrasing makes me think that you're trying to be sarcastic, but that's exactly how every long term transition of power has ever worked. If people are not convinced that you should have the power, they will take it away on a whim. See, for example, the US civil rights movement vs. the emancipation proclamation and civil war. The South was not in general convinced by the emancipation proclamation, and so the oppression continued in the extreme. The civil rights movement did an awful lot of convincing, and though there are still those that are unconvinced, the power transition was far more lasting and complete. Force only works as long as you have the upper hand. Convincing works as long as the other person is convinced.
Google search "40 hour work week Henry Ford" and it auto suggests "henry ford started 40 hour work week" "henry ford invented the 40 hour work week"
Which takes you to "Does the 8-hour day and the 40-hour week come from Henry Ford, or labor unions?" http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/sep/... "In 1914, at a time when most workers still lacked a guarantee of eight-hour days, the Ford Motor Co. attracted notice for instituting eight-hour shifts and raising wages in the manner the graphic indicates. (For many Ford workers, the work week remained six days.)"
Of note, you can get 24 hours from 4 * 6, 3 x 8, or 2 x 12 hour shifts. But, 8 * 6 is not 40.
And closes with "The claim contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, so we rate it Mostly False."
It's a better example to point out that the the emancipation proclamation didn't even free all the Union's Slaves at the time. Its kind of a no-duh that the South wouldn't follow it because the emancipation proclamation was a war measure against the Confederacy. Edit: It'd also be stronger to point out Jim Crow laws in the reconstruction era
Weekend off? Unions
9-5? Unions
Retirement Savings? Unions
Pension Program? Unions
Health Benefits? Unions
Vacation Time? Unions
Sick Time? Unions
Lunch break? Unions
Work place safety regulations? Unions
Boss threaten to fire you if you don't let him screw your wife? Unions
And who opposed to the socialized health insurance movement? Nearly every medical association (doctors, dentists), the entire insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and even premiers of provinces.
Employers were not willing to give those concessions without a fight.
Today, they don't have to fight. They can offshore, outsource, or automate your job. There are a lot more options these days then there were back then...
These all boil down to the same thing. Firing the offending laborer. So really we haven't advanced far since the 1850's.
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This is why Anti-Unionists get so pissy about Unions blocking people from being fired. It removes the main power owners have over their workers.
http://www.dw.com/en/germany-to-mark-record-year-for-strikes...
Because you first expressed a misunderstanding about what unions are and then expressed a misunderstanding about how this site works.
Because your characterization of unions just sounds like blindly repeating the anti-union propaganda that has been so successful in the US starting from Reagan's time.
Note that unions, management, and investors are often not smart. This is often to their long term harm.
And that's an important point, because a "smart union" only works if management doesn't try to railroad them at every turn. It's not exactly surprising that e.g. US Unions had to be hard rather than smart, given management or investors would call the army on them.
In the nordic model, unions are part of corporate governance and thus can have significant stake in and impact on corporate policy, in the US unions are considered pests to be squashed and only listened to when there's literally no other way.
This works well in companies where managers don't have a lot of imagination and who's first reaction is to fire staff when the going gets tough.
For example VW wanted to cut 3000 workers. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-redundancies-id...
After talks with the Union they rescinded somewhat and now the losses will be through attrition. i.e. wait for people to retire or leave.
It doesn't surprise me that Audi want to keep what may be seen as a growing product in Germany.
Not really that's US-style or French-style management and the result is hard clashes between labour and management.
If the union cooperates with an uncooperative company it just gets rolled over, if the union is combative it works better (until the union falls below the level of strength which lets them balance the company).
Look no further than Amazon in Germany for a demonstration.
Lower Saxony (German state) has 20% voting control of Volkswagen, Audi's parent company. There are also anti-takeover restrictions such as shareholder ownership caps.
Examples, apart from VW and Deutsche Bahn? After privatization of the Kohl era there shouldn't be much left. When I was a kid I even drank milk from a state-owned dairy plant.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-owned_enterprise#Germany
Other than normal wear and tear, there should be massively less maintenance required for electric vehicles.
In the Teslas, there are dramatically fewer moving parts and consumables.
No rings to dry rot / wear out, spark plugs, fan belts, oil filters, pistons, fuel pumps, etc, etc. I was actually referring to the Teslas. I do however, think the X was too much too quickly. It is a mess from an engineering standpoint. That being said, the drive train will last much longer than a similar ICE. I suspect in the long run, with battery wear, it will be a bit more than a wash.
Disclaimer: I'm long on TSLA and Solarcity Solar Bonds.
Even then it's only at ~45k and runs about $700.
Overall running costs for EVs are incredibly low. At 48k miles right now and my cost in tires($1k @ 30k mi) is actually my highest per-mile cost, even above electricity.
From what I've heard there's some people out there with ~150k and still on the original brake pads(!).
Brake pads should last a little longer, but I'm not sure how much.
Ultimately though I believe electric cars will be much more expensive in the long run. Nissan wants $5499 for a new battery back. I don't know of any study on how long they last, but reading forums and extrapolating I would say you should plan on replacing the battery pack every 100000 miles. This of course depends greatly on how your charge it which in turn depends on how far you drive. If you drive the full range of the battery every charge you probably need to replace the battery every 50000 miles. If you make dozens of short trips per day, charging after each, you could potentially get several hundred thousand miles.
I'm curious about your A4 experience - how many miles were you driving. Unless you are driving 80,000 miles a year I don't see how you can get that high - at 80,000 miles/ year you have timing belt service. If you are driving this many miles the VW diesels (same base platform as the A4, though less luxury) can probably pay for the entire car including maintenance just in fuel savings.
Combine that with expensive Audi parts, expensive and zealous dealership labour, and they are unbelievably expensive to maintain.
I own a 2006 that I bought for a song--I do my own service, so I was willing to take a bit of risk. The cars are very difficult to work on, even an oil change involves special tools and working around a poorly laid out engine bay. It takes me twice as long to do as any other car I've done.
The previous owner of my car put 120,000km on it. I only have the last 50,000km or so of records, but in that time it was towed to the dealer at least twice according to the service records, and she spent upwards of $10,000 on regular service ($250 oil changes? yep) and fixing broken stuff that shouldn't break at that mileage (turbo blowoff valve, ignition coils on more than one occasion, brake lines, the list goes on). She spent over $1000 on every trip to the dealer in that time.
I do not understand anyone who buys a new Audi, or for that matter any German car. It's ridiculous.
https://electrek.co/2016/06/06/tesla-model-s-battery-pack-da...
The only VW in the same platform (B) as the A4 is the Passat, and there's a lot less shared components between the A4 and Passat than there are for platform A models.
Everything is more expensive on an Audi. It's thousands to replace the fan belt, because you basically have to take the whole car apart.
To use a previous example, replacing the fan belt is regular maintenance. The problem is that Audis are very tightly engineered. Good in some response, but not for easy maintenance/repair.
The dealer told me that they are pushing EVs now to help remake the company's image after the diesel cheating debacle.
The unions probably see this repositioning and reasonably want to secure their members foothold in it.
I briefly considered the e-tron but the battery is too small. And doesn't drive as nice as a Chevy Volt.
The interior and exterior styling are amazing though.
https://github.com/axibase/atsd-use-cases/blob/master/Norway...
Sigh. This better not be what Audi actually thinks. Let me say it as clearly as possible - ALL CARS will be electric vehicles in the future. So if Audi still comes at this from the perspective of "let's build an EV for environmentalist vegan weirdos...and I guess for some eccentric millionaires", then it will always be 5-steps behind Tesla, and it will fail badly in the EV market (as well as in the gas-powered car market, once the decline begins).
In North America VW actually pulled their only hybrid from their lineup for 2017, in the middle of dieselgate when hundreds of thousands of TDI owners who bought their diesel for its fuel economy are looking for a replacement.
They have their e-tron line, and they _look_ nice but they are far inferior to other PHEVs, especially the Chevy Volt and pack only an 8kwh battery.
When I give up my TDI because of dieselgate next month or the month after VW has nothing to offer me.
I am also entirely certain the union is entirely correct in how they see the future.
Germany has an unusual knack for making normally inefficient things efficient. You are probably used to unions in America which are often extremely inefficient, to the detriment of the company/government department.
The reason for the Union speaking out is twofold: The workers want to have the necessary skill set in building EV and they also want the company to stay in front of the market. This kind of communication allows management to actually see those things that they couldn't perceive in their normal view from atop.
curious: What about this is specific to German unions?
It's not something that can be rejected by management.
For someone from North America it can be a challenge to accept but does work quite well once you get over it.
It's not something that can be rejected by management.
For someone from North America it can be a challenge to accept but does work quite well once you get over it.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28140594
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/080515/5-deve...
2) They have strong apprenticeship programs and vocational training.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship#Germany
3) Mittelstand - long-term, focused, and sustainable business culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelstand
http://theconversation.com/the-secret-behind-germanys-thrivi...
Trade unions are almost always in favor of minimum wage and increases. E.g.
http://www.aflcio.org/Issues/Jobs-and-Economy/Wages-and-Inco...
https://economics21.org/html/why-unions-exempt-themselves-ha...