Car Companies Fail Because They Don't Manufacture What Costumers Actually Want
They try to impose their dumb vision on purchasers
Things have only worsened since (2023).
"Porsche eyes 5,000 more job cuts after sales drop 15% in H1 2026," say slopfarms and news sites, but is anybody shocked? Luxury cars in a bad economy? And "modern" cars with a "shelf life" of a few years? Cars that would never survive (in fully operational state) on the road for 30 years or even 15 years? Tesla is already anything but alluring and automobile manufacturers are competing (race to the bottom, surely) over who can pack more computers - whose cost has unjustly gone through the roof - into 4 wheels with a chassis and cupholders on top*.
Recently in IRC we discussed whether renewing the licence to drive was worth the price for those who no longer drive but don't wish to redo tests (many of my generation received such a licence in their late teens; in the US some get that in their mid-teens, depending on the state's laws, which vary over time and place).
If operating a "modern" cars means playing with a tablet and parking with some thing that goes "beep beep beep", then "beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep" (apparently today's generation cannot park a car without a laser show), where are we heading? What have cars become?
The industry has truly lost touch of its real (original) purpose. Do people enter a car to use a computer and go places at the same time? Or are cars about taking us from A to B with minimal distraction until arriving at destination B? If the latter, then a car need not cost much. It's not expensive to maintain and repair, either. █
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* In 2021/02 we already linked to some of the many articles about the "modern" cars being rolling surveillance networks (up to 25 GB of data per hour; maybe more by now, with Tesla as a cautionary tale), which no-one wants. It has only gotten worse since. We recall wise men who called them a computer which you put your body into; "well," an associate said, "that was then, now they are rolling (insecure) computer networks" (which are easy to breach and crash remotely).
This includes microphone surveillance/eavesdropping [1, 2, 3] or "wiretaps on wheels", including voices of passengers, which is a "privacy nightmare". Even non-corporate and non-government entities gain access to this data. If it can be misused, it will be misused.