Despite China, IT development is a complete disaster in Germany. All car so called German car manufacturers UX/UI is horrible to say the least.
Dieter Rams is the only UX/UI designer, who became famous - outside of Germany. Hartmut Esslinger kind of popularized DR, what an irony, that two Germans made history, but of course not in Germany and even in Germany DR wasn't well known. Braun was a brand and statement, but because the devices were and still are extremely convenient. Braun never put design or beauty in the spotlight - it wasn't recognized as such and therefore not of value to capitalize on.
VW? "No one needs Apple Car or Android. We are the world wide Nr. 1 in car business, what does a computer company know about cars? hahaha"
Hubris, resulted into a failed attempt to build in 2 years a complete Car OS. It was so bad, I was mocked back then, because I bet against it.
I am the only one who successfully build a No Code platform in financial services that became such a hit internally, that it became the standard. dbCORE is its name.
Very long story, but design by committee is the norm in Germany, and since outsourcing is the way to go, vendors sell changes all the time otherwise they lose the customer.
Value chains like Apple or Google are inconceivable and no one in Business has a background in CS.
Porsche 997-2 had the best UX/UI there was. Fantastic blend of nobs and touchscreen. It blew my mind, really. This was 2008. The iPhone came to light 2007!
Really, highly impressive, extremely functional and almost no friction at all. 90% was top.
And to the haters: Show me any company or product from Germany in IT that is Top 100 globally. Only SAP is or has been featured somewhere below the bottom. And I gurantee you, no one fell in love with its UX/UI...
Your comment reminds me of the hostile, to say the least, Munich U-Bahn map:
https://drmory.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/TARIFPLAN_Inne...
I remember seeing it back then in the subway, looking for directions and feeling really confused about it. "Damn why didn't I get a transportation systems PhD before coming to Germany!"
The concentric rings remind me of atomic bomb destruction maps where they have different rings for different damage levels.
Different levels of damage to your wallet. Each time you cross a circle the fare goes up.
So really the same idea, just that here you want to be in the epicenter
Hostile is the PERFECT way to describe that map. You got me chucking this AM.
> And to the haters: Show me any company or product from Germany in IT that is Top 100 globally.
Also I wouldn’t want to disagree with you outright, there are still a few important German companies in the IT sector (or related): Siemens, Infineon, Deutsche Telekom, Bechtle, TeamViewer come to my mind.
What Siemens exemplifies is that the strength of German industry is not pure software, but high-tech machinery. While Siemens and most of its spin-offs are doing somewhat okay, the stocks of its spin-off Siemens Energy have risen by ~700 % in the last 3 years.
Where Siemens really shines, is in their fanatical devotion to after sales.
I rely on Siemens automation products at work. They give me end-of-life warnings a couple of years ahead - and maintain a spares inventory for a decade and change after EoL.
That basically ensures I am never caught out, and makes me more than happy to (grudgingly) accept all their ideosyncracies...
I assume it makes you a loyal customer when upgrading/replacing equipment too... knowing what to expect and that you're going to have all of that support.
So many product companies fail to think about that -- they're all thinking about this quarter and very few take a long term approach and really try to have customers for life. They all say that want that of course, but too few are really committed to it. There are a few brands that I buy that are committed to quality, and they usually cost more (initially, but probably not in the long run). I'm fine paying more know that they really tried to do their best and didn't let nickels and dimes get in the way of an otherwise great concept.
Technically SAP is a Société Européenne but still somehow the biggest German software developer.
And fittingly SAP is successful despite horrible UX
What matters is where the headquarters and key employees are. SE can be based anywhere in EU and even then legal entity stuff isn't what matters.
Origin: German, HQ: German, Accounting regime: German, Main stock listing: German, Executive board: 5/6 German
In fact, you can run any form of European legal entity from any country. I.e., I can create an spółka z ograniczoną odpowiedzialnością (sp. z o.o.) in Poland, but run the business in Germany. It would be complicated and stupid, but legal.
>a few important German companies in the IT sector (or related): Siemens, Infineon, Deutsche Telekom, Bechtle, TeamViewer come to my mind.
None of them famous or being praised by customers for having amazing UI/UX though, because they're not consumer products, they're targeting engineers who either don't care about UX, or don't have a choice in the matter because their company is buying it, not them.
Cars on the other hand ARE consumer products and do need great UX, and German companies long forgot how to do that since they operate everything as a cost center and outsource everything they perceive ads no value.
>the strength of German industry is not pure software, but high-tech machinery
Yeah but there's more margins in pure software and more buyers in the world for consumer devices than for high tech machinery. Apple can probably buy all of Germany's machine tool makers if they wanted to. It's the perk of selling to 7 billion consumers in the world.
> the stocks of its spin-off Siemens Energy have risen by ~700 % in the last 3 years.
Just like every energy and defense stock in the world right now, but that's to be expected and somewhat offtopic for SW and UX.
If we look at some of their other consumer and healthcare spin-offs like Gigaset or Healthineers, they are doing insanely poor, which is embarrassing.
They havent totally forgotten. I drove a 2025 BMW last week and noticed many similarities to my favorite car, the '92 325IS. The speedo and tach both aligned in top gear, the thumb hooks were still perfect, and the cluster still dimmed enough for night driving. Someone at BMW remembers how to do UI.
Software in Germany is simply not highly regarded, on the contrary. It is seen as necessary evil at best.
Ageing population that finds itself overwhelmed is my guess. There are exceptions, but they are far and few between.
That seems like a good thing. Mostly software doesn't make people's lives better, instead it does the exact opposite. A society that recognizes that, and rejects the people who build it, is ahead of the curve.
Same as with nuclear...
> Only SAP is or has been featured somewhere below the bottom.
“The company is the largest non-American software company by revenue and the world's fifth-largest publicly traded software company by revenue. In June 2025, it was the largest European company by market capitalization, as well as one of the 30 most valuable publicly traded companies in the world.”
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP
High market cap but universally hated by its end-users is probably not a great yardstick to measure consumer software against.
No, but it seems to be par for the course for enterprise software.
Not a hater, just an example from today’s HN front page: Ableton from Berlin. World class UX/UI leading the DAW market for 25 years and counting. Not “Top 100” enough for validation? Just ask Thomas Bangalter. He’s taken it around the world to get lucky.
Heh, when it comes to audio software, you could throw a lot more in the mix, e.g. Logic Pro, Native Instruments (at least in the past - shame what happened to them) and - arguably ;) - Steinberg among others.
Live is not world class UI. It’s great software but that’s despite the interface, not because of it.
Same thing with Premiere, or the Pioneer CDJ. It’s not the standard because it’s a joy to use, it’s a standard because it’s functional.
My 992.2 has AA/CarPlay, and an outstanding user interface, with a nice mix of configurable displays and physical buttons. Fairly certain it is a top 100 product in it's market.
> My 992.2 has AA/CarPlay, and an outstanding user interface
kind of ironic because, IMO, the only priority for UX in a car like that is a steering wheel, gas pedal, and brake pedal.
/not jealous.. well maybe a little :)
Yes, I think Porsche has a responsive excellent design with their infotainment / button combination though recent SUV / sedan models have moved to capacitive buttons and more touch screen controls and worsened the experience.
To be fair, it is outsourced to Harmon/Kardon.
> it is outsourced to Harmon/Kardon
Many automakers use them for their headunits (ex. both my Chrysler minivan and my Porshce have HK headunits). The headunit in my porsche is also in some VW models and for the HN crew there are some fun hacks you can do with a usb stick to customize some features, including making carplay fullscreen (tap the porsche app to return to the porsche UI)...
https://github.com/LawPaul/MH2p_SD_ModKit
Last month I spoke to a woman driving a Porsche SUV. I was appalled to hear that she is trading it in for a Tesla model Y. I drive a Tesla, and I love it, but it is nowhere near the level of a Porsche. She claims that the model Y is quieter then the Porsche and she loves the self-driving. I advised her to take the Tesla for a long test drive before selling her Porshe, she said that her son in law has one.
That isn't surprising for most people. It is also hard to say without knowing which year and model Porsche she was driving. Someone with a Cayenne Turbo GT will have a different experience from someone with a 1st gen base Macan.
A juniper Model Y is very fast, no engine noise, can drive itself better than a lot of cars on the highway for a similar price, doesn't need gas - convenient if you have a fast charger at home/work, fewer moving parts to think about in your day to day and control.
I like knobs and AA and will never make that trade... but it makes perfect sense for many people who don't mind the interface.
I'm glad Genesis still has knobs and Lexus is getting back to that now. The German luxury cars can't rely on fantastic engines alone forever.
IME the juniper model Y has crazy road and wind noise, it’s certainly louder in the cabin than my S63 which has a V8.
Fast? Sure.
Little she knows that if she uses the “self driving” from Tesla she may get into a death trap.
It’s way safer than most human drivers. I use it all of the time.
It is true though. The level of porche is in the brand only; there isn't a single porche that is better than a juniper for a daily driver. She's making an excellent choice.
what's a juniper?
the 2025/2026 Model Y.
Did you somehow get a juniper which doesn’t suffer from significant road and wind noise?
Marketing beats quality, also a valid approach.
Also a reason why suvs and their more ridiculous variants picked up so well. People don't need cars that are worse to drive, but sure as hell they want one because others have them.
Does Tesla do marketing? They don't advertise in my country.
Tesla historically focused on what marketers refer to as "earned media" rather than "paid media", but it was still marketing. Those Musk and Tesla headlines that happened around the world didn't occur by accident.
That said, they've also been buying ads for the last few years as their growth has sputtered in the face of competition.
So you want me to put my big luggage, 3 carry ons and a big stroller in a sedan trunk?
That has nothing to do with the conversion. However I've actually fit all that and more in my Model 3 Tesla. The trunks are huge.
The cup holder situation, on the other hand… (992.1 owner)
My favorite car was a 92 BMW 325IS coupe, standard. It was a simple driving machine. It drove well. It performed when asked. It had room for four, or three plus skiis with half the rear seat folded down. And BMW took a strong stance against drinking and driving: zero cup holders.
I miss that car. I would buy one again in a heartbeat if BMW still made them.
My E36 was fantastic as well. Automatic climate control, heated motorized mirrors, heated monkey pissers, heated power-adjusted leather seats, power windows, power sunroof, dash lights that fluidly adjusted to ambient conditions, two throttle bodies (in series -- one for the loud pedal, one for the ASC+T), and a single-DIN radio that was dead-nuts simple to upgrade properly whilst leaving the rest of the factory system (and its 10 channels of amplification) intact.
That's a pretty long list of things for a simple driving machine.
But anyway:
It came with two cup holders in the center console, BMW part 51168205367. There were two more cup holders in the middle armrest for the rear seat. Two additional cup holders were also available, which fit under the top of the glove box -- BMW part 51168184470.
I loved that car and it was brilliant to drive, but it did not represent a "strong stance" about drinking and driving.
It was a rather complex machine that came fitted with plenty of cup holders. :)
Sounds like you had the north america version. Mine was built in Europe, first sold in canada. It had to be dealer-modified for daytime running lights before being first sold (headlight switch "off" was turned into another on.)
I've had to give up drinking trenta-sized Starbucks entirely.
I found an add-on cup holder (similar to one I had for my NSX which had none from the factory) that clips behind the inner center console panel and the cup sits on (or near, depending on diameter) the floor. Unfortunately it is expensive for being a 3D printed part that needs better QC (had to sand the changeable cup part) (the NSX one was aluminum) but it works very well.
A better design would be to have a smaller diameter clip-in piece so you can size down when you have a smaller item.
a good idea anyway
see my comment about shopping for a used Macan, and avoiding 2022+ with the haptic BS.
> VW? "No one needs Apple Car or Android. We are the world wide Nr. 1 in car business, what does a computer company know about cars? hahaha"
VW was supporting CarPlay from launch and the VW MEB dash was on all pro material of Apple for ages.
Ever heard of CARIAD, the biggest trainwreck, er carwreck, of a software company south of the north pole?
6000 people to develop a software stack for VW.
Go figure. The fact VW supported CarPlay early is footnote in this comedy.
Not sure how CARIAD is relevant here. That company was started years after carplay landed in VAG.
Nowadays those 6000 people don't even develop anything, they do outsourcing.
No disagreeing with your points. I can see the passion in your reply :)
But Hetzner Cloud UX/UI is wonderful, compared to the rivals, Digital Ocean, Google, AWS (yea those are bigger and offer more, but still)
Not IT, but I think Leica has the best camera design. At around the Leica M6 they decided that the design was done, and every future M camera is essentially an M6 clone.
Well there’s Bosch. Software wise I salute their home connect initiative which is maybe not the best UX but at least it works locally so either it is good forward thinking software engineering choices either it shows neglected software engineering practices.
BMW's latest infotainment despite being intimidating for first time users is quite decent and intuitive compared to the horrors I saw from other German car makers.
Apple Car and Android Auto are on VW cars since a decade.
Comments about this dreadful UI/UX on german cars feels really decade old.
In any case I rent cars quite often, mostly get Korean, Japanese and German cars with few rare US ones, and I really don't see those differences across the board software wise.
They all suck, they are all slow, clunky and unintuitive.
They are all like TVs. The native interface sucks, you plug Apple in and it's suddenly good.
I have never used the native UI of my Samsung Frame. I haven't used any car's own navigation or music app in at least a decade.
Yep, except on my TV I don't have to leave Apple TV to adjust my climate control every time.
(Mk8 GTI)
I drove such a VW. Once. I still get annoyed when I'm reminded of it!
I couldn't help myself and just watched a video demo of it https://www.evshift.com/242850/how-to-adjust-the-heating-and...
The actual rage it induces LOL!
VW? "No one needs Apple Car or Android. We are the world wide Nr. 1 in car business, what does a computer company know about cars? hahaha"
I have no idea what you are talking about. I think all recent VW cars (since 2018) support Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. CarPlay works great with our VW ID.3.
Also, since a refresh a few years ago, the in-car system has had great UX/UI. We are perfectly happy with it and this is after almost two decades of iOS + having tried the systems of various different cars (including NIO).
We do not have anything to complain about, except more physical buttons would be nice, but the latest generation is bringing them back (e.g. the new ID.3 NEO). We are considering upgrading to the ID.3 NEO soon (or maybe Hyundai).
The facelift/software that was introduced with the ID.7 is really good (especially the navigation system with AR HUD), but you kinda have to consider that the HN user population is extremely US-centric and IDs aren't really available in the US, so I don't think it's surprising that the opinions on HN lag behind reality by a couple years there.
> All car so called German car manufacturers UX/UI is horrible to say the least.
What?
My BMW i4 has iDrive 8.5 and it's excellent, and i've had Mercedes and Audi and VW and Honda and SAAB.
the BMW and the 40 years ago SAAB (i bought it very used) both were easy to operate without looking away from the road.
>And to the haters: Show me any company or product from Germany in IT that is Top 100 globally. Only SAP is or has been featured somewhere below the bottom. And I gurantee you, no one fell in love with its UX/UI
Games count I suppose?
Engineers in Europe are essentially pariahs, a necessary evil for corporations hiring them. Sure they earn more than cleaners or teachers, but not substantially more. Difference between being able to afford 2 visits in restaurant a month rather than just 1.
This means engineering is not attractive and no longer something to build life around.
It takes years of learning, patience, trial and error for not much different remuneration than jobs requiring far less commitment.
Nah, 991.1/981 had the best UX/UI. It used screens for the controls that need to be on screens (navigation and entertainment), and physical buttons for everything else.
There needs to be a screen, but it should be used only for optional features. It shouldn't be required. The 9x1 generation got that. In the 992, you can't even open your garage door without fumbling around with the stupid touchscreen.
Total nonsense you’re spewing here. Especially for it being very country-biased in a world where giants like Volkswagen and BMW are highly international.
https://www.bmwgroup.com/en/innovation/innovation-network/te...
For example, BMW tech offices exist in Silicon Valley and Shanghai, among other locations.
German cars have been very well-regarded in terms of their automotive interfaces by the automotive press and reviewers as well as customers.
Watch any Doug DeMuro [1] video and on the subject of infotainment systems and you’ll see that BMW and Mercedes are up toward the top in terms of usability and customization.
You’ll see brands with good technology reputations like Kia refuse to put a GPS map in the gauge cluster while the Germans have been doing it for a decade plus now.
I will also remind us all that Mercedes beat Tesla to market on level 3 autonomy.
The only companies beating the German brands on tech are EV startups in China and companies like Tesla, but of course those companies are doing so mainly because they are replacing physical buttons with that technology, and generally integrating a lot of gimmmicks that are low hanging fruit compared to the things they can’t replicate as well like driving platform dynamics.
[1] I choose Doug DeMuro for this because he’s somewhat “in the middle” on technology. He prefers touch screens over purist physical controls for many functions but isn’t wildly biased toward them or incredibly tech savvy like the kind of person who blindly embraces Teslafication. He’s the kind of reviewer that will miss the “but actually there’s a setting for that” solution for his nitpicks, effectively showing the car as an layperson who isn’t techbrained but also isn’t your dad who wishes the screen was gone entirely.
Where driving platform dynamics are they offering that helps normal people (not talking about car junkies here)??
All the provide is a squeeze money scheme by making everything paid upgrade, laggy software, buggy software, bad range and much more.
There's nothing good about most German cars anymore. Bmw neu klasse is finally a decent answer but it took how many years?
Time to put up your receipts.
What are you talking about with “bad range?” I’m not even talking about EVs directly. Two of the top 10 Edmunds tested EV range vehicles are made by Mercedes. The next 10 vehicles include 5 German brand cars.
“Paid update” are you saying competing brands don’t have subscriptions? https://www.toyota.com/connected-services/
Laggy software? According to whom? Can you link me a review of a German vehicle that complains about laggy software?
Buggy software, compared to what?
“Car junkies” are a more profitable segment than customers who shop by price and don’t care how the car drives.
Actually... My 2016 Skoda Rapid let's me update the map for free through a user removable SD card. Pretty great UX compared to every other car I've ever had the displeasure of having to navigate with. Software is nothing special otherwise, but gets the job done. Car is 95% physical buttons through.
Also, my 2020 Mii Electric is 100% physical buttons. Pretty great.
Frankly, I am wary of anything but VWAG at this point.
100% agreed. I think it's safe to say that good software UX is incompatible with the way German hardware companies are generally run.
It's the same old story about how hardware companies can't do software UX, except extra amplified because of the strong emphasis on hierarchy, formal degrees and their, errm, heavy processes.
> And to the haters: Show me any company or product from Germany in IT that is Top 100 globally. Only SAP is or has been featured somewhere below the bottom.
Much as people seem to dislike when I say this, but, Europe simply cannot compete anymore in technology and tries to legislate away its problems, which, while sometimes something good does come out of it like the DMA, it does not help long term when there are no good home grown big tech (or indeed, any sector in the top 100) companies of their own.
"Europe" is about 750,000,000 people in about 50 countries. There are huge differences in both culture and economics between one country and another and often even among different parts of the same country. It's probably not a great idea to generalise to "Europe simply cannot compete anymore in technology and tries to legislate away its problems".
One of the main reasons Europe doesn't have a lot of big tech companies is that a lot of its most innovative and successful companies get bought out by the giants in the US before they reach that scale themselves. I expect this is going to happen less in the future because of the recent shifts in opinions though.
Or maybe they leave voluntarily, because the EU is simply not a place to do business? Because the EU has been regulatory-captured by aging tech entities such as Siemens, IBM and SAP?
Mistral, Zendesk, Basecamp, etc. left Europe for the US early on. If we take into account European founders who started their companies in the US right away, the list is even longer.
The EU and Europe are different. 27/50ish (depending on who you ask) countries in Europe are EU member states and they collectively have about 3/5 of the European population.
My own country - the UK - is (in)famously not a part of the EU and I don't think anyone would seriously claim that we have no technological innovation or successful tech businesses here in Cambridge. The city is practically overflowing with tech startups either spun out directly from university research or keen to employ people from the local tech community.
But what tends to happen is that when one of those companies reaches a certain stage the founders will cash out. Not everyone needs to be the next Bezos or Musk. Not everyone needs to see their company of 20 or 50 or 100 people grow to 5000 with international divisions set up before an eventual IPO. Not everyone wants to go through multiple rounds of VC funding and then have to run their company under the influence of the VC's people on the board. There are a lot of founders who would be very happy to take an eight figure payday after 10 or 20 years of working on the business and then have no need to work any longer if they don't want to and the freedom to do almost anything they want for the rest of their lives. I've personally known a few of them. Some did effectively retire. Others later started something new. But one thing I don't recall a single one of them ever expressing is regret over the timing of their exit.
If anything I'd say what is missing here is a culture where people feel the need to carry on past that stage in their startup's growth. And so instead of that successful business continuing - perhaps after some other form of exit for the founders - as a local company that might eventually become big enough to buy up other successful startups we instead see them get taken over by companies ultimately run from the USA because they're the ones with enough resources for an acquisition at that scale. Of course there have been a few that did become much bigger before an eventual exit - ARM is probably the most obvious one locally and for all the tragedies in the Autonomy story it was another - but they are the exception and not the rule here.
To come back to the car business we were originally discussing today - I doubt very much that we will build the next Tesla or BYD or even Polestar here in Cambridge - but I could easily imagine a startup here developing the next generation of car control system and then selling the IP to one of those companies as the exit strategy.
When European Union tries to regulate the influence of US companies in Europe and establish some European digital sovereignty, US government comes to help and applies pressure on European Union.
" “To start a direct confrontation with USA right now is probably not the smartest way to react,” said Christel Schaldemose, the Danish social-democrat lawmaker who led the drafting of the Digital Services Act."
https://www.politico.eu/article/jd-vance-waging-war-eu-tech-...