Kwarior

I've just acquired my first S Class W221. I cannot turn on the Air Con. If I use Command to turn on Air Con it immediately switches back to OFF. Nothing I do will allow me to turn it on. The fans are working perfectly, and I can change the temperature setting. It ignores my attempt to switch from OFF to On in Command.

Arrie

Your A/C does not stay ON, right?

First thing to check is that you have enough refrigerant pressure in the system. Too low pressure will not allow the compressor to run.

BOTUS

new AC condenser silly money from Mercedes... the oem is https://catalogue.nissens.com/FrontPage

Peter Roberts

Did you find out what wrong as I have the same problem!!

BOTUS

all AC units lose gas.... when it drops too low it turns off.

the condenser at the front of the car will fail around the 7 to 11 years mark (age not mileage).... look for dark oily / dusted patches around the sides, its a sign the aluminium has corroded and the gas is weeping out....

if its a Porsche, expect the intercoolers and the condenser to have popped around the 3 years mark.... German vehicles are designed to die... its how they can pay 2.5 times the wages to make cars vs what a USA guy gets paid

BOTUS

the sort of values per annum for an auto worker around the world… Oz cocked up and price themselves out, hence 3 major companies GM, Ford and Toyota pulled out by 2017

in $US k a Year

USA 30
Australia 55
Germany 50
UK 30
Poland 6
Russia 4
China 3

JJKCMO

Australia's issue wasn't wages, it was that Australia is a really small market that doesn't have protectionist policies to support local manufacturing. There are cities Japan, China, and India with more people than Australia.

Yearly Austrailian new vehicle sales are approximately 1 million, which pales in comparison to most other markets. For comparison, the state of California sees about 2 million new vehicle sales a year.

Additionally, Australian exports were minimal because the added cost of transportation simply didn't make sense.

The only way manufacturing vehicles was going to survive is if the government was willing to create policies that would favor domestic manufacturing.

They aren't designed to fail, they're designed to be a bit better than their competitors. This usually comes with a cost in longevity. That is expensive.

DaleB

I have no idea where you pulled those numbers from, but you're off by a substantial amount for the US (and probably the rest as well). These numbers are not that difficult to find for the US. Average wages in the motor vehicles manufacturing sector run just over $30 per hour, or a bit over $60K per year. That doesn't include the taxes the employer will have to pay per worker for Social Security and Medicare (an additional 7.65%) plus the cost of any company contribution to benefits such as medical insurance, retirement, etc. Then there is training costs, paid vacation, and on and on. It adds up pretty quickly.

And it seems things aren't quite the worker's paradise in Germany, either. Actual employees of German auto manufactures may get paid a reasonable amount (though it doesn't seem all that high), but they also use a lot of very low wage contractors.

Even as far back as 2015, labor costs weren't all THAT far off between the US and Germany. German manufacturers were paying out between $38 and $65 per hour including benefits; US manufacturers were seeing costs between $41 and $58 per hour. Again, these numbers include benefits, not just the hourly wage.