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One of those companies is a multi-million dollar client for them, and one is not.

• devy 9y ago
  I suspected that as well - but any hints of evidence? To be fair though, Tesla's manufacturing quality does indeed falling behind their targeted segment majorly. Like Munro said, even Kia makes better assembly these days (without uneven gaps etc.) But yes, have a paid contract for product promotion doesn't hurt
• THE_PUN_STOPS 9y ago
  On the other hand, Munro is a company whose ability to sell products and services depends wholly on the veracity of their reports.
• Someone1234 9y ago
  Instead of attacking their reputation, maybe pointing out actual flaws with the assessment as presented would be more constructive?
• rsp1984 9y ago
  BMW certainly doesn't pay them to rip apart an i3. Their competitors do.
  • gwern 9y ago
    BMW certainly might: > Plus, the engineers told me, the cost models are proven. Some manufactures, they said, actually hand their own parts to Munro asking them to use their model to see how close they can get to the actual cost of manufacture. Munro says their numbers always come very close, and that they’ve even been accused of having insider information. Munro isn’t just there to help engineers learn about how the competition designs and assembles its cars, it’s also there to help automakers—who really should be called “auto assemblers”—figure out if they’re getting ripped off by their parts suppliers. Knowing exactly how much it costs to build a wheel bearing, for example, can act as leverage for negotiation against a supplier of that part. At the same time, suppliers also go to Munro to learn. If, for example, one of their competitors is selling a part for what seems like impossibly too little, the supplier might ask Munro to tear it down and figure out how the competitor is saving cost.
    • icc97 9y ago
      Hopefully Tesla takes seriously what Munro is saying.
  • emmelaich 9y ago
    They should though. Much like IT companies pay bug bounties and penetration testers.
    • icc97 9y ago
      Perhaps suing companies is the judicial way of valuing bug bounties.
• Bluestrike2 9y ago
  I've seen similar comments everywhere I stumbled across this story. It's an easy takeaway, but that's not how automakers look at competitive benchmarking. Working with a company like Munro is an engineering decision. Munro breaks cars down, reverse engineers everything they possibly can, and draws as many conclusions about production methods as possible. Engineers with other automakers use this data to learn from how others approach problems. The engineers don't give a damn about a Munro PR video about a competitor, period. It's a complete non-issue for them, and the same goes for their managers who are the ones who decide to work with Munro. They want to know every detail about how all the sausage is made (or what the sausage actually is). They don't care if the car is well made or poorly made; they're focused on the how; after all, even a car with severe quality control issues can offer useful insights. Besides, every peculiar (or even dumb) design or manufacturing decision they've made was previously laid bare by companies like Munro. Think of the process as something more like peer review or a morbidity and mortality conference for doctors. It's not a public process, despite something like this video. Basically, the people who would care if Munro upset the company by speaking favorably about Tesla are the people who have no involvement in whether their company works with Munro in the first place. If someone from Ford marketing told Ford engineering to quit working with Munro because of a video, they'd be laughed at and promptly ignored.
  • crazysim 9y ago
    Maybe he's trying to sell his services to Tesla so he dialed up the prickiness. "I'm calling this out about your car. You got quality problems. We can help."
    • nebolo 9y ago
      I don't think Munro is in that business. Understanding how something is built is different from how to consistently and price effectively build it to specs/tolerances.
  • icc97 9y ago
    The stuff that Munro is pointing out is so fundamental that I don't see how there's bias in it. The craziness that there is some hidden circle underneath the front hatch that you have to know to open and pull out a couple of leads to attach to a 12V battery is maddening. The fire department would have to do this to be able to cut the cable that's in the front hatch. I can see there being a Model 3 recall over that kind of stuff. What's the point of over the air software updates if your hardware is unsafe.
• avs733 9y ago
  The counterfactual to this argument is that his clients would be much more likely to purchase his products if there was something to learn from a competitor like Tesla. They buy his services and reports to learn. If Tesla is vastly superior, and Munro understands how, that is critical to the Big three. Knowing or having some small boutique industry firm take pot shots at Tesla doesn't get them anything. This isn't being reported on NPR and CNN. In reality, I think this has almost no impact on his business other than a little bit of publicity. Well run companies on the scale of GM are going to be just as interested in the data on a competitor whether their competitor is better or worse. There is always something to be learned. Ford is going to learn different things from Hyundai and from Mercedes...but they are going to learn.
• deleted 9y ago
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