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I developed new appreciation for car manufacturing from this article. The way that one component depends on other common components reminded me of NPM packages.

I developed new appreciation for car manufacturing from this article. The way that one component depends on other common components reminded me of NPM packages. I'm wondering what if they found one car infringing another car's design or engineering IP without fulfilling a license, or if they would find certain car makers "reinvent the wheel" simultaneously. A lot of car makers need to properly license certain design from other car makers. I wonder if this also helps facilitating and defending these licensable designs, or encouraging open sourcing design in cars. I suspect the overall outcome of finding similar design and borrow existing design from one car maker into another is a good thing for bringing the cost down.

mschuster91 9y ago
Most car components actually do not come from the car manufacturer. For example: Bosch (which is famous for its drilling machines) is also a common manufacturer of engine control units and other parts and got flak for it during the diesel scandal, Knorr Bremse is an industry supplier for brakes on trucks and buses and Takata a supplier of airbags. Takata actually is the perfect example: no matter what car manufacturer there is, they all ended up on the infamous airbag recall list: https://www.nhtsa.gov/recall-spotlight/takata-air-bags https://www.nhtsa.gov/recall-spotlight/takata-air-bags
Arbalest 9y ago
It's kinda frustrating that reverse engineering in the physical space is not protected (as evidenced here), but stuff like the DMCA tends to do a lot more for protecting software. Seems ridiculous to me. Perhaps this is why these guys aren't also reverse engineering the control systems (as suggested by many comments, I'm not sure it is true)