4 ms·

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.