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I think you are oversimplifying. 'Tech' as a commonly applied label typically involves widgets and software. Not large manufacturing and supply chains that in

I think you are oversimplifying. 'Tech' as a commonly applied label typically involves widgets and software. Not large manufacturing and supply chains that involves world trade, weather, regionalism, human resources in the hundreds of thousands and years of planning to work with many similarly configured partners. Tesla for all it's glory isn't the greatest endorsement for Tech as some (not necessarily you) like to claim and I like Tesla. Everyone that says car companies don't move fast seems to be picking and choosing the facts that suit their own bias towards 'traditional' industries. Car companies only look slow on the outside, but they really aren't when you look at the totality of their products scope. For example car companies go through millions of dollars in just testing alone with nearly every country operating their own testing center. They need to be weather tested in so many different environments, they need to meet regulatory hurdles that are different from state to state to State. It's just massive what goes into what they need to do just to get the right to sell their product in a region or country. Yet they do all this with significant upgrades to models that are now coming nearly every 3 years. I remember when it went from 10 years to 5 years. Wow! I remember when the assembly got so complicated that cars were squeaking due to the materials rubbing against each other. So in comes material science guys trying to get that sorted in all weather conditions. I think Waymo is far more likely to be in the sidelines than people think, but we'll see; I could be wrong.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
I fully agree. There's tons of stuff moving fast when you look on the inside. Everyone aware of what the cutting edge is in their field and working to implement that within their own little niche of responsibility. From the outside it's like watching a large military cargo plane. It's so big that it looks slow no matter how fast it's going. That said, GM (or any other BigCo) realizes when it doesn't have a capability and either decides to not pursue it, spin it up themselves internally (like in the case of EVs), license it, or buy someone who has it (e.g. Cruise). >I remember when the assembly got so complicated that cars were squeaking due to the materials rubbing against each other. So in comes material science guys trying to get that sorted in all weather conditions. Was that back when you could look at a picture of a Saturn and tell what temperature it was when the picture was taken? ;)

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

I fully agree. There's tons of stuff moving fast when you look on the inside. Everyone aware of what the cutting edge is in their field and working to implement that within their own little niche of responsibility. From the outside it's like watching a large military cargo plane. It's so big that it looks slow no matter how fast it's going. That said, GM (or any other BigCo) realizes when it doesn't have a capability and either decides to not pursue it, spin it up themselves internally (like in the case of EVs), license it, or buy someone who has it (e.g. Cruise). >I remember when the assembly got so complicated that cars were squeaking due to the materials rubbing against each other. So in comes material science guys trying to get that sorted in all weather conditions. Was that back when you could look at a picture of a Saturn and tell what temperature it was when the picture was taken? ;)