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What's the opposite of this experience I guess. The Toyota as you've cited, or a similar Hyundai? Where the sheer volume and implicit agreement with the custo

by urthor 5y ago

What's the opposite of this experience I guess. The Toyota as you've cited, or a similar Hyundai? Where the sheer volume and implicit agreement with the customer is predicated on the fact every single part is engineered for reliability, and the automobile wins the "total cost of ownership over 10 years" prize in Choice magazine for its segment?

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
Yea. I mean, GM has a group of maybe 20 people that do nothing but fog lights on trucks. If you took 20 engineers away from McClaren, I think the company would shut down. I’m pessimistic about the industry from the moment that OTA updates were possible. Everything has gotten worse with that. “We’ll fix it before Dealers get them!” (No, you won’t). But for the most part, car engineering is a really unique thing. Tons of time, tons of money, because there are tons of them. How many people have private jets? How many people have boats? Trains? Etc. but everyone has a car, and they basically all have to work all the time in any condition with a flat out assumption you aren’t going to take care of it. I think it’s really funny that if I walk into a building with supercars, and I mean Bugatti, Koenigsegg, the rare Porches, the million dollar plus crew, that they ALL have to sit with trickle chargers on them. Because otherwise they would ALL run their batteries dead in two weeks or less. The LaFerarri issue I mentioned was the batteries were all dead, the ebrake was on. So it couldn’t be loaded on a trailer. The access to the ebrake release is behind a door you can’t get to without power. No one designed this as a car for humans. To this day the only person I’ve seen actually drive one like a car was a guy in Taiwan that was definitely some gang or cartel executive. Nice guy though. He didn’t care it isn’t a real car. I think it’s funny because people who dream of these things, have no idea what a pain in the ass they are to even get in and out of. Porsche makes some higher end ones that still feel like cars, and the Ferrari touring aren’t bad, big though. IDK. I’m probably just jaded on vehicles.
- sitkack 5y ago
  Is one of the points you are trying to make is that we don't have a proper level of engineering until something is mass produced to the same quality level? Maybe mass produced is the wrong word, but something that satisfies more of the common design constraints or functional requirements. I do think that there is a sloppyness that develops in thinking when using a medium that allows for free infinite continuous modification. Having a design be final has a certain foundational quality to it.

by urthor 5y ago

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago

Yea. I mean, GM has a group of maybe 20 people that do nothing but fog lights on trucks. If you took 20 engineers away from McClaren, I think the company would shut down. I’m pessimistic about the industry from the moment that OTA updates were possible. Everything has gotten worse with that. “We’ll fix it before Dealers get them!” (No, you won’t). But for the most part, car engineering is a really unique thing. Tons of time, tons of money, because there are tons of them. How many people have private jets? How many people have boats? Trains? Etc. but everyone has a car, and they basically all have to work all the time in any condition with a flat out assumption you aren’t going to take care of it. I think it’s really funny that if I walk into a building with supercars, and I mean Bugatti, Koenigsegg, the rare Porches, the million dollar plus crew, that they ALL have to sit with trickle chargers on them. Because otherwise they would ALL run their batteries dead in two weeks or less. The LaFerarri issue I mentioned was the batteries were all dead, the ebrake was on. So it couldn’t be loaded on a trailer. The access to the ebrake release is behind a door you can’t get to without power. No one designed this as a car for humans. To this day the only person I’ve seen actually drive one like a car was a guy in Taiwan that was definitely some gang or cartel executive. Nice guy though. He didn’t care it isn’t a real car. I think it’s funny because people who dream of these things, have no idea what a pain in the ass they are to even get in and out of. Porsche makes some higher end ones that still feel like cars, and the Ferrari touring aren’t bad, big though. IDK. I’m probably just jaded on vehicles.

sitkack 5y ago
Is one of the points you are trying to make is that we don't have a proper level of engineering until something is mass produced to the same quality level? Maybe mass produced is the wrong word, but something that satisfies more of the common design constraints or functional requirements. I do think that there is a sloppyness that develops in thinking when using a medium that allows for free infinite continuous modification. Having a design be final has a certain foundational quality to it.