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The idea that a touch screen is cheaper than buttons and that this is the driving factor I find hilarious. It's some top tier bean counter shit. I mean, yeah,

by throwaway22032 3y ago

The idea that a touch screen is cheaper than buttons and that this is the driving factor I find hilarious. It's some top tier bean counter shit. I mean, yeah, sure. It'd be cheaper for my tyres to be made of wood. I don't give a toss, a new vehicle costs tens of thousands, what's $50 for a few buttons? edit: Top tier bean counter replies! Is it contagious?

danparsonson 3y ago
Across ten thousand units? Half a million dollars. Not much in the grand scheme of things but not nothing.
icegreentea2 3y ago
I just randomly picked Ford for this. Ford had like 176 billion in revenue last year, but their cost of goods was like 150 billion and their final net income was 4.35 billion. Ford sells on the order of 5 million vehicles per year. If you can generate $50 dollars of COGs reduction in a car, that's 250 million per year. Yes, that's basically nothing in terms of their COGs, but that's like 5% increase in net income (if they can channel all of the savings into the net income anyways). Alternatively, if you want to be less cynical, Ford's R&D budget comes from that ~20 billion dollar slice between their revenue, COGs and final net income. 250 million is still a pretty ~1% slice of their R&D budget.
dzhiurgis 3y ago
Buttons are cheap to manufacture. Their design, testing, installation and support - not so much.
lelanthran 3y ago
> I don't give a toss, a new vehicle costs tens of thousands, what's $50 for a few buttons? I don't think you've ever worked in manufacturing. It's not just the cost of the buttons. A larger cost is the fabrication of the housing for all the buttons: design the housing that goes into the dashboard/console, create a jig/die, continue creating new jigs/dies as the old ones wear out, keep the factory floorspace available even after the car has gone out of production, etc. This has to be done for each car model (yeah, even if you're using blanks). Another cost that dwarves the cost of buying buttons is the fitment: the fitment robots have to be purchased, programmed and maintained just to put those $50 buttons in. It has to be done for each car model. And, of course, design changes late in the process cause the manufacturer to spend all that money all over again. Spread over the lifetime of the car (how long they keep providing parts for it), a minimum of around 5 years, that $50 is negligible compared to the tens of millions of dollars poured into fabricating and fitting of those $50 buttons. Compared to a touchscreen, all that's done is to ensure that the dashboard design has a housing for the touchscreen. Done, and works for all models from baseline to top-end with no more money needed.

danparsonson 3y ago

Across ten thousand units? Half a million dollars. Not much in the grand scheme of things but not nothing.

icegreentea2 3y ago

I just randomly picked Ford for this. Ford had like 176 billion in revenue last year, but their cost of goods was like 150 billion and their final net income was 4.35 billion. Ford sells on the order of 5 million vehicles per year. If you can generate $50 dollars of COGs reduction in a car, that's 250 million per year. Yes, that's basically nothing in terms of their COGs, but that's like 5% increase in net income (if they can channel all of the savings into the net income anyways). Alternatively, if you want to be less cynical, Ford's R&D budget comes from that ~20 billion dollar slice between their revenue, COGs and final net income. 250 million is still a pretty ~1% slice of their R&D budget.

dzhiurgis 3y ago

Buttons are cheap to manufacture. Their design, testing, installation and support - not so much.

lelanthran 3y ago

> I don't give a toss, a new vehicle costs tens of thousands, what's $50 for a few buttons? I don't think you've ever worked in manufacturing. It's not just the cost of the buttons. A larger cost is the fabrication of the housing for all the buttons: design the housing that goes into the dashboard/console, create a jig/die, continue creating new jigs/dies as the old ones wear out, keep the factory floorspace available even after the car has gone out of production, etc. This has to be done for each car model (yeah, even if you're using blanks). Another cost that dwarves the cost of buying buttons is the fitment: the fitment robots have to be purchased, programmed and maintained just to put those $50 buttons in. It has to be done for each car model. And, of course, design changes late in the process cause the manufacturer to spend all that money all over again. Spread over the lifetime of the car (how long they keep providing parts for it), a minimum of around 5 years, that $50 is negligible compared to the tens of millions of dollars poured into fabricating and fitting of those $50 buttons. Compared to a touchscreen, all that's done is to ensure that the dashboard design has a housing for the touchscreen. Done, and works for all models from baseline to top-end with no more money needed.