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A Company That Tears Cars Apart to Find Out How They're Built

jalopnik.com

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Re: A Company That Tears Cars Apart to Find Out How They're Built

#31

Post by bwang29 »

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.

Re: A Company That Tears Cars Apart to Find Out How They're Built

#32

Post by jerkstate »

sharpercoder wrote: post #28

Should not the government require manufacturers to extensively document all the parts and materials that go into a product? In this age, we should demand that products are easily (re/up/down)cycle-able, and this means third parties should be able to efficiently dismantle products.

If the regulatory burden for starting a new car company was that high, you would have never seen Tesla, which means you would never see any pressure on the big guys to go all electric. So you need to balance regulation with innovation.

Re: A Company That Tears Cars Apart to Find Out How They're Built

#33

Post by ethbro »

traek wrote: post #8
ethbro wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of that transfer was explicitly driven by government policy. If you're ever around the Beijing airport, you'll notice a mushroom patch of well-known non-Chinese companies' facilities. The one constant? More security around the buildings than a military base. I'm not one to beat the US / European nationalistic gong, but it's a fact that the Chinese government has specifically targeted foreign industries to force…

How has China forced companies into tech transfer? Nobody forces them to manufacture in China.

Manufacturing is a large industry, but it's what China was targeting in the 1950s. They're aiming higher now. Most of the tech transfer is around next gen industries, such as batteries.

And as for who is forcing foreign companies to do this? Hilariously enough, capitalism. Multinationals can't afford to miss selling to the Chinese market, or their board / shareholder's vote them out. So they're left to strike the best deal they can get, given that the outcome is already known by both parties. (Exceptions like Google exist, but it does have an atypical stock structure)

From the Minneapolis Fed (2016), https://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/economic-policy-pape... (the first authoritative source I could find):

"China’s quid pro quo policy also helps account for the unusual global investment flow. Chinese policy requires multinational firms that want access to China’s huge market to transfer partial property rights to their technology, often through R&D centers or joint ventures with Chinese firms (Holmes, McGrattan and Prescott 2015a, 2015b)."

Re: A Company That Tears Cars Apart to Find Out How They're Built

#34

Post by Someone1234 »

S_A_P wrote: post #27
Luc wrote: post #9

A fun comparison: Munro on the BMW i3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqiBWfsDTAA Munro on the Tesla Model 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCIo8e12sBM

I would not doubt that the build quality of the Tesla is lacking in areas that are cosmetic. Ive seen numerous Model S and Model X vehicles with atrocious panel gaps and things that people coming from the likes of Audi, BMW, MB, and Lexus would notice. That said, it doesnt seem to be affecting their safety, as there is a pretty significant amount of crash data from tesla vehicles that shows that they are among the sa…

With all due respect did you not watch the video? Much of the focus was on safety during an accident.

The 3 they were looking at had two points to cut the electrical system, both of which were hard to get to during an accident, and the rear doors had no mechanical backup at all. If power goes out rear passengers need to make their way to the front seats or trunk.

Maybe watch the actual video rather than imagining what the video was to say and then responding to that.

Re: A Company That Tears Cars Apart to Find Out How They're Built

#35

Post by Someone1234 »

sxates wrote: post #15
Luc wrote: post #9

A fun comparison: Munro on the BMW i3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqiBWfsDTAA Munro on the Tesla Model 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCIo8e12sBM

One of those companies is a multi-million dollar client for them, and one is not.

Instead of attacking their reputation, maybe pointing out actual flaws with the assessment as presented would be more constructive?

Re: A Company That Tears Cars Apart to Find Out How They're Built

#36

Post by sharpercoder »

jerkstate wrote: post #32
sharpercoder wrote: post #28

Should not the government require manufacturers to extensively document all the parts and materials that go into a product? In this age, we should demand that products are easily (re/up/down)cycle-able, and this means third parties should be able to efficiently dismantle products.

If the regulatory burden for starting a new car company was that high, you would have never seen Tesla, which means you would never see any pressure on the big guys to go all electric. So you need to balance regulation with innovation.

Agreed. But for a product like a car, it would be fair to comply much later after-the-fact; it's not like the car is driven straight into the junkyard ;). For products like food (packaging) it seems different though.

Re: A Company That Tears Cars Apart to Find Out How They're Built

#37

Post by com2kid »

plantain wrote: post #20
com2kid wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now companies like DJI can compete and beat us DJI hires high quality Chinese engineers. Their software is better than what American consumer drone companies manage to push out, and they can push the latest tech to market insanely quick, as GoPro learned the hard way when they found out DJI was a half generation ahead of them on drone tech. DJI has great customer service, an amazing insurance plan that provides pie…

This is patently untrue - DJI has some of the worst customer service I have ever experienced, especially for a 1000$ device. I spent two months calling every other day trying to resolve a hardware issue and ended up issuing a chargeback before getting any attention. Go read the DJI hardware/software support forums. Never. Again.

Fair enough, I've seen mixed reports. I have the care program, and everything I've ever seen about that has consisted of people saying they got their drone replaced quickly and without fuss.

Re: A Company That Tears Cars Apart to Find Out How They're Built

#38

Post by com2kid »

vuln wrote: post #24
com2kid wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now companies like DJI can compete and beat us DJI hires high quality Chinese engineers. Their software is better than what American consumer drone companies manage to push out, and they can push the latest tech to market insanely quick, as GoPro learned the hard way when they found out DJI was a half generation ahead of them on drone tech. DJI has great customer service, an amazing insurance plan that provides pie…

Do you remember when the DoD banned use of any DJI drone due to it phoning home everything to China?

That should've been obvious.

To be fair, from what I understand the no fly zone restrictions thing actually does require geolocation lookup and I think those no fly zones can change, so pinging a server and checking in makes sense.

From just a pure telemetry perspective, knowing where people are flying the drones at is useful for product development and marketing.

(In response, DJI did release a privacy mode that doesn't need internet.)

A sizable % of websites visited want geo-location data, which, at times, gets sold on the open market!

Then there are background phone apps that grab location data. Even when rate limited, once every half an hour is plenty enough to figure out where Military Secret is at.

Infosec, it is a thing for a reason.

Re: A Company That Tears Cars Apart to Find Out How They're Built

#39

Post by rsp1984 »

sxates wrote: post #15
Luc wrote: post #9

A fun comparison: Munro on the BMW i3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqiBWfsDTAA Munro on the Tesla Model 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCIo8e12sBM

One of those companies is a multi-million dollar client for them, and one is not.

BMW certainly doesn't pay them to rip apart an i3. Their competitors do.

Re: A Company That Tears Cars Apart to Find Out How They're Built

#40

Post by xcvbxzas »

jerkstate wrote: post #32
sharpercoder wrote: post #28

Should not the government require manufacturers to extensively document all the parts and materials that go into a product? In this age, we should demand that products are easily (re/up/down)cycle-able, and this means third parties should be able to efficiently dismantle products.

If the regulatory burden for starting a new car company was that high, you would have never seen Tesla, which means you would never see any pressure on the big guys to go all electric. So you need to balance regulation with innovation.

That does not seem like much of a burden, at all.

All of that information is required knowledge for the business to operate and production to continue. You can't make something if you don't even know what materials you need to make it, nor if you don't know how to put it together.

In the case of extremely low production with hand-fitting the documented process may vary some from the actual process but it shouldn't be so significant that one product does not even resemble another.

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