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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

#51

Post by mschuster91 »

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.

What is the regulatory burden in forcing car manufacturers to publish the same manuals and offer the same tools for purchase they already have for their own service centers?

Besides many countries do require automobile mass market vendors to offer spare parts and docs on FRAND conditions to "unconnected" repair shops already.

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

#52

Post by mschuster91 »

bwang29 wrote: post #31

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…

Most car components actually do not come from the car manufacturer. For example: Bosch (which is famous for its drilling machines) is also a common manufacturer of engine control units and other parts and got flak for it during the diesel scandal, Knorr Bremse is an industry supplier for brakes on trucks and buses and Takata a supplier of airbags.

Takata actually is the perfect example: no matter what car manufacturer there is, they all ended up on the infamous airbag recall list: https://www.nhtsa.gov/recall-spotlight/takata-air-bags

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

#53

Post by Arbalest »

bwang29 wrote: post #31

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…

It's kinda frustrating that reverse engineering in the physical space is not protected (as evidenced here), but stuff like the DMCA tends to do a lot more for protecting software. Seems ridiculous to me. Perhaps this is why these guys aren't also reverse engineering the control systems (as suggested by many comments, I'm not sure it is true)

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

#55

Post by jtchang »

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

That was a very informative video. My respect for the CEO shot up quickly. He wasn't really trying to sell anything but simply illustrating points of concern.

I can tell he very much enjoys doing what he does.

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

#56

Post by solaarphunk »

vinceguidry wrote: post #3

This is the sort of thing that makes my eyes roll and my attention wander whenever politicos hammer on about the loss of our manufacturing base being America's imminent downfall. The amount of institutional knowledge baked into our industries is simply mind-boggling. The only reason we can get away with outsourcing manufacturing in the first place is because this knowledge is so amazingly thorough.

BMW and Audi literally manufacture their cars in China now. I feel like at this point we are practically giving our IP away.

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

#57

Post by bahmboo »

Shivetya wrote: post #45
blinkingled wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's laughably bad of Tesla - the thumb wide gaps in the body, the gluing rubber parts on glass seals because the original one was way out of tolerance, door rattle, one door having two ways to open but not the others - the screen that goes you have activated alternate door opening mechanism or some such thing - all pretty embarrassing. Never mind the insane difficulty to open the hood in an accident which looks li…

I do not understand how there is no manual mechanism for opening the rear doors from the inside, how does that even happen? His comments about the outside door handles were at least prefaced with his own physical limitation but the state of that car is mind boggling. This is on top of the known promised features and oversight with regards to the programming of the display. I did notice on reddit there is a story of a…

I agree, but if you are really safety minded you should have a metal pick/club to break the windows anyway. Can't rely on doors being operational during accident and can't wait for emergency response. Of course I don't have one :]

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

#58

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#59

Post by majormajor »

com2kid wrote: post #10
ggg9990 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have transferred a TON of this institutional knowledge to China. Now companies like DJI can compete and beat us, and it’s all with knowledge that we transferred to them in the last 30 years.

> 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…

That's exactly the parent's contention. Where did all the infrastructure, money, and knowledge that led to a world-class country emerging there come from?

Bootstrapping a tech economy gets a lot easier when people hand you the keys to the kingdom in exchange for short-term profits, without even requiring equal access to your domestic market in return.

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