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

To be fair though, Tesla's manufacturing quality does indeed falling behind their targeted segment majorly. Like Munro said, even Kia makes better assembly these days (without uneven gaps etc.) But yes, have a paid contract for product promotion doesn't hurt

The engineers don't give a damn about a Munro PR video about a competitor, period. It's a complete non-issue for them, and the same goes for their managers who are the ones who decide to work with Munro. They want to know every detail about how all the sausage is made (or what the sausage actually is). They don't care if the car is well made or poorly made; they're focused on the how; after all, even a car with severe quality control issues can offer useful insights. Besides, every peculiar (or even dumb) design or manufacturing decision they've made was previously laid bare by companies like Munro. Think of the process as something more like peer review or a morbidity and mortality conference for doctors. It's not a public process, despite something like this video.

Basically, the people who would care if Munro upset the company by speaking favorably about Tesla are the people who have no involvement in whether their company works with Munro in the first place. If someone from Ford marketing told Ford engineering to quit working with Munro because of a video, they'd be laughed at and promptly ignored.

In reality, I think this has almost no impact on his business other than a little bit of publicity. Well run companies on the scale of GM are going to be just as interested in the data on a competitor whether their competitor is better or worse. There is always something to be learned. Ford is going to learn different things from Hyundai and from Mercedes...but they are going to learn.

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.

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 III having cratered its engine. http://teslaweekly.com/first-model-3-motor-failure-reported-...

All in all 2017 wasn't their best year so hopefully 2018 will see a turn around but even max projections are well under 200k cars this year

https://perryandcoblog.com/2009/11/17/porsche-carrera-911-99...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss6-8TJYIqE

What exactly did you learn?

He kept saying the i3 "life module" (agile! AGILE!) was some magical achievement. Yeah, carbon fiber is neat. They also choose the grain direction of panels for optimum efficiency.

- We've been using grain direction on wood for what, thousands of years?

- We've been made cars "strong" for century. It's called a tube frame. And it's one of the main reasons dragsters/NASCAR drivers don't die on impacts that will kill most people in consumer cars.

What's actually important these days is not how "strong" a frame is. It's how it deforms to absorb maximum energy on impact so the passengers experience the least acceleration possible. "Strong" has been solved. And crush areas have been common for decades upon decades. The only new thing here is they're using carbon fiber. And the only reason they're doing that... is 1) "marketing" and 2) weight reduction because battery cars are very heavy AND very sensitive to weight for mileage.

Automotive companies aren't on the frontline of technology. They're on the frontline of CHEAP/mass-producible technology.

Simply putting some carbon fiber on a body is not magical to us practicing mechanical engineers. But I guess it may seem like "magic" to software people, the way mechanical people see IT/software as magic.

What's actually "Cool" about this company/video is how they can tear down entire vehicles and come up with accurate cost estimates, as well as the construction order. That takes a _lot_ of work and industry experience. But the technology in those cars? It's not even remotely new.

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 into tech transfer. And foreign governments generally haven't done anything meaningful about it.

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 piece of mind, and bullet proof build quality.

They do have a major advantage of being in China, so they can work with suppliers much more directly. It doesn't feel like they are using the grey technology market though. A lot of the lower priced drones are obviously put together from Shenzen part bins, but DJI just feels good all around.

That said, their Android mobile app is a bit janky at times. Then again, lots of stuff on Android is a bit janky...

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.

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