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Comment by jorblumesea | Hacker News Reader

Is it fair to compare US car manufacturing standards to overall US manufacturing standards? The US car industry is notorious for poor engineering standards and quality, largely driven by profit incentives. Yet, we have our own sophisticated manufacturing base. It just doesn't care about cars.

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"The US car industry is notorious for poor engineering standards and quality,"

Engineering standards are * very broadly* similar, worldwide, as auto companies do have to design and sell a vehicle for multiple markets. What was lacking in the U.S. is the actual execution of the build quality. You can engineer something to be really good, but if you don't build it well, there's no point.

A very good example of this is the year 2000 Ford Focus. It was winning car of the year/ best quality awards in Europe, while it was noted for having the most amount of recalls in the U.S for a Ford. Broadly the same product with some localized differences, built separately in EU and the U.S. - completely different execution/ build quality.

My overall point was, it seems silly to use one manufacturing sector to make a determination about the entire industry. The US is home to some really cutting edge technology/manufacturing companies.

Yep. That's a fair point to say.

I'm not convinced that there was a huge difference in Ford Focus build quality between American versus European factories. I experienced both as rental cars and they seemed equivalent. On average European drivers make shorter trips at lower speeds on smoother roads, and they're more forgiving about NVH problems.

Oh yes, there was! I am not talking about simple things like NVH or other minor issues. I am talking about safety recalls like the wheel bearing failures which can cause your damn tires to fall off kind of variety!

I was a summer intern at Ford in 06/07 and they were still dealing with issues from the 2000-2003/04 cars.

A sample for you:

"2000-10-24 (Published by NHTSA on 2000-10-24) Recall Summary: VEHICLE DESCRIPTION: PASSENGER VEHICLES. THE REAR WHEEL HUB RETAINING NUTS CAN LOOSEN AND ALLOW THE LEFT REAR WHEEL AND BRAKE DRUM ASSEMBLY TO SEPARATE FROM THE VEHICLE. Hazard: THIS CONDITION COULD RESULT IN A VEHICLE CRASH."

Knock yourself out. And this doesn't include dealer fixes (called technical service bulletins -TSBs) which are not actual recalls.

https://www.autosafety.org/fords-trouble-prone-focus-hit-saf...

http://wemakeitsafer.com/vehicle-recall/Ford-Focus-Recall-50...

> The US car industry is notorious for poor engineering standards and quality, largely driven by profit incentives.

That certainly used to be the case, 20+ years ago. US auto makers have dramatically improved since the mid 1990s.

On reliability today Buick outranks BMW, Infiniti, Toyota and Mercedes. Chevrolet outranks Toyota, Audi, Honda, Hyundai and BMW. Ford & GMC are better than Subaru and Acura, comparable to Mercedes, and slightly better than Volkswagen. Lincoln is better than Honda, Nissan and Audi.

https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/jd-power-201...

Purely anecdotal, but as someone in the space I'd attribute those improvements largely to better manufacturing technology rather than better management. Servos, feedback control, reliability testing, etc. have improved a lot since the 90s. But American management still tends to be rather Taylorist.

With electronic components being more popular you're seeing quality issues crop back up from T1/T2 suppliers because the focus is on technology instead of process. But the AOI/ICT I've seen in the automotive space are fairly crude compared to the number of potential failures you can have with electronic components. Playing whack-a-mole doesn't work. You need people close to the process who care enough to notice when something is not quite right, and are empowered to do something about it.

Kaizen is to manufacturing what Agile/Scrum is to software development. As soon as management hears "improved efficiency" they tend to focus on the dollar signs rather than the message about people and process.

This sounded quite interesting and surprising as a result. I could not access the results so I did some quick googling.

The source is JD Power and they are claimed to have bad methodology. From what I read they don't weigh issues, so an infotainment issue is on the same level as a more severe mechanical issue.

There's a ranking from Consumer Reports but it requires a subscription as well, and it is probably somewhat biased since to my understanding one needs to be a subscriber to answer the questions in the first place.

A better method would be to pool data from several insurance companies, but I could not find such a thing.

I could imagine that publishing this data would be of great interest to insurance companies. That way, they could steer people into using cars which are cheaper to the insurance companies.

An objective study would certainly be of interest to someone who needs a car to move around. It's costly and not to mention frustrating when a car breaks down.

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