Cool ideas, people have already figured out this was designed into the system. Sure more testing can catch things, but how much money are you allowed to spend on every single feature?
There isn't a 'right' answer to these questions, engineers are literally doing cutting edge, never before jobs.
Everyone wants more time, more money, and better suppliers.
You need a call to action, not just a youtube video talking about groups not being responsible.
It's the opposite, this is a stupid idea by the sound of it, as it goes against what we've learned for decades in this industry. You yourself speculated what could be wrong with it, not exactly hard to see.
Who knows, it might be great once you actually do it, but honestly I dont think so.
> Reminds me of a student design with what you get by just following design equations and going for a crazy mission profile.
This is the only thing that makes sense about this design. It's the result of optimizing some parameter at the expense of all others. Maybe the maths makes sense but it looks ugly and I've never seen an ugly machine that worked well.
> That thing is so over-engineered it is almost as if it was a joke.
Maybe different people use that term differently but I wouldn't call that 'over-engineered'. I'd just call it 'poorly engineered'. Mismatched components doing a poor job despite being far more expensive than necessary. If they'd put a well designed hydraulic press in there, I'd call it over-engineered. :)
Like AvE says, it's really not. Elegant engineering is exactly meeting your design requirements (assuming your design requirements are good). It's far far easier to overengineer everything. It's also wasteful, since all that extra capacity won't be utilized.
> This should be based on core tech development only..
What good is the tech if you can't put it into production? There are real design and manufacturing issues to deal with, and a company that doesn't take that into consideration and give it the attention it deserves likely won't do well in the long run.
> First, the skateboard and the upper body could be built separately. Maybe not at the same place (a handful of skateboards will fit perfectly in a shipping container for completion thousands of miles away).
I hate to be critical, but this really reminds me of a 1950s "visions of the future" piece more than a practical design choice.
For example, the skateboard is not a new concept [1], and there are reasons you don't see it. Modular design really only shines for low-volume production (or a large combinatorial space). When you are doing 10s of millions of units per year, as the auto industry does, modularity often gets thrown out in deference to volume/cost.
Also, distributed manufacturing is a huge pain, why would you ever want that? See Boeing's experience with the 737 supply chain. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
> It's pretty shocking to me that people in our society build things and then deliberately break them so they can make more money. Is this really the best system we can come up with?
All part of cost tradeoffs. Previously, they'd build the car with the ability to support all those add-ons even if the customer isn't getting them. Turns out it's cheaper not to do that.
It's "engineering trade offs" when you do it and "cutting corners" when the competition does it.
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