That's just how early R&D is when you have a physical product. I can't count how much crazy crap I've seen rushed from China to make a deadline or meet early turn outs. Sometimes engineering time and early adopter happiness are worth a lot more than the one off cost of some air freight. Its not like (at least I hope not how) that's how their supply chain will be working in the long term.
R&D definitely forms a huge part of many product costs, and not for many products where you just churn them out by the millions
For a plane, it's going to be the former
That and the reason it's easy to get a BOM of cheap products is because you can buy them and tear them down. I can't see Airbus managing to buy a boeing and tear the entire thing down without Boeing noticing
Orders and refundable deposits don't mean jack shit for something that hasn't been produced fully yet. A lot of people are willing to put money down on a fantasy.
The company has, like, 1 of these prototype (still experimental class) planes. As commented elsewhere here, certification, etc. is a big hurdle. Clearly they're following Tesla's playbook -- but with something much harder to produce.
The press release's lazy language makes it sound like they already achieved these benefits. Wait until even 1 plane is delivered to see.
I'll take planes I don't want to get in for 1000 Alex!
Seriously, think of software projects that took years longer than predicted and went way over budget. What kind of product was finally delivered? I don't want to be a seller of fear (I hate that about the US) but I won't be surprised to see serious issues with this thing when it enters service. Anyone here ever work on a 3 year long 1 year project? I have and its rare to see the attention to quality at the end of that 3 year death march that you see in the beginning.
Because it takes time, not just data. To set up infrastrcuture, to do tests, to train, etc. Hell, it takes Boeing itself several decades to design a new aircraft model, even though they have done it several times before.
The US for example trying to get back some of its domestic manufacturing prowess, after decades which has outsourced it to China which has gotten really good at it, has a 10-20 year barrier to overcome before it can even start to get to the same level, and that's if all goes well and no stupid decisions are made. Which is not very likely.
Long term, this creates a weakness - a manufacturer that can't survive without massive subsidies on open world market, which means subpar/overpriced products.
Just look at F22/F35 mega-clusterfucks. Healthy company with competition would aim slightly lower for massively higher feasibility and generally would make more clever decisions.
But once you know that whatever you deliver, however overpriced and with 10-20 years delays, it will be accepted, then you end up with pathetic stuff like those projects.
Taking a plane from design to commercial delivery takes years. I'm sure they can spare 2-3 months to do some long running tests. Especially if those can run in parallel with other fit-and-finish work unrelated to software.
International supply chains are the rule rather than the exception. The 787 pushed the novelty envelope further than it needed to with the amount of composite materials used (it's possible that in time, this will look like a smarter bet as it'll be easier to reengineer if competing with future generations of aircraft where composites are commonplace) which as one of the factors delaying launch, and also had major issues with engines and batteries which were always going to be supplied by third parties.
Hm. I suspect that the 20/80 rule applies there and "here's our shiny new aircraft design, have fun testing and debugging it for the next 15 years" isn't a viable strategy there. There are often those "vision designs" of wonderful new planes that are developed internally by the major companies, but then never realized. I bet they can easily produce the 20% part themselves in much less time. But maybe it's an illusion and they are really ripe for disruption.
Meh. Building an airplane isn't that hard anyways, China will get there soon if they aren't already (e.g. with the C919).
It is very difficult to build avionics and jet engines that work, which are just shipped whole sale in final assembly. It will take China much much much longer to replicate that technology, and final assembly rights aren't going to help much at all.
It seems designs can be iterated on and tested in just a few days.
In today's aviation world, if an idea can make it into the air in less than 5 years it's a miracle. I don't see any substantial innovation happening in the aviation world for that reason. Planes docking side by side to save fuel like this would be amazing for the environment, but will never happen.
It's all fair criticism. The lessons learned will only take you so far, so the caveat is that if you think it's a bad project then you're already above a certain level. Go you :)
You might take it in the context that they are shipping a real product at a fair speed so where it deviates from ideal what you're seeing is the educated choices of the tradeoffs to make in a real business (which is a statement of the plane team's opinion, yours may vary).
I suspect most of the innovation is actually in the acquisitions side of the house. They could burn money for decades on this project and still come out ahead compared to running half a dozen acquisitions projects for multiple planes.
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