The CEO of Ford made over $17 million last year in compensation, but it was worthwhile to write an article about a 200k R&D expense, with a senior industry analyst giving a quote seriously questioning the $50k spent over sticker price in order to get the vehicle immediately instead of waiting in line.
Is this really a story? Or just clickbait because it has Tesla in the title?
The news is not about the amount indeed, it's basically pocket money for Ford. However, they go in great lengths to acquire a Tesla through unusual channels. The founders edition are very limited and rare and only given to close friends & board members. They wouldn't do this with a new Honda I imagine.
What makes it interesting is to see how the car industry reacts to Tesla's disrupting the industry, which in this case is one reaction (of many). Thats what I think is fascinating.
I think it's just supposed to be noteworthy because it is unusual for them to pay that much, and it was specifically to get an early iteration of this particular model.
I wonder if there's some reason they specifically went for one of the earliest ones sold. Maybe as one of the first ones made, it would be more in "prototype" mode versus one of the latest versions.
The public never usually hears about it, that's why. There are entire companies that specialize in tearing down products and selling reports to customers.
It's not the total price that's a shocker rather they needed to pay $55,000 over the list price. That's way above average even if it's chump change for a major car company.
This makes me think of the iPhone + RIM (Blackberry) and what a shift in thinking they had after pulling apart the first iPhone they could get hold of.
"RIM was even in denial the day after the iPhone was announced with all hands meets claiming all manner of weird things about iPhone: it couldn’t do what they were demonstrating without an insanely power hungry processor, it must have terrible battery life, etc. Imagine their surprise when they disassembled an iPhone for the first time and found that the phone was battery with a tiny logic board strapped to it. It was ridiculous, it was brilliant."
Carmakers continually buy all sorts of competitors' models for comparison testing and R&D purposes. From what I remember, the company I interned for (one of the big 3 in Detroit) bought Ferraris, Porsches, BMWs, etc to compare drive quality and for R&D. Additionally, sometimes they don't want a new car, they want one that is 10 years old and has real world wear and tear. They essentially have a broker who will find any car they ask for. I worked on the alloy design team, and one of the more unique stories I heard was about 10 years ago, they bought a 20 year old Mercedes to essentially cut into pieces. Why? The model they bought was one of the first cars with a unique alloy in the body IIRC, and they wanted to run mechanical as well as characterization tests on it to see how it aged.
In the book "Soul of a new machine" there is described a moment in 1978 when an Data General engineer (Tom West) gets to go look at and take apart a newly installed DEV VAX at a friends company.
Why is is that reverse engineering gets people cease and desist letters, especially in the software and electronics community? Is the difference that Ford keeps the findings internal and doesn't share them with the public? If so, that's pretty bad, because someone dissected a product and now everyone else should do the same instead of sharing the result. It's a waste of money and work force, all in the name of trying to hide stuff even though patents and copyrights are abused already for similar purposes.
It's not the act of disassembling that's important, it's what you do with the knowledge afterwards. For example, the team doing the Tesla teardown is now poisoned; they can write up their findings from the clean room and provide them to other engineering teams for implementation (IP issues aside), but they are now barred from working on any derivative technologies themselves. It's a bit cumbersome, but this is how engineering espionage is done.
The comments here are really interesting. I agree that I'm not sure why this is news worthy since it seems like companies spend much more than this doing the exact same thing in other verticals. I'm sure Google and Samsung have spent hundreds of thousands, if not millions, doing the same thing to Apple products. R&D includes trying to understand how others do it. Spending nearly $200K to tear apart a Tesla seems pretty reasonable to me.
Assuming that Apple has 10 products on the market at any time, and you buy one per month at $1,000 each, that's $10,000 dollars a month, so for $120,000 you could fund the teardowns for a year.
When Lexus launched the LS400 two percent of the sales that year came from auto manufacturers. They could not believe how the car was so good. They still haven't caught up in many ways.
OT: the letters PR have a primary association with Public Relations, i.e. people who are paid to spin the truth on the behalf of others. I see from your profile that those are your real-life initials... but it's not a great first impression. You might want to open an account as Pablo-asimuv, or, really, anything else.
(I checked because this comment sounded an awful lot like a PR exercise for Lexus.)
Good for Ford. They'd be negligent to not try their hardest to get some competitive advantage any above board way possible. I don't see what the fuss is about. OMG AMD buys Intel chips and checks them out!!! Sometimes they pay over market price.
Yeah - this type of stuff is what I would expect Ford to be doing. It might be different if they bought a gasoline Subaru but this is a Tesla which is a brand that is supposed to be revolutionizing the automotive market. If they paid twice or three times the price to get something as early as possible I still wouldn't be surprised.
Legally - you can do some things you figure out in reverse engineering that you could not do if you had the engineer.
Plus, does 1 engineer really know all parts of the Tesla? Can he tell you about the types of lugs used on the wheels? Can he also tell you about the type of glass used in the windows, or the type of leather used in the seats? If cars are anything like software, each engineer knows like 5% of the total product..
Because Tesla's engineers all live in California, and Ford's engineers all live in Detroit, and Tesla's engineers really don't want to live in Detroit.
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[+] [-] CameronBanga|10 years ago|reply
Is this really a story? Or just clickbait because it has Tesla in the title?
[+] [-] jasonwen|10 years ago|reply
What makes it interesting is to see how the car industry reacts to Tesla's disrupting the industry, which in this case is one reaction (of many). Thats what I think is fascinating.
[+] [-] mfoy_|10 years ago|reply
I wonder if there's some reason they specifically went for one of the earliest ones sold. Maybe as one of the first ones made, it would be more in "prototype" mode versus one of the latest versions.
[+] [-] Spooky23|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rocky1138|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joezydeco|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Retric|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CosmicShadow|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelbuckbee|10 years ago|reply
"RIM was even in denial the day after the iPhone was announced with all hands meets claiming all manner of weird things about iPhone: it couldn’t do what they were demonstrating without an insanely power hungry processor, it must have terrible battery life, etc. Imagine their surprise when they disassembled an iPhone for the first time and found that the phone was battery with a tiny logic board strapped to it. It was ridiculous, it was brilliant."
From: http://www.edibleapple.com/2010/12/28/rim-was-in-disbelief-f...
[+] [-] wrong_variable|10 years ago|reply
This is what innovation looks like - its so absurd that it might actually work !
[+] [-] pandemicsyn|10 years ago|reply
[0] http://www.wired.com/2014/07/go-inside-the-lab-where-gm-tear...
[+] [-] emdd|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tcpekin|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acomjean|10 years ago|reply
Oddly VAX cost $200,000.
Very short exert http://kottke.org/14/07/the-soul-of-a-new-machine
Long exert of the book which continues the story of the VAX disassembly was published in the Atlantic called "flying upside-down".
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1981/07/flying-u...
Soul of a new machine is a really good book. highly recomended.
[+] [-] cm3|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HillRat|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josh_carterPDX|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csours|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asimuvPR|10 years ago|reply
*Edit:
Here is more about the history of the car itself: http://ateupwithmotor.com/model-histories/lexus-ls400/
[+] [-] dsr_|10 years ago|reply
(I checked because this comment sounded an awful lot like a PR exercise for Lexus.)
[+] [-] mc32|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EA|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IE6|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexc05|10 years ago|reply
Strikes me that a reasonable sized team would cost that per-day.
[+] [-] ck2|10 years ago|reply
What if it is to try to find patents they can sue over?
[+] [-] shogun21|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reitanqild|10 years ago|reply
Making them public is part of patenting anythong I think.
[+] [-] dajohnson89|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brianwawok|10 years ago|reply
Plus, does 1 engineer really know all parts of the Tesla? Can he tell you about the types of lugs used on the wheels? Can he also tell you about the type of glass used in the windows, or the type of leather used in the seats? If cars are anything like software, each engineer knows like 5% of the total product..
[+] [-] samfisher83|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Grishnakh|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oldmanjay|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dang|10 years ago|reply
Also, please re-read the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, specifically the two at the bottom) and don't post any more comments about getting downvoted. Those are out of bounds for good reason.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11534726 and marked it off-topic.
[+] [-] oldmanjay|10 years ago|reply