Taking an engine out of gear wont blow the engine, it will just bounce off the limiter for a while. That’s not great for the engine, but it isn’t catastrophic. However, automatic transmission wont always let you take it out of gear, or at least don’t make it obvious that you can.

Because sometimes throttles stick.

How do you go about desiging a component to fail after such a high number of miles? It sounds much more difficult than designing one not to fail.

I’m surprise the BMW I8 didn’t make the list. Between the door release that far too easily broke, and my personal favorite “the hood that needs 2 qualified technicians to open or else it damages your car” it should have been an easy fit.

High speed rail. Really.

Flying cars wont be quiet as terrifying as giving everyone an airplane, provided they can hover (and thus come to a stop, which is something an airplane can’t do) and you have some way of making and assigning lanes (the easiest way probably be augmented reality like overlay of lane markers on the screen, but since I’d…

Now there is a solution whose time has come!

Why not both?

If you have a band, you have a garage to practice in!

If the new owner doesnt put big SWAT letters on the side, he is missing a great opportunity.

It’s a compromise, like anything else. There is no shortage of companies hiring highly qualified, hard to replace workers.

It is possible, and at least to me, likely, that the companies with better manufacturing facilities are busy making other parts (presumably with more difficult requirements and higher profits). If this is correct, than than the two types of manufacturers (high/low productivity) aren’t actually competing at this time.…

I agree that demand is a huge factor in this decision. The trouble with modern, productive manufacturing methods is that they are expensive, and you have to keep them busy.

In my experience, the risk typically isn’t (directly) in the payback for a modern factory being too far in the future. It’s in not being able to get all/most of the theoretical productivity gains from the new factory due to lack of skill/supply bottle necks/ internal politics etc. It’s usually a story of “If we could…

If this firm bought a modern production line, it could afford to produce at a lower cost. As long as it could get enough orders to utilize its line, it could easily afford to pay its workers better (and provide them with proper safety gear), since it would need far fewer of them. In fact, it would have a vested…

Because their employer is using very old production techniques. They offset the low productivity with a very large workforce, thus the low pay.

I understand, hope you don’t mind me asking. My run in with local motors is limited to a conference on additive manufacturers they (along with a few others) were holding during the last IMTS. I walked in being very excited to hear about how the envelope is being pushed in that field. And walked out very dissapointed,…

In order to be a business, you have to have sufficiend revenue to cover your expenses, or at least have some realistic plan of accomplishing that. Rally fighters aren’t priced like veyrons.

Interesting. 55 in how many years? Did they sell other products? If so, what were the biggest money makers?

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