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I keep thinking about a missed opportunity for automakers to build a deeper trust relationship with owners: An owner-only Q&A forum, moderated by an engineering contact. Owners would be able to post questions about functionality and design and get answers from the mouth of the horse. This would resolve some questions about design features that appear arbitrary, or stupid, to owners, but could have a sound basis in engineering. Which I think happens a lot.
Does any brand do this currently? If not, I'll wager, if anyone, the Koreans will be first to make this a thing.
What world are you living in?
The norm nowadays is super-specialization with employees seen as widget makers and a cost center. Nobody knows enough about the whole products anymore. I mean NOBODY -- not the chief engineer, not the CEO. The creation of knowledge bases within the company is seen as a superfluous activity and if attempted the effort is so piss poor that what results is useless at best but in most cases is harmful because it propagates misinformation. The more experienced, capable, and knowledgeable engineers are laid off for cheaper labor that better fits the widget model.
What you're referring to is essentially impossible to create. What is more likely is that in 10 years, production of all vehicles will be done in China and customer-facing people will be even more clueless than they are today.
I keep thinking about a missed opportunity for automakers to build a deeper trust relationship with owners: An owner-only Q&A forum, moderated by an engineering contact. Owners would be able to post questions about functionality and design and get answers from the mouth of the horse. This would resolve some questions about design features that appear arbitrary, or stupid, to owners, but could have a sound basis in engineering. Which I think happens a lot.
Does any brand do this currently? If not, I'll wager, if anyone, the Koreans will be first to make this a thing.
GREAT IDEA! Probably not feasible however, due to many reasons, one would be proprietary engineering.
Last edited by JB in AZ; Jul 27, 2020 at 04:44 PM.
There is too much to know. Too many different things to be expert on.
Now, I might be showing my corporate management self here, but there needs to be a bunch of engineers leading the technical stuff, automotive and software, some sales people, no more than two, including a writer, and floor production management to create a working group that meets on a regular basis. Each member must have both full facility in his or her area of expertise, along with an ability to meet and deal with other people.
And they must meet regularly and off site, so they can hang out at the bar after hours.
After much contemplation, the wife and I decided to take the plunge to the New instead of the CPO. The new RDX A specs are flying off the lots here in Columbus OH and 2 we had our eye on got sold before we got there (less than 24 hours). We are fortunate to have 2 high volume Acura dealers here within 25 minutes of each other, so we drove over to another and they had a 2020 Performance Red sh-awd with Black interior(the dealer that had that CPO we originally were set on buying). So we pulled the trigger and the wifey is ecstatic! Thanks for all the feedback that was shared and helped us form our decision! Looking forward to being part of this forum.
We also bought the roof rails and racks and have to take the car back to get them installed next week.
The norm nowadays is super-specialization with employees seen as widget makers and a cost center. Nobody knows enough about the whole products anymore. I mean NOBODY -- not the chief engineer, not the CEO. The creation of knowledge bases within the company is seen as a superfluous activity and if attempted the effort is so piss poor that what results is useless at best but in most cases is harmful because it propagates misinformation. The more experienced, capable, and knowledgeable engineers are laid off for cheaper labor that better fits the widget model.
What you're referring to is essentially impossible to create. What is more likely is that in 10 years, production of all vehicles will be done in China and customer-facing people will be even more clueless than they are today.
Apparently a world filled with angst.
Definitely not an easy thing -- or functionally realistic in hindsight -- but not impossible. But, I withdraw the suggestion as naive.
