Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] computer and car prices (was Re: [MLUG])

[Michael <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

> If you pretend to be a car maker, you'll soon see that getting this
> kind of agreement is much tougher than you think and it makes almost
> no sense to do alone.  Seriously, it's pretty clear that people do 
> not invest much time in thinking about safety features, and would 
> only grouse about the fact that the uniform bumpers were boring or 
> clashed with some other design element, or...

Well it doesn't take instant approval across all car makers to work out
such a standard. If one company does it and advertises it as a saftey
feature then the others will feel the pressure to do so also. If there is
no cost to license the concept or anything like that then it's an easy way
to 'me-to' your product line. Get 2-3 companies following the standard and
sheer market forces will drive most of the others to adopt the standard
also.

Consider the airbag. A company that advertised it had airbags first
probably had a jump on the others despite the fact many people probably
didn't fully understand what an airbag was. Then everyone wanted to put an
airbag in their cars and then eventually you got into passenger side
airbags and my airbag is better than your airbag type stuff but it did get
worked into the psuedo-standard. Now I do think if I remember right that
they actually did have to use the government to sort of force this issue
but eventually economic forces would have done the same except in the
ultra-cheap cars. Given that adjusting bumper height doesn't really impact
the cost of building a car I'd expect it to make it into even the
ultra-cheap cars eventually.

> When I said before that cars had improved dramatically, I still
> stand by that, but the improvements have generally come fastest when
> they had to be made due to the competitive nature of the market. 
> (Regulations have helped, but they can take forever to get 
> anywhere.)

I'd agree that they've improved in some ways and that it depends largely
on what cars are being compared. There are lots of the damn things. :)

> Now, there are things that could help, but the auto companies would
> fight them tooth and nail.  So, for example, suppose in addition to
> giving out the EPA estimated gas mileage ratings on an obvious
> sticker that they also had to give out death/injury ratings for that
> make/model (or absent sufficient data, the whole fleet) together 
> with the average figure for cars/trucks of that class and all 
> vehicles.  Like this:
> 
>           EPA est. MPG    DOT fatality rates
>           miles/gallon    deaths/10 million passenger-mile
> 
> highway        25.0           2.0  (avg=1.0)
> 
> city           17.0           2.4  (avg=1.7)
> 
> I've made up the numbers, but you can see where this is going. Cars
> that have proven to be much more dangerous, for whatever reason, are
> not very likely to sell for much longer if the info is right there
> on the sticker.

That's an excellent idea. That'd definantly push along adoption of saftey
features that actually worked. Especially in the family car I think.

> Some would suggest that the average Japanese-made sedan of the 1980s
> played almost exactly this role, for better or for worse.  But the
> problem with this comparison is that the reason you do this with PC
> hardware is so that anybody can put one together or add more 
> peripherals.  Nobody much buys stock parts to assemble a car or 
> outside of a small fan base does any systematic "upgrading".  Some
> parts are pretty standard (tires, plugs, belts), and, funnily 
> enough, those are exactly the ones that do get systematically 
> replaced or upgraded.

Which helped the Japanese break into our markets and then once they did
they went for the flashier nicer looking style that has largely controled
the market since.

It might be that more cars would be built/repaired at home if the parts
were more standard. If you didn't have to relearn everything you knew
about them for each model. Sure 95% would probably still be made by big
companies, and the rest by small companies and hobby builders but it'd
give more control to the consumer.

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