I can’t wait until private equity companies are exposed as the exploitive side of our current system that needs to be corrected. At the heart of so many good companies are bad decisions driven by PE structures and personalities, most of whom seem very toxic and short sighted. Surely there is a better model of capitalism — I am not so vapid as to turn against the obvious advantages of the system. But I am also not willing to endorse the current approach as anything but exploitation with extra steps.
We need to cut spending. Spending is OUT OF CONTROL.
You can’t make up in taxes what you keep spending, and deficit spending is insane right now.
Why is this not part of the conversation? I have no problem paying higher taxes, but without responsible spending it’s just pouring gas on an out of control fire.
This is just a social credit system designed to control behavior, but attached to your workplace instead of your person.
The proof is simple. If you move this system from a single workplace to multiple workplaces with an ID for the worker, you get social credit.
This is a system that many governments and corporatists are in love with, as it generally “punishes troublemakers” without having anyone who’s a lawsuit target get overly involved. In my opinion, social credit systems are repression and totalitarianism masquerading as systems of personal responsibility.
Mad respect for live demoing in a talk on conference Wi-Fi. There is something to authenticity and embracing potential failure that flies in the face of the well manicured presentation culture we have today that needs to come back. As long as the talk can be done, or there is a plan b, why not? I think a lot of concern stems from wasting other people’s time: which is valid. But presenting is also a deeply culturally engrained performance art that sometimes sacrifices authenticity for appearances.
I think people don’t understand how important just being there for your family actually is. Sometimes it’s enough just to be reliable, stand for good and just be present. Sounds like he really knew it.
They are limited by insurance rules in each state and federal. The patchwork of consumer protection regulation makes for a lot of weird effects, like the one you are discussing.
They are not limited in profit, but they are limited in what they can do, when they are required to total a car, etc.
This is the way it’s always been done and it’s highly effective. The move to welding it to the frame doesn’t make it less reliable, it saves manufacturing cost and complexity.
The parts market transformation for tier-1 parts suppliers is far more complicated. What’s happening is that the legacy parts (panels) are coming from a different management pool than the EV components and parts suppliers are scrambling to change their strategies.
Take a look at how parts suppliers are segmenting their businesses and it will make sense (article below).
I completely agree with your conclusion, but none of the manufacturers have incentives that line up with limited liability.
> Suppliers looking to formulate a successful portfolio strategy should begin with a careful review of their existing product groups, broadly allocated to three segments based on their growth and profitability outlooks.
- Booster parts. The major source of growth, this category includes such trend-driven parts as advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), battery management systems (BMS), and fuel cells. These parts offer generally greater profitability, though profits will depend on the specific niche—higher for software, lower for increasingly commoditized segments like power electronics.
- Carry-over parts. These include a range of parts that will be predominantly trend-agnostic and stable, such as exterior parts, HVAC, seating, lighting, and the like. Profitability for this category will generally be stable.
- Legacy parts. These include ICE engine systems and conventional transmissions, exhaust systems, fuel systems, and older generations of electronics and human-machine interface (HMI) systems no longer applicable for connected cars—all of which are generally declining as a result of trends in mobility. In general, future profitability for this category of parts will be declining as suppliers struggle with overcapacity.
> Many tier-one suppliers will likely offer a mix of all three types of products. A proper portfolio strategy, however, will require the development of a separate, distinct strategy for managing each product group.
That’s such the point. You’ve got one of the core issues about what is going articulated perfectly.
The problem is that the manufacturers are incentivized to build them with high repair costs based on how they make money… they make a ton from parts. And there are massive changes forecast for the parts market.
If you really want to dig in, and you may know all of this already, this is a great article outlining the transition currently happening for tier1 parts suppliers:
All of these changes are coming out in the insurance industry, but the insurance industry is constrained by what insurance commissioners will allow, and of course there’s the point you are making at core — they’re not making parts affordable because it’s become a profit center for them. A lot of money is now being made in the backend as companies optimize their supply chains for BEVs.
Take a look at the New Strategies section of that article.
I am not debating potential or technology, but the higher industry repair costs.
Theory meets the road so to speak. I think it’s likely an artificially created profit center to keep the upfront cost of vehicles very low, as in Tesla’s case.
We should pass a law that any company that tries to outsource their trademark and copyright costs onto the public loses them in reaction to this ongoing waste of money and time.
Rising cost of repairs are causing this as new car are becoming so complex and are so difficult to repair they are causing catastrophic loss to insurance companies.
Electric cars lead this change with eye watering repair costs, but just look at the cost of replacing the headlight on a 2024 f-150 — it is almost 1400 bucks, plus labor. Each. So a minor fender bender is thousands and for insurance you have to use approved parts, which are most always OEM and painfully expensive.
Cars are complicated and expensive to repair and getting more complicated. And manufacturers are doing strange things. Like the 2024 Lexus GX has a hutch included in every model (yay, finally), but then it sticks out several inches and is welded to the frame so even a minor fender bender can total the car — it’s the first thing that gets nailed when someone read ends it and it goes straight to the frame. That’s not a good plan, and could (in my opinion definitely will) lead to totaling the car from minor fender benders.
And electric cars in general are even more expensive to repair.
This is correct. I am currently working on a system to do price and purchase monitoring and optimize people’s purchasing. One of the things that I keep having to work around is dynamic real-time personalized pricing systems as they are more prevalent than I realized.
It seems almost inevitable that everyone will move to subscription / surge pricing models unfortunately. There are no structural incentives for retailers to keep prices lower. Perhaps bulk purchasing will change the game at some point, but it seems unlikely.