Comment Assembly, maintainability, repairability (Score 1) 130
Ford hired Tesla veterans Doug Field and Alan Clarke and says the new platform reduces parts by 20%, has 25% fewer fasteners, and 15% faster assembly time.
That sounds concerning. Sounds like the vehicles are designed to be snapped together once at the cost of quality, maintainability, and reliability.
I hope that's not the case. The world doesn't need more disposable junk (at the cost of consumers and the environment). I truly hope that the vehicles based on the platform:
- Won't be glued and snapped together in a crappy way like the Cybertruck which has led to parts falling off and even flying off at highway speeds.
- Will be maintainable and repairable instead of relying on single-use-only fasteners (and/or glue) that are made to be put together only once when the vehicle is assembled and prevent it from being taken apart for repair. That ish was bad enough on Mopars that I've workerd on.
- Not have egregious single points of failure such as like the Cybertruck. Everything is daisy chained together on a CAN bus network that's on a single wire bundle. Taillights, break lights, nearly everything is connected to one single physical link layer that must not be interrupted. In other words, the Cybertruck is electrically (and apparently logically) wired like ancient Christmas lights or token ring - you get a break in the wiring or an issue with the bus and you're screwed.