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Comment by weberc2 | Hacker News Reader

While John Deere does buy OEM parts, it designs and builds a lot of stuff in house, including engines. It owns and operates foundries and it even designs its own embedded computers (and writes the firmware, operating system, CAN drivers, and application software). It probably takes longer to prepare the factory for a new model-year build of an existing tractor than it takes some software vendors to get an MVP to market. There's lots of inefficiency there, but it's not likely a startup will be disrupting this industry anytime soon (and if they do, it will look more like fleets of small, simple, semi-autonomous drone tractors than conventional equipment).

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I'm assuming you mean a metal foundry and not a semiconductor foundry?

Still, the fact that they build their engines in-house is pretty impressive. I believe that many auto makers purchase their engines instead of designing then in-house because they are so complex to get right.

Both. They've operated their own foundries for longer than I've been alive; probably closer to a century. They've since purchased at least one semiconductor company to design and manufacture some of their electronics. And yes, John Deere has built its own engines for a long time; the division is called Power Systems or JDPS, and they build engines in factories all over the world, and they sell their engines to other equipment manufacturers as well.

I highly doubt that John Deere operates any semiconductor foundries. Those foundries aren't your normal run of the mill factories. They are $10B monsters just to get started.

John Deere may not, but General Motors actually does:

http://kokomogmch.com/kokomo-semiconductors/about-kokomo-sem...

To be clear, I never said anything about "semiconductor foundries" (I can only hazard a guess as to what this might mean), I said "semiconductor company".

They could have a fab operating at a lower process node for manufacturing microcontrollers, but I also think that it's not likely.

http://www.manta.com/c/mm3k9t4/phoenix-international-a-john-...

Looks like standard electronics manufacturing; nothing state-of-the-art. It's still interesting that they chose to design and manufacture it all in-house.

I didn't mean to imply that it was in some way non-standard or state-of-the-art; only that they do, in fact, manufacture some of their electronics in-house.

I don't see any evidence there that they manufacture semiconductors, only electronics. Manufacturing electronics isn't that hard, depending on what exactly you're doing. Assembling printed circuit boards from components is something you can even do by hand in most cases, and automated assembly equipment isn't really that expensive to set up a small factory, depending on the volume required (small-volume stuff isn't that expensive, high-volume high-speed stuff is more so). Manufacturing semiconductors is something else altogether, and isn't something you can do in a small warehouse with a few hundred $K of equipment; it requires very specialized buildings and equipment.

Fair enough, I probably misspoke.

>I believe that many auto makers purchase their engines instead of designing then in-house because they are so complex to get right.

Citation needed. Engines are one thing the automakers tend to hold onto and not outsource often. There are exceptions, and there's cases of them licensing specific engine tech from each other (like with Toyota's Prius drivetrain). For instance, Mazda has a prototype car where they paired their 2.0L "SkyActiv" gas engine with Toyota's hybrid transmission/motor from the Prius. There's also cases of them doing joint ventures, like when Mitsubishi and Chrysler formed "Diamond Star Motors" back in the 80s/90s, or with the more recent Subaru BRZ/Scion FR-S where Subaru makes the engine/drivetrain/suspension and Toyota makes the body (I think).

The only cases I can think of offhand where automakers simply drop in a purchased engine are with diesel pickups, such as Dodge using Cummins engines. Oh, there was also the Ford Taurus SHO with a Yamaha engine, but that was way back in the late 80s and Yamaha isn't exactly known as a serious engine-builder these days.

so? they probably sell parts to competitors and vice versa.

for example, a Chrysler pt Cruiser have a engine designed by bmw, made in Brazil and Mexico on foundries owned by Volkswagen.

that's an extreme example, but hope this gives the idea to the downvote army.

> so?

Why are you confused? You said "all manufacturers just assemble readily available parts". I demonstrated that this is not the case for John Deere (or probably any other automotive manufacturer), which builds many of its own components and writes much of its own software in-house.

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