Jaguar Land Rover electric car whistleblower sacked
bbc.com
bbc.com
Key takeaways here are probably "Vinfast doesn't have much in house engineering" and "don't buy one right now".
Launch fast, ignore obvious things. I see it daily: „just ship products, we finish them when they come for repairs“. Scary new world, nobody is really responsible for this. The workers do not stay long. As well as managers.
It's still clearly an exaggeration, but one could argue that reality is gradually moving in that direction.
Lead paint on children's toys and asbestos in the walls suggest there has never been a culture of making sure it is safe before putting it in production even in the physical world.
But asbestos in the walls is great for the safety of those living there — the place doesn't burn down so easily. It's the safety of anyone who inhales the dust when the place gets broken down that's endangered by asbestos.
That meme goes back at least to the 90s: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/car-balk/
I do. Speaking only for myself, but Tesla has a long long way to go to repair its manufacturing reputation in my eyes.
Plenty of companies do care. These two don’t.
Consumers and victims care about safety. Regulation is the only reason safety exists.
That's probably about the number of people who take safety into consideration as a major factor when making purchasing decisions.
Crash tests from 2000 are way stricter today.
So they all force the manufactures to fight for 5 stars
But it absolutely does punish companies whose products are shown to be dangerous.
>Volvo is the only major car company that consistently manufactures cars that widely exceed legal safety requirements
Exceeding safety standards can easily be a negative. Their cars will be more expensive than similar ones.
Also, do the Chinese care at all? Or are you just talking about the past?
That's exactly my point.
Lucid has a sample size too small to evaluate.
What matters for safety is precisely one thing. Does the company culture, meaning the engineers on the ground, view it as a goal by itself or a list of checkboxes you need to tick.
The only other company that has done this, to my knowledge, is Volvo.
Obviously it can. Cars are engineered to satisfy specific test, which are well known in advance. You can always engineer cars to satisfy them.
Crash tests aren't everything though and I mention sample size because issues might only reveal themselves after a prolonged period in a few cars. E.g. a defect on a very important component, which only occurs after some years in a few circumstances is an obvious safety issue which Lucids could not have proven themselves against.
I say this not as particular slight against Lucid, but because safety is more than satisfying tests. Often safety is where you are doing things which aren't tested at all.
>The only other company that has done this, to my knowledge, is Volvo.
Looking at the Euro NCAP is the VW ID.7 Tourer is also getting pretty decent marks.
Subsidiaries can have a different culture from their parent organizations. Volvo still has engineers and designers in Sweden, and Tata owns Land Rover and Jaguar, which seem to be doing okay safety wise and don't appear to be obviously cutting corners like the Vinfast project. I have seen no evidence of a decline in Volvo's safety record, the "but surely Geely doesn't care." argument is a reverse appeal-to-authority, in the absence of evidence. It is entirely possible that Geely (and Tata) may have poor safety cultures, but their foreign subsidiaries do a much better job.
If Swedish engineers are just developing hats, their influence on crash safety is significantly reduced. Right now Volvo still uses an inhouse platform, where they do actually have control, but it is obviously inefficient to develop numerous similar platforms for different brands.
But from where I sit, Volvo advertising and safety PR has entirely disappeared. That does not bode well for that "safety focus". Anyone has current info?
I think what will or won't break the whole thing os whether their next generation of cars will still use a self developed platform. If they do, then I would consider it quite likely that management at Volvo has the independence needed to keep their own vision. If Geely forces a platform onto them, then I think it is a pretty clear statement that they see Volvo as nothing but brand recognition.
Not everyone is following the China model.
All companies care about safety, to varying degrees and for a mix of reasons ranging from PR to regulatory burden to the fact the CEO uses the product.
Many don’t care enough by my subjective standards, but it’s silly and childish to say no company cares even the tiniest bit about safety in any context.
> All companies care about safety
is naive at best.
yes, all companies care about safety...after profits
we've structured corporations that this is the main driver, full stop.
as an example, earlier in my career i worked in aviation test equipment. for commercial and govt't agencies. let's just say i avoid flying anywhere at all costs now if i can. why? because, as always, safety is secondary to profits (and most of the time, you hope it is secondary and not ternary or worse). and this was in a 'highly regulated' industry.
Except the relationship is not strong enough to compel companies to always do the right thing (or even to do so adequately often). Especially when they perceive that the market will let them get away with it. For example when negative impacts are scheduled to occur far into the future (or in the present but affecting non-customers, or the environment).
Or when they occur in the present, but (as with seatbelts before they were mandatory) the customers just don't perceive the risks.
If you prefer to think every person who works at any company is a moustache-twirling villain
The comment you initially chimed in on was definitely quite hyperbolic. But this take is also.
Of course not "every" person working at a company needs to be ethically challenged for bad things to happen. All that's need are a few bad apples (whom we know are in no short supply) at approrpriate levels of responsibility. The rest will simply go along, to keep their jobs.
You know that.
First it has to be profitable, then it has to be useful to the customer.
https://www.the-rheumatologist.org/article/revisionist-histo...
So, yeah, without the law there's no seatbelt on your car.
>This fundamental dualism between light and darkness, good and evil, is a central tenet of Manichaeism...
- Regulators. And caring about regulations means caring about safety.
- Consumers. Who value safety a great deal. Being able to credibly signal the safety of your product is a huge factor in selling a car
(May not be SFW depending on where you work)
https://magnitglobal.com/us/en/workforce-management-platform...
> AI-powered Talent Matching: Leverage AI to identify and match top talent across blue collar and white collar roles from a broad range of sources including contingent workers, freelancers, and project-based workers.
Oh wait, it doesn't, but because it's not a tech company it gets a free pass.
Choosing to remain ignorant of such important legislation is ridiculous.
Hi! In the spirit of improving communication and assuming that you'd like to know:
A tenant is someone who rents a property
A tenet is a principle or belief that is generally considered to be true
GDPR may have technically replaced the right to be forgotten with a more limited right of erasure, but unless you care about legal phrasing it's an easy thing to mix up.
Also, it does look like a GDPR issue to me — not that I'm a lawyer, so usual caveat applies, all I can do is look at the plain language of GDPR on the Commission website.
GDPR regulates "personal data" (information that relates to an identified or identifiable individual), and looking at the "lawful purposes" list in Article 6, people running such a thing would seem to me to need to make some kind of argument about "legitimate interests" or "performance of a contract".
It may be that a plain reading of this isn't giving me the correct answer, but I don't see how placing specifically whistleblowers (rather than, say, known embezzlers) on a blacklist would meet the standards: https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/r...
People like this are heroic and are essential to keeping unscrupulous bureaucrats in check.
Hopefully he gets paid in court.
Self-identifying yourself on Reddit and then posting classified company information in a childish tone would definitely get you blacklisted. If you read the post, it's clear that he didn't care about fixing the problems, he just wanted to dunk on the company for Reddit updoots.
What would you have done if you realised that something you're working on was a death-trap, and managed ignored your concerns?
If none of these are willing to listen, it isn't your fault. But posting years after the fact on Reddit is negligence.
The reason Vinfast investigated his account was because he was publicizing its flaws, leading to his firing. Bad PR is the mechanism that going to a newspaper or TV station would have led to reform, he got the same result by going to Reddit: you can't argue with the results.
He reported the "extremely concerning" incidents to colleagues at Tata Technologies Limited (TTL), the consultancy's UK division
…
He escalated his concerns to senior executives at TTL and VinFast
…
Mr Denli asked Tata Technologies to reassign him to another project but senior managers refused.
Unhappy to be associated with the VinFast car, he says, in May last year he resigned.
Yeah, maybe he could've been more professional. I guess. In my mind though the far more important takeaway is how a major automaker is (yet again) cutting corners and turning out ever shittier products at ever higher prices and pocketing the margins. And as someone who is actually looking into a vehicle in similar categories, if I could get an engineer like him from every manufacturer to give me the non-corporate-speak truth of what goes on in their design process, that would be 1000x more valuable than all the samey-bullshit-marketing-fluff that all of them turn out.
And you know, if the company itself was more interested in making a quality product than just telling people their product is quality they probably wouldn't give half a shit if an engineer was out discussing the process. I get that NDAs are most often (and for!) protecting a company's IP, and that makes good and is sense. However the same agreements also allow said company to do all kinds of horseshit with at least a decent expectation that their engineers won't spill the beans to the wider public, and that sucks ass.
I recommend reading the article, not just the post.
An ~1800-lb limit, to be a ton less than a mustang, doesn't give you much room to make a full-size vehicle. A prius is over 3,000 lbs.
2024 Mustang curb weight is 3588 - 3949 lbs.
So you're suggesting you drive an EV that weighs approximately 1588 - 1949 lbs. Which EV is that?
https://www.topspeed.com/lightest-electric-cars/
At least in the U.S., the lightest EV starts at 2952 lbs (Fiat 500e).
https://www.topspeed.com/cars/car-news/at-1627-pounds-the-va...
There is at least one EV that is light enough, though I suspect it is not your daily driver.
The Dacia Spring is available around here (Berlin), and while it's a bit more than that mass, it's close enough to be "about" a ton lighter.
But lighter than almost all electric cars. Certainly not a ton heavier.
Tesla model 3: 3900 pounds Tesla model S: 4700 pounds Chevy bolt: 3600 pounds Nissan Leaf: 3900 pounds Volkswagen ID4: 4600 pounds
EVs are heavy. I’d be interested in your 2600 pound EV.
So is the mustang heavy? Compared to what?
A 2-door mini cooper is 2600 pounds. A Nissan Versa is about the same.
For larger cars, the Elantra and Civic are both less than 3000 pounds.
Source: my I-MiEV owner's manual
Not necessarily - as an example:
Tesla Model 3 Standard: 3,862 lbs (1755 kg)
Tesla Model 3 Long Range: 4,034 lbs (1834 kg)
Tesla Model 3 Performance: 4,054 lbs (1843 kg)
BMW M3: 3,990 lbs (1814 kg)
These are effectively the same weight for comparably-positioned sports sedans.
The broad trend that electric cars are heavier and need to be designed differently than combustion cars is undeniable.
EVs might have started heavier, but it's modern vehicles that are heavy more than EVs. Sure, you can point to the OEMs that brute-forced their way into the market (the Hummer springs to mind), but the truly preposterous are, fortunately, small in number.
Huh? Why is it a stupid comparison? It is comparing the Model 3 (very popular EV) against a similarly-positioned ICE vehicle. I showed three trims of the Model 3 in order to avoid people saying, "yeah, but you didn't post the weights of all the different versions..."
GP said simply "Electric vehicles are very heavy" - that means all EVs. Not some EVs. So showing a comparable pair of EV & ICE vehicles to disprove it is a completely reasonable comparison.
It is also particularly disingenuous (although irrelevant) that you ignored the different 3er Variants.
Separately, the Model 3 Performance is most comparable to the M3. And they are virtually the same weight (as the data that I presented showed). So, not a disingenuous comparison. But thanks for the accusation :)
Candidate: Is this a newly created roll?
Company: No.
Candidate: <breezily> What did the last guy die of?
You'd be surprised how few interviewers are able to lie fast enough and convincingly enough.
On Reddit, he praises JLR engineering standards and says the problem was Vinfast’s leadership ignoring engineering concerns, always picking the cheapest materials, and skipping safety tests.
The title makes it seem like JLR’s cars are the ones being whistleblown, which isn’t true.
He started commenting after NHTSA was already on the case. He was commenting the investigation where VinFast was cooperating.
It would be better to report to media, regulators or, relevant hedge fund who could start shorting.
I've always viewed EVs as a luxury. While it's interesting to experiment with cheap EV designs, the short or midterm goal shouldn't be production.
There's a reason Tesla sells its cars even though they are expensive. They're supposed to be expensive since they are basically high-scale experiment.
Got it.
While I sympathize with the complaints about budget and time that kind of further reinforces my point. In the face of those constraints experienced engineers would have designed something conservative with room for improvement. It's new engineers who more frequently tend to over-optimize design something right up to within an inch of its life when faced with tight constraints.
> He soon became concerned VinFast was cutting corners with safety, keeping costs down by employing a small team of inexperienced engineers.
> His concerns grew when he heard three of his predecessors had quit after short spells on the project.
This to me sounds like the boss issued a task that was impossible to do safely and fired anyone who splashed reality into the mix.
If you are fresh out of school and your head is full of ancient knowledge that is in the textbooks and lessons and tidbits of "the new hotness" and you are too reliant on simulation, testing, and other process that is done for process sake in school you are likely to design something that leaves less potential performance in measured areas (weight, cost, etc) but has lot of teething issues on secondary or unmeasured criteria (i.e. the tool and die guys will hate you, your item will wear rapidly in a case that while not average, represents a large number of users, etc)
Look at Juicero. It hit the key points, it juiced things, but it was wildly expensive and a bear to manufacture and operating costs were comical because there were no adults in the room to tell the noobs that their weighting of the tradeoffs both expressed and implied wasn't quit right. Here the same sort of inexperienced people were told to produce a suspension befitting a sexy new EV but also to make it cheap. Well they did that, but they also made something that's coming apart at the seams from day 1 and doesn't age gracefully at all and in cases of extreme use results in spectacular failures.
You see this sort of pattern in all sorts of technical fields.
All of its senior executive leadership is still British
Obviously not true.
One of them is German.
How it usually went (not sure about now, but certainly 10 years ago): Dodge < Jaguar/Landrover < Germans cars < American cars < Japanese cars
The answer always begins with the people in mirrors, including the one in my mirror too.