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Comment by giantg2 | Hacker News Reader

Why would it be crazy when they're completely separate systems?

All I know about this situation is what I've read in these comments just now. I don't have a dog in this hunt.

But I think the surprise is that a company who makes something considered highly reliable would make a similar item that the Air Force claims is killing their airmen. It'd be like Toyota making another pickup, the Bellevue, that likes to randomly explode. Sure, things happen, but Toyota? Huh, that would be unexpected.

With SIG USA specifically there's a long track record of making firearms that can only be described as problematic. For example, their attempt to adapt SG 55x to the American market - all versions had some issues, but especially so the ones chambered in 7.62x39.

The unusual thing here is that this is a problem in a product that managed to pass US DoD acceptance testing. But the drop safety issue was already known at the time, so one has to wonder just how much in soft bribes SIG had to spend to get it adopted regardless.

Not sure that's the best example, since Toyota did have the unintended acceleration issue, though I still don't get whether the consensus among smart people was that it was purely user error.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%932011_Toyota_vehic...

I mean, the new Toyota Tundra seems to have lots of problems with its V8, and I'm not sure people call that _crazy_.

You must mean 2021 Tundras. 2022 and up are twin turbo V6 only.

Ford made the Pinto. The Volt or Bolt from GM had battery fires. I believe Tesla has had multiple safety and quality issues come up.

May be my age, but I wouldn't say any of those brands are a mark of quality. Rather the opposite in fact.

They are all interesting in their own way (especially Tesla), but certainly not quality/reliability-first organizations.

Is any mass produced car made by a quality first org? I'm sure we can dig in and find examples. Someone brought up Toyota and Japanese cars. How about the unintended acceleration issue and the frag airbags?

I don’t know where we’d draw the line for “quality first” but I’d argue Toyota at minimum qualifies

That doesn’t mean they’re perfect: cars are incredibly complex machines and mistakes are inevitable. But the airbag issue was a vendor (used by many companies) and IIRC the acceleration issue wasn’t that much bigger in Toyotas than other makes

There were no reports of the unintentional acceleration in other makes.

Too young for the major news headlines about Audi?

True, I was considering the same timeframe as the Toyota issue. However, their reputation would likely be supportive of quality and be another example for my point.

What? Unintended acceleration happens _all the time_. It’s usually driver error or a stuck floor mat. The vast majority are drivers who hit the accelerator thinking it’s the brakes then panic when the car speeds up. Toyota had some design issues that seemed to make it more likely (though the software was found to be fine) and got attention due to a viral 911 call and a poor response.

They were absolutely not the only make with unintentional accretion reports/issues at that time; nor presumably today, but I haven’t seen recent numbers

Fine, let me be more specific - unintended acceleration due to mechanical design issues (sticking pedal, even without floor mats). The point is, Toyota was raised as an example of quality, yet here we have a design issue. This also shouldn't be a surprise since the floor mat issue can be solved by design changes sound on other vehicles. So yes, manufacturers can make good and bad products. There are no manufactures who make only perfect products - it's not a surprise the P320 could have issues when the poster holds the P365 in such high esteem. The only thing that statement really displays is the suppression of cognitive dissonance being suddenly unachievable.

Ford, GM, and Tesla are all bottom barrel automakers. All three of them relying on the government to prop them up, too. Otherwise, the Japanese market would have obliterated the American automotive industry ages ago.

> Otherwise, the Japanese market would have obliterated the American automotive industry ages ago

Or the Chinese in the last 5 years like they have done in Europe and rest of the world.

Yeah, I feel like BYD would kill Tesla if they sold cars here.

Usually, when a company makes something good, the things they make that are similar to that thing are also good.

Conceptually, the P365 and the P320 are very similar. Semiautomatic, striker-fired, polymer-framed, tilting-barrel centerfire pistols with replaceable serialized fire control modules. One's just bigger than the other. The guts of it are what changed, and you wouldn't think it'd be too hard to implement the P365's striker system within a larger pistol.

The fact that it's smaller changes two important factors for trigger systems - mass and geometry. Geometric differences for things like sear engagement or even travel of the striker before encountering the block can change how it functions. Mass is another critical element when it comes to dropping it and how the parts could move to release the striker, etc. These are the types of changes they tried to implement in the FCU update for the P320. The P365 is a completely different design for the FCU anyways. For all we know the fatal difference could be that the stamped housing for the P320 FCU flexes in a certain way to trigger the disconnect while the P365 is machined and doesn't flex as much or in the same way. Whether or not something like that would scale without affecting the desired weight or dimensions, I dont know. It certainly would affect price for larger stainless billet and more machining.

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