Car guys vs. bean counters
by Robert A. Lutz · first published 2011
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That's Bob Lutz writing. I was just re-reading his book, "Car Guys vs. Bean Counters". It's fascinating to read how he thinks about cars. He writes that there is no part of the car market where an existing product can't do the job. So it's all about going for customer desirability, and…
on ““Complete Acquiesence”: How the Pontiac Aztek Happened” ↗Today, of course, the NUMMI plant belongs to Tesla. For a good book on the subject, see "Car Guys vs. Bean Counters", by GM's Bob Lutz. He was the one who insisted that GM improve their sheet metal fit and paint quality. Neither was really that hard, but GM hadn't focused on perceived quality. Lutz points out that…
on “NUMMI 2015 – Why are most American cars still not as good as foreign cars?” ↗…we know what to do with, the problem is hiding it. Compare, for example, an 80's boom box.[1] There, complexity was a status symbol. There's still some of that in automotive interiors. Read Lutz's "Car Guys vs. Bean Counters" book for a sense of how that industry thinks. What sells cars is quite different from what makes cars work well. It's useful for engineers to have some sense of design. And vice versa. When you're in…
on “Engineers Build Ugly Products” ↗"GM doesn't have anyone whose job it is to subordinate all business functions to UX." They've had such people. Read "Car Guys vs. Bean Counters" by Bob Lutz.
on “Apple Is Said to Be Rethinking Strategy on Self-Driving Cars” ↗"Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle For the Soul of American Business"[1] by Bob Lutz tells this story really well, from Lutz' vantage point trying to salvage General Motors from the clutches of an army of MBAs. There's a decent…
on “Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed” ↗As Lutz says in his book "Car guys vs. bean counters", that was done to make the Leaf battery last longer. The car industry knows that 80% of trips are under 40 miles, so most of the time, that's enough range. Longer, and they cut in the gasoline engine,…
on “Rapidly falling costs of battery packs for electric vehicles” ↗…than to fix people's tanks. Nevermind that many more people would die without the recall; that wasn't relevant to increasing shareholder value. Another good example comes at the beginning of Bob Lutz's "Car Guys vs Bean Counters". Lutz, a car lover and an automotive exec for decades, once fixed a problem with transmission manufacturing. The problem was causing a lot of people's cars to die right after the warranty expired. He…
on “Google throws open doors to its top-secret data center” ↗…moving numbers around can do only so much. Over the long haul, you've got to invent or improve real products and services to grow." The author of the article references a book written by Bob Lutz called "Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business"[2], which contains numerous examples of how replacing executives from engineering backgrounds with executives from more traditional business backgrounds…
on “Why Aren't Salespeople Running Software Companies?” ↗In "Car Guys vs. Bean Counters", Bob Lutz describes the day he killed voice input for GM cars in the 1990s. He tried the demo, and decided that working through the voice menus was just too clunky. So he killed the project.
on “I Drove Chevrolet's Bolt” ↗I know. I read De Lorean's "On a clear day you can see General Motors" (1979) and Lutz's "Car Guys vs. Bean Counters" (2013). Lutz makes a key point about automotive. He says that all the functional needs from automobiles have been met. You can buy just about any car from any make and get where you need to go reliably.…
on “Cruise Automation, GM’s Self-Driving Cars, and the Founders Behind It” ↗I add that these are companies where management is there to organize. when management takes over engineering, then it's over. see also http://www.amazon.it/Car-Guys-vs-Bean-Counters-ebook/dp/B004... and here for something more close to my experience and a partial counterpoint, see http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/DevelopmentAbstractio... it is most apparent in engineering…
on “Things that Saved Apollo 13 (2010)” ↗…of wealthy conservatives in those areas who are in the market for fancy cars. But the reality might be worse: A few years ago Teslas were widely seen as really good machines, the hero that followed Car Guys vs Bean Counters, whether that was justified or not. I'm just not hearing that anymore, from anyone. The positive vibes are just... gone. I suspect the damage to the brand is massive, but not strictly political. It turns…
on “Musk’s desire to own the Libs is alienating the buyers of Teslas” ↗There's an interesting bit in car guys vs bean counters where the author recalls the new regulations mandating a smaller average size car. US manufacturers had to make much smaller cars to lower their average. But US customers just weren't interested. They…
on “Tesla Normal Operating Sounds” ↗