Quote Of The Day: The Ultimate Data Machine Edition
August 9th, 2011 7:47 PM
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The source of today’s Quote Of The Day, a BMW M Division engineer, is clearly not a native English speaker, but he reveals just where performance cars like the new M5 are going when he says:
More and more demand is from our test engineers from the referring(?) departments and they come over and 80%, 90% are only working on the electronic systems. The other 10, 20 percent are working at the car, under the car….
Of course, the M engineers aren’t developing a car from the ground up here, but it’s still amazing that the workload is so unevenly weighted towards electronic rather than, for lack of a better term, “greasy hands” work.
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Modern day automobile, most complex device you can buy today. It also has to control mechanical part too, unlike Apple products.
Seems to me the mechanical processes have long since been moved to the factory's hands. Maybe those developing cars are greatly outnumbered by everyone else at BMW. And as for all the 3-series variants and 5 series-like crossovers (although not really related) I think we should liken this to how McDonalds has a hugeass menu available, indeed, all the time, and it/they can make it, and so will, and now you have more options! There's nothing wrong with that. Almost, sort of similar to VW's two kits/80 cars agenda. Uhh!!! The roundel is burning! BMW, what have you become? I'd say that if I were stupid.
He could also be referring to things like engine control, not just "ICE". That's really where performance comes from these days; there isn't a lot of improvement to be had by tweaking suspension geometry or testing in the wind tunnel. Engine and transmission control is where it's at. Did I just end with a preposition? Dangit!
Can we expect that the M guys will toss the electric steering as they've done previously?