[1rudeboy]

It's really amazing that US tech and innovation does not apply to the auto industry anymore.

I was thumbing through some old magazines while waiting for a friend to get out of a doctor's appointment, and learned from Road & Track that the Japanese have (auto) R&D facilities set up all over the U.S. doing truly groundbreaking work.

I left wondering, "is it possible their Americans are better than our Americans?"

[FreedomPoster]

Yes, because they don't all live in Detroit, and thus don't succumb to the industry groupthink that "our Americans" do.

[Zhang Fei]

I was thumbing through some old magazines while waiting for a friend to get out of a doctor's appointment, and learned from Road & Track that the Japanese have (auto) R&D facilities set up all over the U.S. doing truly groundbreaking work. I left wondering, "is it possible their Americans are better than our Americans?"

Fundamentally, Americans do breakthrough technology, whereas the Japanese make refinements to that technology. The auto industry's technology is mature - this is why the Chinese can make cars, but there's only one Microsoft. And two major computer CPU firms - both American.

Let's face it - auto manufacturers are not primarily in the technology business - there are no fundamental capabilities cars have today that they did not have during the Model T era - they're in the business of making better-looking interiors and sheet metal. The Osprey is a completely new animal - a helicopter that can both hover and fly like a plane. You gotta to hand it to American engineers - it's not that they know their stuff - any dipstick can learn from a book - it's that they can come up with completely new things that nobody else ever figured out. Credit it to good old American ingenuity - and a $100b defense procurement budget.

[SauronOfMordor]

I left wondering, "is it possible their Americans are better than our Americans?"

Or their management is better than our management. It's hard to be a good engineer under a bad manager