Ford paid $199,950 to tear down a Tesla Model X

The CEO of Ford made over $17 million last year in compensation, but it was worthwhile to write an article about a 200k R&amp;D expense, with a senior industry analyst giving a quote seriously questioning the $50k spent over sticker price in order to get the vehicle immediately instead of waiting in line.<p>Is this really a story? Or just clickbait because it has Tesla in the title?

$200k USD for R&amp;D on such a market-changing item is peanuts. I&#x27;m not sure what the hullabaloo is all about.

This makes me think of the iPhone + RIM (Blackberry) and what a shift in thinking they had after pulling apart the first iPhone they could get hold of.<p>&quot;RIM was even in denial the day after the iPhone was announced with all hands meets claiming all manner of weird things about iPhone: it couldn’t do what they were demonstrating without an insanely power hungry processor, it must have terrible battery life, etc. Imagine their surprise when they disassembled an iPhone for the first time and found that the phone was battery with a tiny logic board strapped to it. It was ridiculous, it was brilliant.&quot;<p>From: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.edibleapple.com&#x2F;2010&#x2F;12&#x2F;28&#x2F;rim-was-in-disbelief-following-the-introduction-of-the-iphone-in-january-2007&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.edibleapple.com&#x2F;2010&#x2F;12&#x2F;28&#x2F;rim-was-in-disbelief-f...</a>

Its pretty common practice[0]. IMHO the take away is that Ford is taking Tesla (and electrics) serious enough to do it.<p>[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;07&#x2F;go-inside-the-lab-where-gm-tears-apart-its-competitors-cars&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;07&#x2F;go-inside-the-lab-where-gm-tear...</a>

This seems very reasonable to me. Why not essentially try to reverse engineer it? See what Ford can learn from Tesla.

Carmakers continually buy all sorts of competitors&#x27; models for comparison testing and R&amp;D purposes. From what I remember, the company I interned for (one of the big 3 in Detroit) bought Ferraris, Porsches, BMWs, etc to compare drive quality and for R&amp;D. Additionally, sometimes they don&#x27;t want a new car, they want one that is 10 years old and has real world wear and tear. They essentially have a broker who will find any car they ask for. I worked on the alloy design team, and one of the more unique stories I heard was about 10 years ago, they bought a 20 year old Mercedes to essentially cut into pieces. Why? The model they bought was one of the first cars with a unique alloy in the body IIRC, and they wanted to run mechanical as well as characterization tests on it to see how it aged.

In the book &quot;Soul of a new machine&quot; there is described a moment in 1978 when an Data General engineer (Tom West) gets to go look at and take apart a newly installed DEV VAX at a friends company.<p>Oddly VAX cost $200,000.<p>Very short exert <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;kottke.org&#x2F;14&#x2F;07&#x2F;the-soul-of-a-new-machine" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;kottke.org&#x2F;14&#x2F;07&#x2F;the-soul-of-a-new-machine</a><p>Long exert of the book which continues the story of the VAX disassembly was published in the Atlantic called &quot;flying upside-down&quot;.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;archive&#x2F;1981&#x2F;07&#x2F;flying-upside-down&#x2F;306467&#x2F;?single_page=true" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;archive&#x2F;1981&#x2F;07&#x2F;flying-u...</a><p>Soul of a new machine is a really good book. highly recomended.

Why is is that reverse engineering gets people cease and desist letters, especially in the software and electronics community? Is the difference that Ford keeps the findings internal and doesn&#x27;t share them with the public? If so, that&#x27;s pretty bad, because someone dissected a product and now everyone else should do the same instead of sharing the result. It&#x27;s a waste of money and work force, all in the name of trying to hide stuff even though patents and copyrights are abused already for similar purposes.

The comments here are really interesting. I agree that I&#x27;m not sure why this is news worthy since it seems like companies spend much more than this doing the exact same thing in other verticals. I&#x27;m sure Google and Samsung have spent hundreds of thousands, if not millions, doing the same thing to Apple products. R&amp;D includes trying to understand how others do it. Spending nearly $200K to tear apart a Tesla seems pretty reasonable to me.

When Lexus launched the LS400 two percent of the sales that year came from auto manufacturers. They could not believe how the car was so good. They still haven&#x27;t caught up in many ways.<p>*Edit:<p>Here is more about the history of the car itself: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ateupwithmotor.com&#x2F;model-histories&#x2F;lexus-ls400&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ateupwithmotor.com&#x2F;model-histories&#x2F;lexus-ls400&#x2F;</a>

Good for Ford. They&#x27;d be negligent to not try their hardest to get some competitive advantage any above board way possible. I don&#x27;t see what the fuss is about. OMG AMD buys Intel chips and checks them out!!! Sometimes they pay over market price.

Seems like a good deal for Ford. I know some entities that would pay millions to get a hold of a rival entity&#x27;s competitive materiel.

How much did the engineers who took it apart cost?<p>Strikes me that a reasonable sized team would cost that per-day.

Everyone thinks it is for R&amp;D ?<p>What if it is to try to find patents they can sue over?

Tesla already makes all its patents public.

Why not poach an engineer?