Quote:
Originally Posted by coolraoul  Naah, that was only because I was surprised to see it, thought it was a BMW concept that Benz took for the W221 (well, and Audi for the A8).
I thought it was interesting to see that Benz was thinking about it since 1995! |
The debate over "who's copying who" is completely irrelevant & shows a certain degree of ignorance how auto industry really operates.
It's funny to see people fighting about copycat-ing when eg some car maker issues a solution few months (or even a year) after its main rival.
Why?
Because it takes years long to develop a car (or any other component).
Yes, sometimes manufacturer A is a pioneer, sometimes it's manufacturer B. It depends on marketing activities, and product planning. Eg. if your complete product line is based on solution A, then a new solution will be introduced when a new platform is introduced. Because it's not easy to implement some solutions on incompatible platforms.
Sometimes it also depends on financial issues: eg. this year a certain tech is way too expensive to implement, so a carmaker A rules out the new solution - although it is almost developed. But in a year or two the price drops, and the rival comes with this new solution - while the carmaker A have to weight till the introduction of a new platform, or at least till LCI.
And as said: recently only a small amount of solutions are developed exclusively by carmaker themselves. Usually new solutions (especially electronic systems, gearboxes, etc) are developed by specialists (eg. BW, ZF, Getrag, Siemens VDO etc) with cooperation with carmakers. Sometimes such cooperations are of more exclusive nature, sometimes they are not. When they are, the partner carmaker can use the solution exclusively for a certain period of time.
In iDrive case BMW was the first one, while eg in some other solution cases MB is faster, or sometimes is Audi - when it comes to introduction of such a solution.
Same case regarding the designs & new models: hardly copying of type ("oh, look - the rivals have A, let's copy that") is possible. Similar products are due same / similar results of market / customer behavior / trend researches.
Yet ... strategies can be copied more easily. Or carmakers have same external consultants (eg. same consulting company).
