yeah, they still have an issue with the cost tho. Just for comparison's sake, If you take the $12,700 price and 6k middle class salary and compare to the US, with a 36k middle class salary, that would be equivilant to $76k in the US.

So, imagine paying 76k for a car that tops out at 68mph,
and is held together with glue. Well, maybe I'm off on what a Middle Class Indian makes, but I also know that a family of 4 in the US making 36k isn't exactly doing well either.

 

Its not perfect, but great ideas spawn great inventions.

With all the tech jobs being sourced out to India, I do believe the salaries are much higher than that.

 

Uhm, why do you think they are being sourced to India?

There's ~1.1 billion people there, many speak English, and most are highly technical and educated. So maybe a 80k here is equivilant to 20k there? We're still talking a factor of 4, raising the equivilant cost to 51k in the US.

However, this is an intriguing concept, especially for a city car type of thing. Drive to work, plug in to fill up, drive home, plug in again. Since the safety issues seem worked out, the only other thing is a welded and bolted version that isn't cost prohibitive. Under no circumstance am I going to buy a glued car, I don't car how strong you tell me that glue is, it's not going to be the same as rivets and welds. Now, if it's epoxy, that's slightly different, and worth considering. They have epoxy stronger than concrete now.

 

The people I have worked with that come over here(i was in software for a while) say it's about a factor of 3 actually, where an entry level C++ programmer here makes around 60k, over there abuot 20k.

and there are over 300million "middle class" english speaking college educated Indians(more ppl than we have combined in america).

 

And what happens if the cap or stem of the tank is severed from an accident? Have you ever seen high pressure tanks rupture? I used to work with stainless steel kettles under 20psi. One time someone forgot to screw the cap on tight and it launched through the ceiling. That was at 20psi. This is at 4350psi. I dunno about you, but I don't trust a glued together piece of machinery at 4350psi. Get some of our engineers in there to modify the engine, air tanks, and injection systems and test it to our safety specifications. Then I'll take it for a test drive.

 

I trust their engineers, heck, 1/2 of our engineers come from there, but I don't trust their R&D budgets and safety procedures. And it has nothing to do with me thinking Indians are sub-par and looking to cut corners wherever possible. It has to do with the fact that Indian business does not suffer under the same weight that American businesses do with the fear of getting sued to kingdom come. It's quite frankley the only thing keeping US industry in check.

And it is done exactly like Ed Norton describes in Fight Club. What is the probability of failure? What is the worst case scenerio in case of failure in terms of dollars? Is it cheaper to pay that or is it cheaper to upgrade the engineering to lower the probability of failure?