EUC prices: Should all wheels offer serious "early adopter" discounts like the V13 to make up for possible issues?

[0000]

  

7 hours ago, mrelwood said:

Like... Boeing? Future Motion?

It would be nice if your assumption was true. I'm not sure it's that simple though. There are many examples of Western manufactured products that are just as sub-standard  and failure prone as EUCs.

There's a saying I'm sure you are aware of that exceptions don't make the rule. If you were to conduct a randomized poll posing a hypothetical question prefaced as follows: you are making a significant purchase of a product whose quality is critical for ensuring safety of the product user, rank these statements in the order in which you feel you will ends up in the highest quality on average:

1. Product is designed and assembled in the US/EU
2. Product is designed in the US/EU and assembled in China
3. Product is designed in China and assembled in China

Ignoring the political games of what % of the end product needs to be actually assembled in one region in order to get the "Manufactured or Assembled in the USA (or EU)" sticker... it's still fairly predictable how things would shake out from this kind of poll (in the order presented, although there's a good argument for 1 and 2 being somewhat interchangeable/equal now). The public perception and stereotypes are a result of the cumulative momentum of anecdotal/lived experiences ultimately shaping current public opinion on this matter. That averaged perception doesn't preclude anecdotes of shitty domestic engineering or assembly, but like @The Brahan Seerpointed out, the standards and Quality Assurances still mean something in our domestic markets, on average. Although I think that equation has been and will continue to change to your point (more on this in a minute).
 

7 hours ago, mrelwood said:

There aren't many manufacturers, Western or not, that go beyond what's just barely enough. The competition is that fierce in pretty much all fields of manufacturing.

The only thing that keeps the lousy quality alive, are the customers for whom a lousy "quality" is enough. The Master and S22 threads are depressing to read, yet people don't cancel their orders but hope that the unit they are about to receive would be an outlier and free of issues. It's a gamble, pure and simple, and too many customers are ok with it.

I agree, ultimately it's the tolerance (rewarding manufacturers with unearned confidence in the form of pre-orders being a prime example) for this bad quality that's keeping the status quo going. However, there's some meta factors at play that are interesting to talk about too that affect why, I think, things are as they are when you talk about a race-to-the-bottom type of competition as I think you are in that fierce competition statement. We already spoke on a big one being the regulatory environment both protecting the consumer and preventing products like EUCs from domestic development completely due to liability (ignoring patent infringement). Another one is global competition itself.

Have you ever heard the saying, that which you compete with you become?

Due to globalization, the strong labor protections and costs of living in our countries of origin put us at a massive disadvantage when we are forced to compete with countries without those same protections or standards of living. Globalization is labor arbitrage where "we," that is those of us who are in the labor pool and/or need to work for a living, have been deliberately and systematically devalued beyond just automation trends which has resulted in wiping out massive amounts of domestic manufacturing opportunities. By forcing labor to compete with what is essentially slave wages and weak regulatory environment, you get a race to the bottom effect. One of the consequences from this labor arbitrage reality, IMO, is substandard products as the incentives are stacked up not to reward the actual stakeholders in the production environment, that is the workers (or guild members if you want to liken this analogy to production before the industrial revolution), but the bulk of the rewards goes to the shareholders and management class. The do-nothings at the top.

So with a lack of properly structured incentives inside of the production environment in this race-to-the-bottom environment which would naturally flow from the people doing the work, the "lessons learned" and basic QA checks don't become a part of the culture. Hence public perception and stereotyping "overseas" manufacturing as I tend to do.

If you're effectively a slave/replaceable cog and comprehend this reality, why would you personally care about how well the company does or the end product is if you're not going to benefit from it or your position won't ever improve (no or fewer ladders up). Increasingly, I have seen and experienced this same kind of reality reflected domestically as well in my professional experience. That which you are forced to compete with, you become, so eventually even the perceptions of quality, on average, in favor of domestic design and assembly will likely tend to fade as well to support your earlier points @mrelwood IMO.

There are other factors at play too in the globalized economy that eliminates market participant good will like blatant IP theft which destroys the opportunity for innovation as the rewards for risk-taking are very frequently stolen, and expediently at that. This is also not helped by the permissive environment in which our supposedly strong domestic regulations continue to fail to protect against. Domestic manufacturing isn't inherently better as I have alluded to in this thread, but there was and still is, to some degree, a kind of production quality momentum for the outfits that have survived and can still compete in this labor arbitrage environment as well as incentives for them, or at least disincentives, for violating the standards @The Brahan Seer pointed out through consumer protection legal liabilities.

TL;DR: the world may not be improving, particularly for labor, but at least we still got access to relatively cheap products (assembled by slaves) /s

Edited October 6, 2022 by Vanturion
spelling and other errors

[0000]

One more thing I wanted to say.

6 hours ago, mrelwood said:

I play music with overseas instruments that I record with overseas microphones and overseas interfaces, and I mix the music with an overseas computer. I also shoot video on my overseas phone and edit on the same overseas computer. And they all work great, just like all of their overseas precessors did. And the ones before those. I do not believe that "overseas" or "Western" are labels of quality or durability. You can build crap even in Switzerland. And if people keep buying the crap, they keep making. Isn't that like the first rule of economics or something?

Same here, probably a majority of the products I own are manufactured overseas, probably from China as that is where international capital decided they could best exploit labor for lack of a better descriptor. Many of these products I own are great, and I can't really complain about the quality. However, it's a limited view to excuse or ignore the downsides of the globalized economy that we didn't necessarily vote for unless you count voting with your dollar. We don't have an alternative in "voting" though when it comes to purchasing an EUC for all the reasons I estimated earlier unless you count no sale at all.

IMO, the biggest downside of overseas manufacturing I already touched on, the killing of an environment that breeds innovation. By disenfranchising labor domestically and pitting labor in high COL countries against labor in low COL countries, the opportunities to innovate domestically, think engineers working directly with assemblers on the manufacturing floor bouncing ideas off the wall, bringing in R&D, much of those opportunities for collaboration breeding innovation in new products is lost. Couple this with the incentive stack and the massively skewed funneling of the rewards upwards, you have a grand recipe for stagnation at a meta level. I think we're living through it now.

Ripping off designs and producing cheap products that consumers are generally OK with, the globalized economy has achieved 110% (just look at Amazon's storefronts and all of the silly "overnight" company names used on products). Even complex products that are designed domestically and manufactured overseas, like Apple products, tend to do very well for the companies that take the pursuit seriously. EUCs, are somewhat complex product, are both designed and manufactured in China and there is clearly a cultural difference that yields the quality shortfalls we repeatedly see. Of course I could be wrong possibly about everything as everything I said is just my opinion and observations. There's a lot of shit going on in our globalized, possibly overly connected world, and this long-winded assessment is how I've come to make sense of part of it.

[LightWave]

EUC's are all overpriced like a "scarce resource" and like they're manufactured with top quality materials. A good solution would be designing, building and testing wheels right here in North America. I don't think it would be that hard to get funding and investors for project like that. Just imagine a future where EUC's have a "made in USA" or "made in Canada" stamp on it!

[Mayhem]

22 minutes ago, ElectronxCycles said:

EUC's are all overpriced like a "scarce resource" and like they're manufactured with top quality materials. A good solution would be designing, building and testing wheels right here in North America. I don't think it would be that hard to get funding and investors for project like that. Just imagine a future where EUC's have a "made in USA" or "made in Canada" stamp on it!

I can see it now, euc made in America for $10,000. just look at how expensive a onewheel is being made in America.

when you compare Ow spec to euc specs theirs no comparison you get way more pev for your money in a euc. 
 

Also just look at all the tamper proofing they do for a Ow. You can’t even open the new ones without bricking it…. While an American company would bring better quality control imo. The hefty price tag would cause that company to be non existent in a short period of time. 

Edited October 6, 2022 by Mayhem

[Celt26]

Yeah definitely 

[mrelwood]

10 hours ago, The Brahan Seer said:

Semantics. The hardware is designed in the US and its made to US standards.

So it is not about the country of manufacturing, but the country where a product is designed? I can relate to the argument, but only to a point. Same thing here:

 

8 hours ago, Vanturion said:

rank these statements in the order in which you feel you will ends up in the highest quality on average:

1. Product is designed and assembled in the US/EU
2. Product is designed in the US/EU and assembled in China
3. Product is designed in China and assembled in China

I can somewhat agree, to a point. But the problem I see with this poll is that products designed and manufactured in China often don't compete directly with the ones designed and manufactured in US/EU. I again talk microphones since that's the area I know well. (Or used to 10 yrs ago.) If you're buying a large diaphragm studio microphone, you now have a huge amount of choices in a price range that was in itself unheard of in the year 2000, $50-$200. All made in China of course, most of them copies of traditional high-end European microphones. They are making the best mics they can for that amount of money, and most of them perform exceptionally well for their price.

But they are not even trying to compete with the original in noise level, durability, visual detail, and quality of assembly. I believe this is the same in other products as well. If there were US made EUCs, they might cost close to $10K. People don't generally expect a $3K product to compete with a $10K product. But if the Chinese designed and manufactured a $10K EUC, I don't think it would have the issues that current $3K EUCs have.

If we again look at the microphones, many western manufacturers have their cheapest models assembled in China, costing something like $150-$300. They somewhat compete with the all China mics, both in price as well as quality. And then there are a few China mics costing $400-$1K, and only they are the ones that try to compete with US/EU manufactured models. And to my knowledge they are good and well comparable products, suffering mostly only from a lack of brand recognition that the age old EU manufacturers enjoy.

 

8 hours ago, Vanturion said:

downsides of the globalized economy that we didn't necessarily vote for unless you count voting with your dollar. We don't have an alternative in "voting" though when it comes to purchasing an EUC for all the reasons I estimated earlier unless you count no sale at all.

Which is not to be completely disregarded in my opinion. We all know that it's normal and even recommended by many that one should own three or more EUCs. And of course replace them with new ones almost every year. That kind of behavior is so far beyond actual needs, and only represents what one wants. There is a lot of play here, and I would argue that most of the current EUC purchases could be skipped as a message to the manufacturers that the quality is not good enough.

If I had three cars in my possession, of course I'd use the one that fits my needs the best each day, but I had zero problems choosing just one that fulfills all the requirements I have for a car. And I mean actual requirements, not wants. Same goes for an EUC. I have used solely a V11 since it came out, and while it's not perfect, it's what fits my requirements the best. And I'm fine with that, I don't need a "perfect" wheel. I only want one. None of the newer models would even be a step up for me though, so my plans of purchasing a new wheel this year were erased.

 

8 hours ago, Vanturion said:

IMO, the biggest downside of overseas manufacturing I already touched on, the killing of an environment that breeds innovation. By disenfranchising labor domestically and pitting labor in high COL countries against labor in low COL countries, the opportunities to innovate domestically, think engineers working directly with assemblers on the manufacturing floor bouncing ideas off the wall, bringing in R&D, much of those opportunities for collaboration breeding innovation in new products is lost. Couple this with the incentive stack and the massively skewed funneling of the rewards upwards, you have a grand recipe for stagnation at a meta level. I think we're living through it now.

You again present your arguments and points with good detail and reasoning, as you tend to do. This one's hard to disagree with. And I'm sure the manufacturers of all areas have tried to find a solution to this for a long time already. Like developing a manufacturing process that can't be copied for cheap as easily, I'd imagine. All I know is that I'm real happy not being a head of a manufacturing company, on any area. This dilemma is damn hard to crack.

 

[0000]

20 hours ago, mrelwood said:

You again present your arguments and points with good detail and reasoning, as you tend to do.

Thanks and I've noticed you're a very logical thinker on this board often with great salient points. I can see the merits of looking at this problem (lower quality manufacturing and deficient designs regarding EUCs) both ways, an issue of competing on low cost + fast/fierce competition vs all of the rest of the meta themes driven by globalization including cultural differences for a host of speculative reasons, some already discussed. I think we can agree it's not an either-or black-or-white type of thing anyway. Probably not much productivity in further speculation, instead I find my thinking lately drawn to more of the tangentially-related meta themes going on in the world lately which puts me nearly at about a 100% chance of going at least somewhat off-topic.

From what you said at the end there, being in the unenviable position of maintaining market share operating in high COL zones competing against those with inherent advantages in the global marketplace, yeah 100% with you there. Although I find myself looking at things like this, more and more with a kind of postmortem assessment of it all. As in some fatal damage has occurred a long time ago (then multiplied 5 times over), and reality is now beginning to set in finally and move more violently to reflect the choices of the people who were in the driving seat decades ago. Globalization that is, speaking on the whole of it. Thinking on questions like, what does it mean to compete against the labor pool of the entire world particularly in the era of increasing automation, what are the consequences, and has it been worth it? (Also, what the hell to do now? comes to mind). It's a hell of a thing to comprehend just how low in price, how little value, is assigned to many types of labor in this environment.

Anyone who's read some of my longer-winded rants can probably already figure where I fall on these questions, but it's a hell of a thing when you start questioning things you used to take for granted and automatically accepted. And not just questioning, but straight up no longer believing the their "data", the "arguments" (which often present as appeals to emotion or nonsensical suppositions), and the outright declarations of formerly perceived "sources of authority" as fact or truth. I'm digressing so I'll halt the dig and rest.
 

21 hours ago, mrelwood said:

If I had three cars in my possession, of course I'd use the one that fits my needs the best each day, but I had zero problems choosing just one that fulfills all the requirements I have for a car. And I mean actual requirements, not wants. Same goes for an EUC. I have used solely a V11 since it came out, and while it's not perfect, it's what fits my requirements the best. And I'm fine with that, I don't need a "perfect" wheel. I only want one. None of the newer models would even be a step up for me though, so my plans of purchasing a new wheel this year were erased.

It's a great topic, the want vs need dilemma, (and I didn't miss the joke earlier, nice). It's kind of funny to see the excess consumption that occurs in this hobby. Then again, it's actually a little disturbing on some level, not specifically about buying/consuming an "excess" of wheels, but about the thought process, or more specifically, possibly the lack thereof in a hypothetical person who may recognize that they can take the action to consume but fails in ever asking if they should (and everything else implied from missing that sort of introspective analysis). Insert example of famous actor flying private jet to speak at conference in which he tells others not to do exactly that. ^{(went for the low-hanging fruit, sorry)}

22 hours ago, mrelwood said:

Quote

We don't have an alternative in "voting" though when it comes to purchasing an EUC for all the reasons I estimated earlier unless you count no sale at all.

Which is not to be completely disregarded in my opinion.

Yes, although if I'm going to be hyper-critical, I'd re-frame the situation to try and dig closer to the core of what's really bothering me:

The Chinese people exist in a very real state of subservience to an authoritative regime which is both completely unacceptable and antithetical to the strong freedoms, personal liberties, and property rights historically (had to qualify that because things are totally fucked today) afforded to us here in the west, more so America specifically. Every dollar/euro we spend is not only a vote, but quite literally the only effective vote we "regular" people get in our respective elective/fake representative political systems.

Therefore, every dollar/euro we funnel to these Chinese markets is synonymous with a vote in favor of this kind of ridiculous authoritarian regime. Knowing this as well as understanding that reality of that which you compete with you become like, one could and should surmise that purchasing EUCs as they are only available from China, is, in a very real way, voting for this kind of authoritative governance and accompanying enslavement.

These statements are not to condemn or slander the Chinese people personally or to negate the efforts of the presumably hard-working individuals that deliver us the products (EUCs) we want, it's simply to bring attention to another consequence of Globalism that I personally, and quite hypocritically I will add, find extremely disturbing (as I watch my own "freedom-loving" government visibly mirror the authoritarianism I so detest in a great many ways).

[GothamMike]

On 10/6/2022 at 6:28 PM, ElectronxCycles said:

EUC's are all overpriced like a "scarce resource" and like they're manufactured with top quality materials. A good solution would be designing, building and testing wheels right here in North America. I don't think it would be that hard to get funding and investors for project like that. Just imagine a future where EUC's have a "made in USA" or "made in Canada" stamp on it!

Still a labor-intensive product to build. Japan excels at automating assembly. America, less so. 

Right now the silicon valley of EUCs is in China. Until the safety improves, I don't see USA/EU or others jumping in.