RE: INEOS confirms Grenadier for reveal in 2020

[Ares]

Max_Torque said:

janesmith1950 said:

I wouldn't be surprised if he's personally worth more than JLR.

How to make a small fortune in the passenger car business? Start with a large one.

He might be rich, but he really has absolutely no idea what on earth he's doing......

Actually he does. I dealt with Jim back in the mid-90s when he was with Inspec. He is probably one of the best and most commercial people you will ever meet. His ability to understand businesses, and surround himself with industry experts is incredible. I know have exposure to him via cycling, his approach is exactly the same.

[750turbo]

Surely something we should be celebrating?

Of course, not in here though it seems.

I really hope it is a massive success, given the utter st we have had in the media for how long now?

[Plate spinner]

Wow, that’s some serious ambition right there.

[jimmytheone]

Max_Torque said:

This is surely doomed! there are so many contradictions in their aspirations it would be funny it it wasn't real:

...toyota and nissan ...

Edited by Max_Torque on Wednesday 18th September 18:56

I love the idea of this and would love to believe it will be a success for Jim and the gang but surely any war lord worth his salt sends his troops into battle in something Japanese.
And they’re not worried about hosing out the interior either

[blueST]

Max_Torque said:

This is surely doomed! there are so many contradictions in their aspirations it would be funny it it wasn't real:


1) Using BMW 6 cyl engines, but "you can diagnose faults yourself" - really, have a go at that and get back to me. (they are also assuming BMW will release this proprietary info that effectively short circuits their own dealer network....)

2) Using BMW engines (high performance, finely tuned, but "will run on poor fuel" (have a go and sticking some low lubricity, hgih sulphur fuel in your 330d and get back to me on how it pans out (the answer is expensively)

3) Using BMW engines (product of several million euro worth of calibration and certification), but "the engines will run our own tune" (BMW won't warrant anything if you change the cal, and you'll have to completely re-cert the tail pipe emissions and OBD across world wide markets (which is roughly a 20 million quid job and takes 3 years)

4) Costs 10% more than a top of the range competitor, but is more basic (right, who exactly walks into a dealer and say "oh, no, i don;t want that nicely spec'd japanese pick up that does everything i want for less money. oh no, i'd like to spend 10% more on a completely unproven, less specified version that i have to fix myself after spending 10 years reading up on fault codes and buying £3k worth of diagnostic kit"

5) They'll sell 25,000 a year (LR only sold about 15k defenders on average) Without a military market, and competing against the likes of toyota and nissan who can leverage platform sharing, sorry, but no way do those numbers add up.

6) Body on frame with beam axles, but will be robust and reliable and put together by only 200 people. Have to sat in a Defender? panel gaps you can put your had through, the crashworthyness of a eggbox, and more rattles, squeaks and leaks than an, er, rattly, squeeky, colander....

7) Revealed in 2021. Hurray, 2 years till we get to see it, then what, when can we buy it. Because i'm not sure if you've noticed, but polluting, high CO2 vehicles are already looking a bit anti-social today, and EVs are taking over fast. Companies like Rivian are re-writing the rules faster than the existing OEs can pedal......

8) It's designed to encourage aftermarket development: Pull the other one mate. No OE who wants to stay in business is going to let people bolt completely untested, unproved and critically un-homologated bits to their vehicle, and even more certainly not whilst honouring the warranty..


and

9) 300 is going to have to buy one of these, it's his perfect car, and after months of claiming the new defender is sh*t, if he doesn't he's a two faced liar!

;-)

Edited by Max_Torque on Wednesday 18th September 18:56

Firstly, I absolutely bow to your experience in this area, but I do think that some of the above could be more feasible than you suggest. I’m just trying understand why, what seems to be well run project with some very serious people involved, has overlooked these serious flaws.

Fault finding - Could some sort of stripped down simplified diagnostic software not be run on the head unit?

Body on frame build quality - there are many companies who manage to build vehicles with acceptable quality and panel fit on that type of vehicle. Granted, I don’t know how many you need to do that. But it should be noted that the 200 people in Wales will be supplemented by another facility in Portugal.

Could BMW not be providing both the engines and the tune, just optimised for Ineos? Would BMW not already have software tunes suitable for low quality fuel for their sales in the developing world?

The 70 Series Land Cruiser offers a big modern diesel for use in harsh conditions, so it must be possible, although I accept that Toyota can probable spend an order of magnitude more on development than Ineos could.

[anonymous-user]

Simonium said:

Never trust anyone who believes jeans, brogues, and blazer is acceptable apparel.

You are extremely strange.

What on earth do you deem acceptable clothing for a man?

I often wear jeans, shoes, a shirt and a jacket/blazer, as do many people who like to put a tiny bit of effort into casual attire.

I can only assume you don't get invited anywhere that requires shoes or a blazer.

[anonymous-user]

Ares said:

Max_Torque said:

janesmith1950 said:

I wouldn't be surprised if he's personally worth more than JLR.

How to make a small fortune in the passenger car business? Start with a large one.

He might be rich, but he really has absolutely no idea what on earth he's doing......

Actually he does. I dealt with Jim back in the mid-90s when he was with Inspec. He is probably one of the best and most commercial people you will ever meet. His ability to understand businesses, and surround himself with industry experts is incredible. I know have exposure to him via cycling, his approach is exactly the same.

ok, answer one question:

"How do you sell an inferior product for a higher price than your competition" ?

[JerryF]

750turbo said:

Surely something we should be celebrating?

Of course, not in here though it seems.

I really hope it is a massive success, given the utter st we have had in the media for how long now?

Well said, I agree.

[anonymous-user]

Max_Torque said:

ok, answer one question:

"How do you sell an inferior product for a higher price than your competition" ?

Reputation/brand image.

Apple are great at it.

[Andeh1]

Max_Torque said:

This is surely doomed! there are so many contradictions in their aspirations it would be funny it it wasn't real:


1) Using BMW 6 cyl engines, but "you can diagnose faults yourself" - really, have a go at that and get back to me. (they are also assuming BMW will release this proprietary info that effectively short circuits their own dealer network....)

2) Using BMW engines (high performance, finely tuned, but "will run on poor fuel" (have a go and sticking some low lubricity, hgih sulphur fuel in your 330d and get back to me on how it pans out (the answer is expensively)

3) Using BMW engines (product of several million euro worth of calibration and certification), but "the engines will run our own tune" (BMW won't warrant anything if you change the cal, and you'll have to completely re-cert the tail pipe emissions and OBD across world wide markets (which is roughly a 20 million quid job and takes 3 years)

4) Costs 10% more than a top of the range competitor, but is more basic (right, who exactly walks into a dealer and say "oh, no, i don;t want that nicely spec'd japanese pick up that does everything i want for less money. oh no, i'd like to spend 10% more on a completely unproven, less specified version that i have to fix myself after spending 10 years reading up on fault codes and buying £3k worth of diagnostic kit"

5) They'll sell 25,000 a year (LR only sold about 15k defenders on average) Without a military market, and competing against the likes of toyota and nissan who can leverage platform sharing, sorry, but no way do those numbers add up.

6) Body on frame with beam axles, but will be robust and reliable and put together by only 200 people. Have to sat in a Defender? panel gaps you can put your had through, the crashworthyness of a eggbox, and more rattles, squeaks and leaks than an, er, rattly, squeeky, colander....

7) Revealed in 2021. Hurray, 2 years till we get to see it, then what, when can we buy it. Because i'm not sure if you've noticed, but polluting, high CO2 vehicles are already looking a bit anti-social today, and EVs are taking over fast. Companies like Rivian are re-writing the rules faster than the existing OEs can pedal......

8) It's designed to encourage aftermarket development: Pull the other one mate. No OE who wants to stay in business is going to let people bolt completely untested, unproved and critically un-homologated bits to their vehicle, and even more certainly not whilst honouring the warranty..


and

9) 300 is going to have to buy one of these, it's his perfect car, and after months of claiming the new defender is sh*t, if he doesn't he's a two faced liar!

;-)

Edited by Max_Torque on Wednesday 18th September 18:56

Entirely agree, well said! None of this story adds up.

[Macboy]

janesmith1950 said:

Reputation/brand image.

Apple are great at it.

Interesting both things that INEOS have none of in this market. You can spend all the millions soaking up JLRs abandoned sponsorships but that’s not going to convince any utility vehicle buyer that INEOS know how to make robust, reliable cars that are value for money. How are they actually going to convince self-proclaimed vehicle abusers to trust them when they have absolutely no background in making cars.

[anonymous-user]

blueST said:

Firstly, I absolutely bow to your experience in this area, but I do think that some of the above could be more feasible than you suggest. I’m just trying understand why, what seems to be well run project with some very serious people involved, has overlooked these serious flaws.

Fault finding - Could some sort of stripped down simplified diagnostic software not be run on the head unit?

Body on frame build quality - there are many companies who manage to build vehicles with acceptable quality and panel fit on that type of vehicle. Granted, I don’t know how many you need to do that. But it should be noted that the 200 people in Wales will be supplemented by another facility in Portugal.

Could BMW not be providing both the engines and the tune, just optimised for Ineos? Would BMW not already have software tunes suitable for low quality fuel for their sales in the developing world?

The 70 Series Land Cruiser offers a big modern diesel for use in harsh conditions, so it must be possible, although I accept that Toyota can probable spend an order of magnitude more on development than Ineos could.

In order:

1) simplified fault finding: A typical BMW diagnostic technician spends 3 years as an apprentice tech, doing a vast array of courses, all specifically aimed at teaching that person how to carry out a robust diagnostic appraisal of a modern motor vehicle. As you'll note, even people who work full times as mechanics in garages and the aftermarket often fail to correctly diagnose and understand the faults that occur. The thought that the average owner, and especially an owner who has presumably bought the vehicle to make them money (ie they use the vehicle in their daily job) has the time, skills, or even aptitude to "simply diagnose" a fault is ridiculous. For example, you read " C1238 - Brake Thermal Model Exceeded" code from your reader, what are you going to do next?

2) It's possible to build a body on frame vehicle with a reasonable level of quality, but the body must be a one piece welded or riveted affair. You can't build a multi-piece (ie bolted together a-la classic defender) structure accurately enough in a short enough time on a production line. So once you have to use a welded body, what is the point of the chassis? Why not just add extra welded structure to the body and use it as a chassis. Cheaper, stronger, more crash resistant. They have suggested they are using beam axles all round, well, there goes the crash performance and the ride quality and any really decent on-road handling. Sure, the last one you might be able to do without, but the other two are really pretty important. This is especially true on un-paved 3rd world roads when vehicles with a poor unsprung to sprung ratio are always going to both ride worse, and wear out things like shocks and bushes faster (more energy has to be absorbed because the moving suspension parts are heavier)

3) What's in it for BMW? At best they get to sell 25,000 more engines a year (BMW group sold 2.5 MILLION cars in 2018!!) at worse there reputation gets tarnished by someone using their engines and not properly developing them. If a world wide "tune" is required, across a world wide range of fuels, and with a matching worldwide engine durability validation program, and tail pipe and OBD certification, that's several hundreds of millions of dollars right their. For 25,000 sales. That seems a vast amount of risk for 1% extra engine sales to me (and of course, they will need to release a vast amount of supporting proprietary engine data, and some of that data isn't even theres to release ie. Have a go at ringing up BOSCH for example, who make the engine control units for bmw and asking "hi, my grenadier is broken, can i have the applications guide for your MED19 engine management system so i can fix it?" and see how you get on


4) Check out the state of tune and emissions compliance of products like the 70 series. That Namiba 79 series on the front page recently was EU4 ( superseded way back in 2009 for the EU!), it made just 200 bhp from 4.5 litres and belches out 300 g/km of CO2. And without DPF, SCR has some chance of running on "poor quality" fuels. That engine could not be sold in any new vehicle in most of the 1st world, and BMW currently don't make an engine that has that low a specification. Ineos could ask BMW to buy all the old tooling for say the E46 330d EU4 engine (204 bhp) and ask Bosch to carry out a re-calibration, but they couldn't sell that car in the EU, Japan, the US, a large chunk of Asia, Korea, or the Middle east. So, lets charitably say they'll be £100M (after building a new line to make the engine on, and paying BOSCH for a world wide cal) down the drain for a car they can sell only in some parts of africa and south america.



Everything i look at for this project screams "very risky, little reward" to me, sorry...

[anonymous-user]

janesmith1950 said:

Max_Torque said:

ok, answer one question:

"How do you sell an inferior product for a higher price than your competition" ?

Reputation/brand image.

Apple are great at it.

You mean EXACTLY the same market that JLR are targeting with their new Defender. The Aspirational / Lifestyle market, where people are made to "desire" the product and hence can be separated from their large wads of cash more easily.

Now tell me, have you ever tried to buy anything off a farmer or brick layer? ;-)

[anonymous-user]

Macboy said:

Interesting both things that INEOS have none of in this market. You can spend all the millions soaking up JLRs abandoned sponsorships but that’s not going to convince any utility vehicle buyer that INEOS know how to make robust, reliable cars that are value for money. How are they actually going to convince self-proclaimed vehicle abusers to trust them when they have absolutely no background in making cars.

How much of it did Apple have in the phone market when it launched its first iPhone?

How much did Tesla have when it launched mass production?

Just because something hasn't generations behind it in a market doesn't mean it can't gain traction quickly. Everybody has to start somewhere.

When you have the richest man in the UK, behind one of the most successful businesses, you are taking a pint to suggest they don't know what they are doing.

[Bodo]

janesmith1950 said:

Max_Torque said:

ok, answer one question:

"How do you sell an inferior product for a higher price than your competition" ?

Reputation/brand image.

Apple are great at it.

Works for the branded fashion industry for decades now.

Given that price and spec levels are not published yet, I wouldn't worry too much about Ineos' business model for now.

[anonymous-user]

janesmith1950 said:

how much of it did Apple have in the phone market when it launched its first iPhone?

How much did Tesla have when it launched mass production?

I fear you have missed a rather important fact with both your examples, namely they were both selling disruptive and unique technology.



Tell me how successful apple would have been at cornering the market if they sold these:





and Tesla sold these:

[Macboy]

janesmith1950 said:

ow much of it did Apple have in the phone market when it launched its first iPhone?

How much did Tesla have when it launched mass production?

Just because something hasn't generations behind it in a market doesn't mean it can't gain traction quickly. Everybody has to start somewhere.

When you have the richest man in the UK, behind one of the most successful businesses, you are taking a pint to suggest they don't know what they are doing.

Your argument doesn’t stand up at all when you cite two products a which were entirely market disruptive (iPhone/Tesla) and ground breaking neither of which are traits the Grenadier will have. It’s deliberately derivative - hell, they even wanted to buy the old Defender tooling. How is an upstart 25,000 unit utility vehicle going to “gain traction quickly”? The worlds biggest Mitsubishi dealer in Dubai sells more pickups than that a year.

[Howard1650]

this whole thing smells like DeLorean all over again

[DonkeyApple]

janesmith1950 said:

I think when the richest man in the country starts making promises it's a bit more believable than two blokes and a lock up in Rotherham promising a supercar to challenge Ferrari.

I wouldn't be surprised if he's personally worth more than JLR.

These projects almost always fail because the founders have to go to the market to raise capital and soon learn that the market really isn’t interested in high risk, low return prospects. But as you say, when the founder already has the money to properly get a venture off the ground then it’s a different prospect entirely.

Initial sales of 25,000 units per annum seems feasible and I guess that with regards to price, when they say they’re aiming for a price in line with the top of the utility market then I guess the number at least starts at £40k?

[RacerMike]

It’s yet another example of people completely misunderstanding the complexities of the automotive industry. Even Apple have now realised that developing their own car was a monumental money pit, and have subsequently cancelled their car project. By comparison, a chemicals company, or even a tech company are incredibly low risk. There’s simply no other industry that exists where you have to mass produce something that costs £15,000-30,000 in raw materials and labour that then sells for a moderate profit to recoup the billions spent in development. There’s a reason why Tesla has struggled to make a profit....because it’s bloody difficult and really expensive to make cars.

There is one positive. 300hp/ton will either be able to rub all our faces in it when this outsells the new Defender....or as is more likely, every comment he ever makes about Land Rover making a body on frame Defender with live axles can be immediately won by saying ‘but the inneos Defender was a complete flop’