Originally Posted by
A Squared
That's one of the major factors that folks are neglecting from thier economic comparisons. In 2015, cessna sold 143 172s. They sold 539 total aircraft that year. In the US alone, MB sold 4,000 SL roadsters in 2015. MB's US sales are around 25,000 vehicles per month
If MB engineers a new airbag system, they amortize the development costs over hundreds of thousands of units. If Cessna engineers a new seat, those development costs are amortized over, at best, a few thousand units.
Seats come to mind because of an experience a few years back. I was writing for an aviation publication and travelled to Columbia where a new utility aircraft was being developed (The Gavilan, very similar to the AirVan) One of the things I learned while down there was just how big a deal seats were. Part 23 has specifications for crash energy absorption for aircraft seats, and the company developing the Gavial had spend in incredible amount of money engineering a pilot seat to meet those specs, then demonstrating the seat's ability to meet the specs. Demonstrating that ability was a considerable portion of the cost. I wish I recall the cost I was told as it would make a better story, but I just recall that it was astonishing amount, for something which seemed so simple. In a way, it was the seat costs which sunk the Gavilan. They essentially ran out of development money after designing and getting approval for the seats, and were unable to design and certify passenger seats. As a result the aircraft never received US certification with more than the front seats, which is obviously a pretty significant disadvantage in a fairly large utility airplane.
ANyway, the point being, if you take the large costs of engineering and testing energy absorbing seats, and amortize that cost over very few units, the per unit cost is very high, and is reflected in the price of the airplane. Then you consider that an airplane contains lots of things like the seats which require a lot of money to develop and prove.
A2... I think your post is kind of my point.
Suppose I own a highly regarded German seat manufacturer, let's call it DasSeat GMBH.
I just googled that to make sure I'm not upsettting anyone and surely enough, there is currently no company named DasSeat GMBH. And no-one with that internet domain name.
Weird. That domain wouldn't last 5 minutes in the US without someone trying to scalp it.
To get back on topic, suppose I am contracted by BMW to make top-of-the-range seats, in comfort and safety. And let's assume that I can and do deliver.
And then Cessna USA contacts me and says "I want those seats, can they do X G's forward, Y G's sideways and Z G's vertical?"
My response might be, "Yes we can do that specification both forward and sideways, but not the vertical because BMW never needed that cert".
So then Cessna says "great, just cert them for Z G's vertical and we will buy 2000 of them.
Response: "I'm sorry, your message got cut off. Did you want 2 million, or 2 hundred thousand."
Cessna: "No, 2 thousand".
"We are a wholesaler not a retailer, I suggest you go to Walmart".