Quote:
Originally Posted by Sportstick
It can be...it's just a few million dollars. The M3 cert was based on building impact prototypes for frontal compliance with FMVSS 208. That powertrain combination has unique characteristics and is not applicable to other powertrains. A 330 and 340 would have to be certified individually, which means development, time, people and crash testing. I've been involved with this in my prior work and we're into seven digits per vehicle species. The question BMWAG will ask is, how many incremental cars will they sell and do they have production capacity to produce them. If the G20 program already is projected as at capacity, there is no upside.
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This is my argument that the Governments should allow use of computer simulated crash testing for certification. This in many instances would close the business model for producing a chassis with varying drive train configurations. The chassis is developed using very sophisticated computer modeling tools for finite element analysis design. A computer simulated crash test tool would be as accurate in determining safety performance variability of a chassis/drive train combination as any level of precision left to the test setup or at worst, a real-world crash.
It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the subject.
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A manual transmission can be set to "comfort", "sport", and "track" modes simply by the technique and speed at which you shift it; it doesn't need "modes", modes are for manumatics that try to behave like a real 3-pedal manual transmission. If you can money-shift it, it's a manual transmission. "Yeah, but NO ONE puts an automatic trans shift knob on a manual transmission."