Mirage Drive 180

[monstahfish]

Originally Posted by ultimatejay

You don't invent something and throw it on the market the next day. It takes years and years of R&D and then you have to test it over and over before releasing a new product. For instance when you se a new model car- that was 10+ years prior of R&D and testing before it's released. Reverse drive is no different. Takes a lot of time. A bike pedal with a chain or belt drive to a propeller is not rocket science. Mirage drive is a lot more complex and unique.

I'm an industrial designer and he is correct. Companies are not holding back on things to screw the customer, it's a matter of development time and resource implementation. For example building an injection molding tool of moderate complexity takes about 6-10 weeks, followed by sampling usually 2 weeks to dial the tool in, followed by any needed redesign a week usually, then tooling rework 2-4 weeks then at least 6 months of field, UV, cycle and materials testing each of which can yield another design change and start the whole cycle over again. Then you have to schedule production and assemble. Now imagine this for every single new component of any product and things can still fail in unusual usage or with poor maintenance. Then the current and old products have to be serviced and maintained by the engineering team so they don't have as much time to develop new product.
Just a quick glimpse into how it works and that doesn't even include the concept, design, prototype and approval phases which can be significantly longer than the build phase.