Low Costs Through Mass Production
All the parts shown below and on the previous page go into a Canon SureShot TELEmax Camera which you can find being sold for just $100! Did you guess $5,000 or $10,000? I would have!
I would LOVE to tour their factory and learn the details of how in the heck they can actually produce this complicated machine for such a price. Canon has to have spent million of dollars on automating the assembly line. It is more than likely one of those factories you hear about - full of robots working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - in the dark!Hopefully, this economies of scale example gives you a better grasp of the cost reduction benefits we would expect with mass produced SkyTran vehicles, track and station modules. We believe, that if we organize the production of SkyTran vehicles and spend serious money on advanced technology production machines that a cost of $6,000 each may even be conservative!
| By the way, that skinny little tube makes the super bright
burst of light for taking Flash Pictures. It is mounted in a chrome plated plastic
reflector that intensifies the light toward the subject. The more I took this machine apart, the more I was just amazed at the engineering and quality that goes into it. Most beautiful is that all this magnificent technology is totally transparent to the user. Better yet, the user doesn't need to bother knowing zip about the technology. As far as the consumer is concerned, he just bought an inexpensive simple-to-use tool to create human remembrances! |
You may have noticed quite a few products exist nowadays that you just replace if they quit functioning. Another fine example is scientific calculators that retail as low as $20. If it fails several years later, one doesn't even consider taking it apart to start trying to fix it. Just toss it out and buy a new one. If this compact intelligent camera was not so superbly mass produced it could easily cost more than $1,000 and it would have been worth spending $200 to have it fixed - but not when it only costs $100!
Whenever the automobile companies state they have to spend a billion dollars to get an all new model out you should be asking yourself where can all that money possibly go? Basically, it goes into design, engineering, automation equipment and programming, raw materials, production facilities, etc., etc. Without spending that $1 billion they would never be able to sell thousands and thousands of cars for just $18,000 each and still make a profit.
How does this "Economies of Scale" thing relate to SkyTran?
SkyTran is NOT a train. A company that produces light rail or other types of passenger trains may make a total of 20 complete trains a year. You cannot afford to fully automate assembly for low costs when you are only manufacturing 20 of something a year. They are essentially all hand built and therefore expensive. SkyTran on the other hand needs thousands of small, light, inexpensive vehicles even in a simple system. Then, as the system grows, hundreds of thousands of vehicles per year will be required. As this happens, it will become cost effective to invest in mass production automation equipment in order to continually lower our per unit costs. Development of automation fabrication for the track and station modules will occur concurrently.