US robotics firms can compete with global manufacturing

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 26:49

   AV. How do you think about manufacturing and supply chain given competition with China and like Chinese robotics companies? Yeah, I spent a lot of time thinking about that. There is this sentiment in robotics or I'd say in the hardware company space that I would say the sentiment that I've heard is almost like you shouldn't even try. Yeah. Because if you're just making a widget, you'll make it using U.S. engineering, which is, you know, 100 plus thousand dollars a year for an engineer you're going to go to us-based machine shops and us-based tooling all this kind of stuff and it's going to be slower you're not going to iterate as faster you're going to pay more for it and the quality may or may not be as good so don't even try and i think like it is possible to be a global company today and have a manufacturing

2. 27:30

   footwear in another country, like use contract manufacturers, tap into existing supply bases. It takes more work and you have to be willing to like travel and go like, you know, pound the ground and make these connections and get access to these things. But it's not impossible. I think like probably, you know, for a US-based company, you're gonna have a hard time competing on pure engineering services. And so if that's all you've got, if you're just like doing mechanical engineering and cranking out products, you're gonna have a hard time on the margin side and have to build a brand instead in order to create that margin. I think when you get into more complex machines and i saw this with you know with self-driving i think even though they may be doing a lot of teleoperation other things there i do think that china is still years behind behind

3. 28:07

   the best u.s companies for self-driving and it's been my experience that anytime you have a sufficiently complicated technical problem um on the software side where you can't just copy it by like you know measuring something and then recreating in cad um or it has to do with taste like the product experience is more than just like a light switch where you flip it on and off then it becomes a little bit harder to quickly copy that and commoditize it.

4. 28:31

   You know, even if you're a fast follower, if you are aggressive enough as a company and can maintain a lead and keep innovating and keep building new products, I think there's room to be a hardware company in the US, you know, provided that you take steps to ensure that if your cost is higher than a potential Chinese competitor or somewhere in Asia, it's not that much higher to the point where you can win on the merits of your product and brand and other things.

5. 28:52

   But in a place like, you know, for home robots and other things, This is like the Wild West. There's no established stuff to copy. You know, we've got to build a lot of stuff ourselves. And I think it'll be interesting to see how this plays out too, especially if these end up being like connected devices and they're constantly getting new software updates with better models on them or whatever it is.

6. 29:10

   I can see a bunch of angles in which, you know, these companies are very durable, whether it's us or another one. You've already been through the ringer once on the regulatory front with AV.