: urQ fog light switch

[Joshua van Tol]

I was speaking of the cost to Audi to build the car of course. They  
couldn't care less how much it costs to replace, as long as it fails  
outside of the warranty period. I've worked in the automotive OEM  
business, and while there is some concern for reliability and  
serviceability, for the most part, it's all about optimizing the cost  
of the car, and if a switch is $0.30 cheaper than a switch + relay,  
you can bet that they'll pick the switch almost every time. As  
strange as it may seem, decisions are made on the basis of $0.10 cost  
differences. Multiply that decision times thousands of parts in a  
car, and then multiply it times the number sold, and it can be a huge  
amount of money. I figured out how to save about 35 cents once, and  
that amounted to a $280,000 cost savings over the life of the program  
in question.



On Apr 22, 2006, at 11:04 AM, cobram at juno.com wrote:

> "Usually" isn't Audi Land.  Not cheaper when the switch is part of a
> $150+ stalk assembly.
>
> BCNU,
> http://www.geocities.com/cobramsri/
> There are two types of tragedies in life. One is not getting what you
> want, the other is getting it.
>
> Joshua Van tol <josh at spiny.com> writes:
>
>> Believe it or not, relays are usually more expensive than the
>> incremental cost between a switch that can drive a relay, and a
>> switch that can drive the lights directly.