Durability in FRC

[Michael Hill]

Originally Posted by nathannfm

After building FRC robots for years it still amazes me how cars, that only cost 4 times as much can stand up to 100's of thousand of miles of driving over years and still hold up reasonably well when our robots are always barely hobbling along by the last off season.

Never underestimate the price breaks of super mass production. Also, engineers spend A LOT of time just shaving off any dollar they can. For example, in 2012, over 400000 Ford F-150s were sold. So for every dollar off their BoM cost saves $400,000, well worth spending the time on. However, in FRC, price has the habit of playing second fiddle to other things like size and weight. If we REALLY tried to, I bet we could really drive down the price of an FRC robot. It's just not a priority.