Speed UTV

I watched a little of it.  Nothing to exciting. 

 
I have lost interest in the shows. I do watch them but not quite as excited about them now. Really it is amazing that he keeps doing them, II mean how much can you talk about the same car. Its 5 minutes of new info and 50 minutes of beating a dead horse. I guess if you haven't seen all of them, it might be a more intriguing. 

I haven't lost faith that the car will get done and it will be cool.......but the hype train is over. 

 
Punchdrunk Monkey said:
I have lost interest in the shows. I do watch them but not quite as excited about them now. Really it is amazing that he keeps doing them, II mean how much can you talk about the same car. Its 5 minutes of new info and 50 minutes of beating a dead horse. I guess if you haven't seen all of them, it might be a more intriguing. 

I haven't lost faith that the car will get done and it will be cool.......but the hype train is over. 
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I think at this point he is committed to them and sometimes it looks like even he has lost interest in doing them.  LOL!

I think he is kind of forced to do them to show people they are getting close to the finish line. I am sure he will be relieved when the production cars start rolling off the assembly line and he no longer needs to do the shows.    

 
Lord of the Dunes said:
I have a question for you guys, let's see what you all think. Last week, they showed off the first production car. I got into a disagreement with some guys on FB about that car.

1. Some guys think that is the same prototype El Jefe built a couple of months ago and no progress has been made since then.

2. One or two guys are calling it a "production test car" which is probably technically correct, it's going to be used for testing and not sold to the public. The part I disagree with is they claim it's another hand built unit, like the prototype, except using production parts.

3. I think it was built on the assembly line in TX with production parts. Obviously they've substituted King springs since their springs aren't ready yet, but that's not a big deal. Both Robby and Connor called it a production car. In my mind, in order to be a production car, it has to be assembled from production parts on the assembly line to prove both that the parts fit and the assembly procedures (especially the welding) works.

What do you think? Any of the above, or some other definition of production?
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Technically it is a test car with some production parts.  The frame is the production frame.  I do not recall if the assembly line built the car or they took most of the production parts and put it together elsewhere.  I am thinking they put it together eleswhere as they had to get the wiring harness built outside the factory.

Also the test car does not have the cast front diff.   

The 10 or so that are suppose to roll off the assembly line would be the actual production cars. 

 
Did this come out yet? I get nervous every time I walk by the wife’s Can Am wondering if this is the day the front end explodes. 

 
Rockwood said:
Did this come out yet? I get nervous every time I walk by the wife’s Can Am wondering if this is the day the front end explodes. 
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Nope... though more and more production parts are being shown and they've shown a "production unit" but it's video of a picture of it, lol.  I really wanted mine by August, but it's not going to happen. 

-TJ

 
Me the Duner when the Speed UTV was Announced ... "This is going to change everything, robbie gets it,  he is gonna build a baby Trophy truck, the SxS as we know it is dead"

Me the Product Guy with 20 years experience in High Tech companies like Apple bringing products to market   ...   "Robble better hire a world class product management team and operations VP now or this ambitious project is gonna slip and may never see daylight" 

While I wish the Duner was right, the Product guy is never wrong - It a way bigger job than they imagined  and experience tells me the closer they get, the farther behind they fall ...

Eventually they will get there - if they don't run out of money first -  but its gonna be a bumpy road getting getting to full production

 
Fullthrottleguy said:
Me the Duner when the Speed UTV was Announced ... "This is going to change everything, robbie gets it,  he is gonna build a baby Trophy truck, the SxS as we know it is dead"

Me the Product Guy with 20 years experience in High Tech companies like Apple bringing products to market   ...   "Robble better hire a world class product management team and operations VP now or this ambitious project is gonna slip and may never see daylight" 

While I wish the Duner was right, the Product guy is never wrong - It a way bigger job than they imagined  and experience tells me the closer they get, the farther behind they fall ...

Eventually they will get there - if they don't run out of money first -  but its gonna be a bumpy road getting getting to full production
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You mean they can’t just enter their BOM on McMaster and build tomorrow? :biggrin:

 
Fullthrottleguy said:
Me the Duner when the Speed UTV was Announced ... "This is going to change everything, robbie gets it,  he is gonna build a baby Trophy truck, the SxS as we know it is dead"

Me the Product Guy with 20 years experience in High Tech companies like Apple bringing products to market   ...   "Robble better hire a world class product management team and operations VP now or this ambitious project is gonna slip and may never see daylight" 

While I wish the Duner was right, the Product guy is never wrong - It a way bigger job than they imagined  and experience tells me the closer they get, the farther behind they fall ...

Eventually they will get there - if they don't run out of money first -  but its gonna be a bumpy road getting getting to full production
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Non-production people with an ounce of common sense could tell there was no way he was going to design and get a car to production in a year, let alone two years.  Just too many moving parts to make it happen.  Plus they kept changing designs so it further delayed finalizing production parts.

I think the tell tell sign RG and company are coming to grips with the reality is when he started talking about supply chain issues a few shows ago.  

If they get the 250 cars to production and out to the public before the end of the year I will be super impressed.   I am confident he will produce the cars, just not sure how long the company will be around.  

 
Fullthrottleguy said:
Me the Duner when the Speed UTV was Announced ... "This is going to change everything, robbie gets it,  he is gonna build a baby Trophy truck, the SxS as we know it is dead"

Me the Product Guy with 20 years experience in High Tech companies like Apple bringing products to market   ...   "Robble better hire a world class product management team and operations VP now or this ambitious project is gonna slip and may never see daylight" 

While I wish the Duner was right, the Product guy is never wrong - It a way bigger job than they imagined  and experience tells me the closer they get, the farther behind they fall ...

Eventually they will get there - if they don't run out of money first -  but its gonna be a bumpy road getting getting to full production
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It's an interesting situation, indeed.  I was/am one of the biggest proponents (fanbois?), as my posts in the pre-crash thread showed.  That said, I never expected or wanted a "mini trophy truck."  I just wanted a better SxS.  I still think we're going to get exactly that, but obviously the timeline was beyond optimistic.  I think it'll all end up about a year late, but for me at least, the delays will be worth it.  Things like completely changing clutch manufacturers, reworking power steering stuff, and a bunch of the other big changes that have added huge delays just wouldn't happen with other manufacturers.  But that's why you have issues like the 2021 RZRs having exploding primary clutches (literally) or the turbo oil-return line leak causing fires on the original (2016) Turbos.  

Whether or not they run out of money will be the real question, as you suggested.  I find it humorous all the FB-warriors that think this project is being funded by the deposit money, and that there'd be any remote chance of a surplus of money for Robby to "run off with" at this point.  Back of the napkin stuff, if he has 5,000 deposits at $1500 that's "only" $7.5M.  Anybody that knows anything about production knows $7.5M goes basically nowhere in building a team, engineering a product (particularly one so complicated with so many sub-systems) and putting it into production.  It's literally laughable that people think he's rolling around in deposit money.  Heck, even if you assume on average all of those 5,000 deposits spent $10k total including accessories (which we were required to pay for up front) that's still "only" $50M.  Now, fifty million dollars is a much better start, but still not remotely enough to get this thing done and is a way high estimate, and the accessory money was only collected recently. 

Anyway, the point is money is indeed the question.  I'm sure he has lots of private investment... but just how much?  They're a year behind schedule, so that's a year of salaries, facility costs etc. (and they bought that building in Havasu during that year).  

 
I am not a deposit holder so the current timeline does not affect me. I am interested to see how these shake out when they get into the publics hands as I would love to pick one up next year if they end up being everything they are supposed to be.

I saw the post @Sand Shark shared from IG and was disappointed to see Robby arguing with everyone in the comments about his accomplishments, how great Speed UTV is, and how great his career has been. I have a lot of respect for the project they have undertaken but if you really are the best, you don't have to shout from the rooftop to try to convince people you are. The Speed UTV design speaks for itself, wish they would keep the focus on getting it to market.

Totally agree with @tjZ06 there has to be a ton of private investment to get this off the ground, far more than the deposits.

With the price of steel, plastics, and all commodities through the roof it will be another challenge for Speed UTV to be profitable and price competitive with existing manufacturers (Polaris, Canam, etc.) who are buying much larger amounts of raw goods and are already in the door with suppliers. Being the new guy on the block to purchase commodities in a market with escalating prices and tight supply = New guy not getting a good deal and suppliers focused on keep existing customer base happy

 
NO WAY there will be any production cars out this year.. NO WAY. You  heard it here first

 
tjZ06 said:
It's an interesting situation, indeed.  I was/am one of the biggest proponents (fanbois?), as my posts in the pre-crash thread showed.  That said, I never expected or wanted a "mini trophy truck."  I just wanted a better SxS.  I still think we're going to get exactly that, but obviously the timeline was beyond optimistic.  I think it'll all end up about a year late, but for me at least, the delays will be worth it.  Things like completely changing clutch manufacturers, reworking power steering stuff, and a bunch of the other big changes that have added huge delays just wouldn't happen with other manufacturers.  But that's why you have issues like the 2021 RZRs having exploding primary clutches (literally) or the turbo oil-return line leak causing fires on the original (2016) Turbos.  

Whether or not they run out of money will be the real question, as you suggested.  I find it humorous all the FB-warriors that think this project is being funded by the deposit money, and that there'd be any remote chance of a surplus of money for Robby to "run off with" at this point.  Back of the napkin stuff, if he has 5,000 deposits at $1500 that's "only" $7.5M.  Anybody that knows anything about production knows $7.5M goes basically nowhere in building a team, engineering a product (particularly one so complicated with so many sub-systems) and putting it into production.  It's literally laughable that people think he's rolling around in deposit money.  Heck, even if you assume on average all of those 5,000 deposits spent $10k total including accessories (which we were required to pay for up front) that's still "only" $50M.  Now, fifty million dollars is a much better start, but still not remotely enough to get this thing done and is a way high estimate, and the accessory money was only collected recently. 

Anyway, the point is money is indeed the question.  I'm sure he has lots of private investment... but just how much?  They're a year behind schedule, so that's a year of salaries, facility costs etc. (and they bought that building in Havasu during that year).  
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I am pretty sure if Can Am, Yamaha, Polaris, Kawi and AC were to give you a peak into what goes into designing a new ride to getting it to production it would look similar to what RG and company are doing.  Only difference is they have established vendors who can make whatever changes need to be made in a timely manner.  The are dealing with major manufactures.  

Yamaha, Kawi and Honda took their sweet time and their cars have issues.   No manufacture is perfect in producing a problem free off-road vehicle.  Speed UTV will be no different.  

RG and company can not say they had no idea what they were getting into and the time it would take.  RG was there with Polaris designing the RZR and with AC/Textron designing the Wildcat XX. 

I agree there has to be a group of major investors backing this project.  

 
Sand Shark said:
I am pretty sure if Can Am, Yamaha, Polaris, Kawi and AC were to give you a peak into what goes into designing a new ride to getting it to production it would look similar to what RG and company are doing.  Only difference is they have established vendors who can make whatever changes need to be made in a timely manner.  The are dealing with major manufactures.  

Yamaha, Kawi and Honda took their sweet time and their cars have issues.   No manufacture is perfect in producing a problem free off-road vehicle.  Speed UTV will be no different.  

RG and company can not say they had no idea what they were getting into and the time it would take.  RG was there with Polaris designing the RZR and with AC/Textron designing the Wildcat XX. 

I agree there has to be a group of major investors backing this project.  
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IDK, Polaris (remember, I'm a RZR owner and like RZRs, not just hating here) still managed to put out a bunch of Turbos and Pros with exploding primary clutches.  And shoot, that's after over a decade of making RZRs, and decades longer making various CVT machines.  Clearly they're not doing what Speed/RG is doing in terms of R&D and changing vendors when needed.  

-TJ

 
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