Toyota to spend $100 million on advanced research in North America

[ericmvest]

Originally Posted by masrapido

Japanese secret agents posing as automotive engineers?

If GM has any sense, you can bet they've ripped apart Camrys, Accords and Altimas before. They don't think everything up themselves either.

See my above post about corporate espionage. Also, I did not say anything was illegal about product tear downs of products that are on the market.

[masrapido]

Originally Posted by ericmvest

I guess I know enough about business to know that corporate espionage goes on that is not only unethical, but illegal. Don’t you remember when Volkswagen settled with General Motors for the damages caused by Lopez taking confidential General Motors' documents with him when he left General Motors to go to Volkswagen?

Foreign companies open research operations in the U.S. and hire the competitions' engineers and scientists at inflated salaries to find out what the competition is doing. Hopefully Toyota’s motivations are honorable, but many foreign companies’ motivations in setting up research operations in the United States have not been. It is naive to think other wise.

Anything is possible, but I don't think we should be paranoid. Toyota has given us no reason to think they're trying to do anything illegal here. Even if they were, I'd imagine they would do so in a slyer fashion.

[plane]

This totally makes it all better.
It makes all the difference in the world.
I'm now a big Toyota fan.
So what if it's espionage?
Over the next twenty years, those 10 researchers will spend a fortune at 7-11,
the pioneering, quintessential North American-owned and operated convenience store.

[BGH]

If all Toyota did was copy and steal GM's technology how come the companies have almost no similarities? When it comes to transmissions engines, safety features, hybrid tech, Toyota has completely different stuff.

By the way the Toyota production system is a great thing. The fact that you can built your product better than anyone else is a great competitive advantage.

By the way all automakers take apart each other cars to see what the other is doing. GM even explained how they cut up a Jetta to see how VW got to ride so good.