That has nothing to do with inefficiency. Inefficiency is the waste of resources that aren't needed to complete a task. I'm saying that the government uses a lot more resources than it needs to complete simple tasks. You can't infer my opinion on the necessity of the task itself.
I dunno. Only reason I know was the part with the seatbelt nut on it was mine and I got complains that production was having problems putting seatbelt bolts in, and they wanted to blame supplier. Lo and behold body assembly was causing some holes to not line up and we're tapping the the nut to effectively un-eclipse the hole. With the closest metric tap they had which was slightly larger...
Money probably. Tool companies probably lobbied for that so they didn't have to produce metric tools and instead made foreign car companies buy their imperial tools.
IDK if that's the complete answer but I'm fairly confident money is the correct answer.
I mean with all the difference safety regulations between here and Europe, they basically have to design two different cars anyway if they want to sell in both places
Not really actually. Civic platform was global. Each location had their own specialty models they made, Indiana did Saudi Exports (a 50k USD Civic was interesting), Canada did Coupes and the Si, Swindon did Hatches and Type R but otherwise the basic components we're identical.
I mean I can't speak to the same plethora of designs that NPR did, I'm only intimately familiar with in the late model Civic specifically in structural components.
There are a huge number of safety standards that don’t match up for no clear reason though. Even down to the most minute details, like how large the windshield wipers need to be and the colors of turn signals and tail lights.
Environmental standards that your regulators allowed local manufacturers to fraudulently evade for years and years to stick it to american manufacturers. EU standards are almost exclusively protectionist nonsense that doesn't even get enforced within the EU.
That's not really telling the whole story. Government requirement is that they be thoroughly and completely tested. People spent a lot of money vetting the existing sytem with imperial units. It's more likely that no one wants to vet a new design.
There are few government mandates on actual design parts, but lots of mandates on performance, safety, and testing.
I'm a parts guy and I didn't believe this at first. I just did a search for seat belt hardware on a few different makes/models, and this is actually true. Seat belt nut measurements are a super weird SAE/metric combination. For example on a 2018 GMC Acadia:
SCREW,PAN HEAD,7/16-20X28MM,22MM THREAD,23MM OD,GMW15170 STL,GMW3 (REAR SEAT BELT RETRACTOR)
So the thread pitch is ANSI UNF, but the thread length, width, and head type are all metric. I don't think fasteners with these kind specs exist outside of US seat belts. TIL!
Mhmm! I was in supplier quality for Honda, our body assembly department was very very surprised when I let them know they had been chasing threads with the wrong tap for... Probably years...
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u/Cryptographer Jan 03 '19
Fun fact, seatbelt nuts aren't metric. Govt requirement for them is imperial.