11-06-2017, 11:36 AM
(11-06-2017, 11:08 AM)MidTowner Wrote: His point still stands and is interesting, though. If June 21, 2018 is the target date, vehicle testing on the last vehicle would have to start on January 1st. If August 22nd, 2018 is the target date, vehicle testing would have to start at the beginning of March 2018. How likely does any of that sound right now?
It’s still hard to say. If the LRVs that aren’t arriving yet are having minor adjustments and fixes done so that they are completely ready to drive when they get here, and if assembly of the remaining vehicles is continuing, conceivably we could suddenly have a vehicle arriving every week. I thought the last news was that everything up to vehicle 9 was in a reasonably advanced stage of assembly.
Then as to the testing, I’m not worried about the burn-in. 600km is something like 15 round trips, so running regular service for a week would be amply sufficient for burn-in. What is much less clear to me is how much other testing is required, especially on each car — things like safety systems and procedures that aren’t meant to be used regularly (indeed, like car airbags, we hope they end up being utterly useless). And of course if the burn-in uncovers sufficiently serious problems then we could be in a very bad shape indeed.
I assume and hope they don’t feel a need to do a pull-through test on each vehicle. If one vehicle can be successfully pulled-through and if the new vehicles fit through a loading gauge plate, then per-vehicle pull-throughs would be superfluous. In general, tests of “the system” shouldn’t need to be repeated 14 times. But other tests will need to be done on each vehicle.