I watched the video. Gale Banks comes across as a typical engineer: technical, ornery, fact-oriented, verbose and somewhat snarky. I have some familiarity with the type as my wife is married to an engineer. We are definitely tough to love.
While I don’t have good cause to dispute Gale’s analysis, I do have an ingrained skepticism when one competitor analyzes another. So here goes my own verbose and somewhat snarky comments.
It is very positive that Pedal Monster did an FMEA on their product. This is a process that identifies possible failure modes, assesses their risk and is used to make a product more robust and safer. But it is odd that Gale says that they ran an FMEA program. I don’t know what this means – I think of FMEA as a process with very specific steps and brainstorming. You may use a program to help you think thru issues and document them, but the FMEAs that my teams executed were done by human engineers with domain expertise. I can’t imagine leaving an FMEA to a computer program. So I am a little skeptical here.
Gale’s point that their competitor manufactures their device in Turkey whereas his is manufactured in the USA is irrelevant. The key is to manufacture the product in a high volume circuit board assembly factory with high standards. While there are some of these in the USA, most are in Asia (China, Taiwan, Malaysia, etc.). It is unlikely that a captive factory, such as Gale’s, could come close to the quality of a assembler who is used to building Apple or Samsung cell phones or other similar devices. So I have some skepticism here as well.
Gail’s point that his company makes high volume, complex engines for the US Military is a valid plus. But I would have more confidence if I knew that these were the same engineers who designed Pedal Monster. Often times, companies contract out engineering to low-cost bidders, especially when the product is outside their mainline business.
Pedal Monster may easily be a superior product, and I admit to viewing the video from a skeptical perspective. There is much to admire about Gale’s presentation, and I Ieft out mentioning some important parts where I am in total agreement, which isn’t fair to Pedal Monster.
Still, as an engineer, I see all these devices as a risk. There are many things that can go wrong, even if the device works well nearly all the time for nearly all people. A simpler approach might be to buy some lead weights and put them in your right shoe.
