The Charms and Challenges of Prototype Testing

(written by Andrew’s brain. No AI invited to participate)

When an influencer presents a product in action, in all cases they are presented as completed products and attached to them are reasonable assumptions that the product has been tested properly.  We also know that the manufacturer will present any product with nothing but the highest praises possible, while the influencer, if not paid, will have freedom to present their findings from their own experiences.

All normal and acceptable, I think you will agree. But what about presenting a product during testing, before its release for sale?

Starting in about 2024, around the time that we took delivery of the HiAce, Heiner and I got involved with prototype product testing other than those that we had tested for Egon. As you might expect, as a content creator, this felt to me like an amazing opportunity to tell some fresh stories. Real life testing, failures and successes would make great content, we concluded.

Based on the fact that I really like to present actuality in all my shows, our idea was to demonstrate real-life testing processes that any product should go through before release. Not only would this content be unique, it could be really entertaining and even educational. And I think I was right. The very fact that we had issues with the products was to me vindication of this idea. But I was wrong. And as it turned out, this was quite a bad idea.

This came to light after a phone call from Headspace Campers reporting that they had lost two clients because our report of the roof conversion included a suggestion that it could do with some tweaking to make it easier to wrap up and close. Which it turned out, was quite an easy fix. But this was interpreted not that the product was being thoroughly tested before going to market, but that the product would carry through shortcomings revealed during testing - and that any testing was therefore pointless. This is the logic of some viewers. My conclusion was that they had confused a testing process with a review, because they had never seen a testing process before. Explaining this in plain English during the video did not work for everyone watching.

Then another call in the same week came from Cruiser Company whose bull bar, the very first for HiAce, had been fitted for our drive from Brisbane to Perth. Testing included days of corrugations, which we thought might break something. And to my delight as a film storyteller, it cracked in two places. Photographs of the failures were then sent to Cruiser Company for them to update their ongoing design, prior to their crash and airbag testing before release. Instead of realising the design just needed minor tweaks (removing the lightning holes as it turned out), people concluded that all Cruiser Company’s bull bar crack. I'm not kidding. Cruiser Company actually has a fantastic reputation and I'd fit their bars to my truck in a heartbeat.

It is true that trolls will attack anything. They are feebleminded enough that when they see weakness, attacking it makes them feel a bit better about their misery. But even so, the manufacturers of these components were rightfully concerned. Our combined conclusion was that demonstrating pre-production prototype testing was a bad idea, and that testing would best stay behind closed doors.

But to me, these failures were nothing but positive, because the alternative is that early consumers will suffer breakages or issues. Our work prevents that happening. Without any doubt at all, the testing we did of the many products fitted to the HiAce improved every one of them, and that everyone fitted to customers’ vans will make them better and safer.

We started sharing similar prototype testing challenges when we fitted the very first Egon 48V hub in Brisbane, prior to the trip, during which the video shows a spark, a loud bang and then a long drawn out silence. Since then there has been regular coverage of testing, and I’m pleased to say nothing nearly as entertaining has occurred since. But sharing every up and down of developing the 48V architecture would have been very unexciting, and we decided to ease back a bit, especially in these final stretch. Were we right to stop covering this part of the development process? These challenges remind me of a famous speech . . .

The Man in the Arena, a speech presented U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt at Sorbonne, Paris in 1910.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

I can reveal though, that the most challenging 48V alternator of all, was the very first one, made for the HiAce itself. While it worked almost faultlessly from day one, there were spurious LIN-Bus error codes indicated on the dashboard, that did not appear in any other installation. It turns out that the safety systems built into HiAce presented a challenge of note when it came to preventing error codes being created inside Toyota’s system. Toyota is not forthcoming with technical information about their cars beyond that which is useful to the customer, with close to nothing for platform developers. So we had to do it all ourselves, and I am very pleased to say that this month we cracked it. Egon has the worlds’ one and only 48V alternator suitable for HiAce.

This almost year long challenge is not unlike the one we would face making the Egon 48V architecture work in Toyota 48V mild-hybrid cars. Our request to Toyota for technical information returned nothing, so Egon’s 48V architecture remains incompatible with Toyota's mild hybrid cars. And we fear that this puzzle would be far more difficult to solve than any HiAce. Ineos Grenadier is our next challenge and similarly a reach-out to Ineos Australia has been greeted with silence. But we are confident that is can be overcome, and with it the Ford Super-Duty 3.0 V6 turbo-diesel next in line for release.

Right now the 48V system is running happily in Toyota 4.5 L V8, Toyota 2.8 L diesel in HiAce, Hilux, and Land Cruiser 70 series, and probably Egon’s bestseller, the Mercedes-Benz sprinter van.

Thank you for being with us on this journey.

Warmest regards,

Andrew and Heiner