We are All Beta Testers

The success of rapid prototyping and incomplete product deliveries made silicon valley too confident. We are seeing the impact as the culture of Beta releases moves in to energy and transportation.

Talk to any person responsible for technology and they will warn you against installing system update “.0”. It is long-standing precedence to wait for at least “.1” before putting important work systems in to a new operating environment.

Why do these updates come out before they are ready? The answer is that technology producers learned long ago that there were a certain number of the population that would be pleased to Beta test different products. This public beta gives the developers the ability to identify changes needed before moving to full production. Using the first public issue to identify even more issues is extremely valuable because it saves development time. It also reduces time to market.

And, after all, it doesn’t create significant harm if it fails. Right?

This is the theory behind rapid prototyping and early releases that has followed technology companies from software to hardware to cars and even energy.

Early releases are based on an expectation by the producer that the system or items can be offered to the public before they are fully baked with little consequence. Perhaps a waiver or some other usage license with extensive get out of jail free language is executed before the product is put in to the consumer’s hands.

Of course, if a company is relatively small, what is there to lose? Worst case, the company fails (which was the probable outcome anyway). Best case, it is a huge success and the legal liability considerations come as there are assets to watch over.

Time is more than money, it is time. Time is perhaps the most valuable material in the world as there is no amount of money that can purchase more. This is the driving principle behind too early releases. The problem it has created is that it is no longer relegated to the relatively benign worlds of software and computers. It has moved now into our energy and transportation infrastructure where it can have a much more dangerous impact.

Consider a couple of examples.

Out of a desire to see what the future held and my personal willingness to be part of the beta testers, I purchased a BMW plug in hybrid. As expected, the car was a great vehicle for driving. Handling, acceleration, all of the things that one expects when they drive a German car.

What I did not expect were the system’s issues. First, at 3 years old and less than 40,000 miles, the battery failed. It was still under warranty, but it would have been a $7,000 repair had it not been. The expected life is 8 years. So, just a bit short of target.

Then at 51,000 miles the compressor failed. This being the first time I have ever had to repair a compressor on any car, it stunned me that it failed this early. In addition to failing about 5 years earlier than expected, the new compressor, in order to work in the hybrid vehicle, had its own electric motor. This effectively doubled the cost of the compressor from about $1,000 to over $2,000.

Ask anyone buying a hybrid/ev whether they know the repair costs on parts can be 2x and I expect the responses will be quite interesting.

Moving the vehicle in to production before the parts were set up to last the typical life of a luxury car was BMW’s compromise to fast prototyping. My fault for not investigating repair costs a little further. The car is no longer with our family. Happily, our insurance costs dropped $200 per month when we replaced the 5 year old car with a new vehicle of similar value. I guess the insurance companies are seeing these costs in their repairs.

A second example is the great Ice storm of 2021. Texas relies on an electric grid defined by market forces. I should qualify that, the market forces include central planning forces (renewable tax credits) introduced by Washington. This freedom to react to market drivers has lead Texas political leaders down a path of fast prototyping they did not understand. They were the beta testers of a full electric grid beta that failed to model extreme events sufficiently. Not applying a zero temperature, multi-day duration event lead to the worst case scenario causing loss of life.

This is the root cause of beta testing failures, inadequate modeling with a distinctly low cost for failure.

It is difficult to see a way to change this without going down a path of regulation that stymies innovation. Perhaps there needs to be a bonding function where producers of the first series of products post reserves sufficient to cover damages. This would cause the manufacturers to slow down sufficiently, both because of the cost of the bond and the concern of losing it.

It is certainly possible to limit this theory to those items where people’s lives are at risk. Cars would be one. Energy systems would be another. Medicine is certainly one that comes to mind these days.

I am absolutely in favor or pricing time dearly. Innovation as fast as possible is the life-blood of a dynamic economy. It is simply important to recognize that there is such a thing as too fast.

We are all Beta Testers Now