“The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.” Benjamin Franklin
First, let the engineers identify the best solution, then let the money people into the room.
Whether you’re an automaker considering a recall, a shipyard designing a modernization, or a city planning a transit scheme, the principle holds. The cost is the pain endured to achieve the best solution; it should not dictate the deliberation.
| From bridges and buildings to codebases and consumer goods, history is full of examples where cheap is dear: • Post-war social housing, built cheaply across Europe is now being demolished or retrofitted at great expense. • Banks and governments are stuck with legacy software systems because upgrades were deferred. • The Boeing 737 MAX took shortcuts to stay cost-competitive, leading to tragedy, brand damage, and billions in losses. Quality, safety and longevity may carry a higher upfront cost, but the cost of failure, remediation or replacement is always greater. |
The pyramids were built to a design which was brilliant, yet extraordinarily expensive. But they still stand. That is sustainability, resilience, and long-term ROI, all concerns now central to transport, automotive, and logistics.
Fast-forward to post-war London. In 1945, the city had the world’s largest trolleybus network. The vehicles were capacious, fast, quiet and smooth. By 1962, the entire system had all been scrapped in favour of diesel buses, because they were cheap and required no costly infrastructure.
The system wasn’t abandoned because it failed, but because of short-term savings. Today London is spending billions to replace noisy, polluting diesels with hybrid and electric fleets because, unlike many European capitals, it has no trolleybus system.
This lesson speaks directly to today’s EVs, passenger rail, and micromobility. Similar questions echo across the transportation sector:
- Is the cheapest EV charging infrastructure really the right choice?
- Is it ever cheaper to cut corners on autonomous vehicle sensors, when a single failure could trigger mass recalls and liability?
- Is it sensible to use low-grade parts in rail track maintenance, knowing they wear faster and demand earlier replacement?
- Is it really economical to delay cybersecurity upgrades in connected vehicles, when a single hack could cost millions in fallout?
- Is it wise to underinvest in port electrification, when global regulations are tightening and customers demand cleaner supply chains?
- Is it prudent to cut back on aircraft maintenance, when the long-term cost of safety failures is reputationally and financially catastrophic?
Today’s leaders face the same dilemma. Do we design for the next generation or for the next election cycle?
Let’s make decisions about electrification, urban planning, aviation, and shipping with a fifty-year horizon, not a five-year budget cycle. The wires may be gone, but the lessons remain.
