Engineering for different countries / cultures - examples

Factual Questions
1

I’m about two weeks away from defending my PhD dissertation, and my mind is wandering a bit today, but hopefully in a therapeutic manner. I’ve had a couple of thoughts over the years that, when merged together, might make an interesting thread. I just went out on a nature walk and came back wanting to post this. :wink:

What I’m looking for are examples of engineering, not just product engineering, that may differ depending on the country and culture of the intended users.

My first example, which I heard many years ago (and might be apocryphal), was from an Electrical Engineer friend who has worked in sound processing design. For instance, he had worked at Dolby for a while. He also worked in Japan, at Panasonic / National / Matsushita denki, and while there he heard that Japanese cell phone microphones were specially designed to better pick up the higher frequency voices of Japanese women, which I thought was interesting. If pressed, I might say I agree that on average, Japanese women have a higher pitched voice, especially in a formal sense, but most individuals I’ve known don’t sound particularly higher in pitch than women in US or Europe. Hence…I dunno if this is a true tale or not.

This next example runs the risk of “running off the road” as it kind of builds on a chain of my own suppositions that may not actually be supported, hence my throwing it out there. As a long-time driver of cars, both manual and automatic, I’ve noticed that when driving in the USA at typical street speeds (25 mph/ 40 kph, 35 mph / 50 kph, etc.) I am usually at about the midpoint of one of the gears, e.g. 3rd or 4th. At such a commonly used driving speed, the car isn’t at a very high RPM, but it’s not so low as to be struggling. It is a comfortable speed, with room to go up or down without having to change gears. In other words, it seems to be an engineered feature. I believe that the gear train is probably tuned to the common speeds driven in the target market. So…do cars drive at notably different speeds in other countries, requiring a different tuning for the gearbox? Or are such speeds common worldwide, thanks to road design for good safety practices?

Any other examples you might have, please share!

2

There’s some other low hanging fruit with cars -
LHD vs RHD
Larger in the U.S. than most other countries - gas is cheaper, fuel standards less restrictive, few narrow roads or tight parking spaces, cultural preference.
Manual gearbox is rare in the U.S.; automatic gearbox is less common in Europe.

3

You might like to read this transcript of an episode of the Planet Money podcast. It asks why automotive safety standards in Europe differ from the US. If the standards were the same, the same cars could be sold in both markets. But they’re not and the podcast talks about why.

One example is that in Europe, the fronts and hoods of cars are designed to minimize injury to a pedestrian while in the US, the primary concern is minimizing injury to the driver and passengers.

4

In the U.S., semi trucks (tractors) are, these days, nearly always those with long hoods, like the one pictured below:

But, in Europe, most semis are flat-nosed, with the driver’s compartment directly over the front wheels:

There are apparently several reasons for this:

  • The longer-nosed trucks are roomier (more attractive for U.S. truckers who may own their rigs, and/or be on long trips), and easier to maintain
  • The cabover style leads to a shorter overall length for the tractor (some countries in Europe have restrictions on overall truck length), and are easier to maneuver in tight urban areas and narrower, winding roads.

More info here:

5

If anything (some) Japanese men have higher pitched voices just because of cultural influences on annunciation and intonation. Whether that affects microphone design I don’t know but I tend to doubt it, as human vocal range isn’t really that broad and the limitations with cellular communication are less about the ability of microphones to collect frequency information than the various multiplexing schemes of communication algorithms to accurately reproduce signals.

Cabovers are also more difficult to work on, especially in the field. The visibility and maneuverability characteristics are not to be overlooked but not that relevant for long haul over-the-road (OTR) transportation, and most long haulers are going from one cargo depot or warehouse to another where maneuvering isn’t as big of a problem.

Stranger

6
7

Engineering also has biases to do with gender (okay I understand you asked for culture, but gender is a bias on the same lines). Some examples are :

  1. Crash test dummies in the US are representative male sizes / weight distribution. Women are more likely to suffer in car crashes due to this.
  2. There’s no seat belts for pregnant women - especially in later trimesters
  3. Lack of females in drug dose trials leads to overmedicated women. Also - the posters educating people about the signs of an heart attack, are for men. The signs of the same in women are different.

These and other such biases are well explored in :

8

I’m by no means an encyclopedia of gear ratios, but all of the examples I know of (mostly Honda and BMW) don’t have different ratios for North American models. There are are indeed transmissions and differentials with different gearing that are only available on EU or JDM models, but I put those into two categories – sporty options that never made it to do the states due to (perceived) lack of demand and economies of scale, and the massive variety in EU and JDM engine options that we don’t get here for the same reason. That is to say, a euro spec M3 might have an optional final drive ratio that’s more aggressive (read, worse for autobahn cruising but better for racing), but it’s a rarely selected option in Germany and so BMW figures its not worth even offering here. Or there are transmissions offered in, say, Civics in Japan that aren’t available here, but that’s because Japan has Civics with 1.0, 1.2, 1.4, 1.6, and 2.0 liter engines with 3 different transmission options, but for North America everyone gets the 2.0 because that’s what the market dictates. We don’t get taxed on engine size and we don’t typically live in tight cities where 50hp is “good enough.”

Long story long, gearing is selected based on the engine characteristics, torque and redline, and not common cruising speeds, as far as I know.

9

Japanese toilets seems designed for their culture’s particular sensibilities, often including bidets, seat warmers, automatic openers, and more. But also, they almost always have a button to make a flushing noise without flushing. I understand that Japan’s consumers don’t want to be heard when they are using a public toilet so it became common practice to flush the toilet when a user was anything less than perfectly silent. Toilet makers added the flush noise button to reduce needless flushing and save water.

10

I’m doubtful too. The fundamental vocal frequency of Japanese women is not likely to be any higher than that of prepubescent children, whose voices are captured just fine by any cell phone. In addition to that, the higher frequencies that distinguish e.g. an “e” sound from an “o” sound are selected for by the shape and size of your mouth, which is probably about the same for Japanese women as for non-Japanese women.

I’ll also note the that the iPhone is the #1 choice in Japan, and I doubt it’s because the microphone is dialed in for Japanese women.

For an automatic under steady cruising conditions, the drivetrain management system chooses the gear that gives the best fuel economy consistent with not quickly destroying the engine (i.e. no lugging). This generally means a high gear, so that you end up with a pretty low engine RPM combined with a high throttle %, rather than the opposite. Cars with very small engines can’t deliver enough torque to maintain speed at low RPM, so it stands to reason the computer might choose a gear that gives a more middling RPM. But if you drive a car with a V6 or V8 engine at 30-40MPH on level ground, you’ll see a pretty low RPM on the tach, and it’ll sound like a locomotive.

11

HVAC equipment in the US, especially air conditioners, heat pumps, and refrigeration systems are stone age garbage compared to what’s available in Europe or Asia where energy prices are higher. Here it’s all about upfront install cost and no care for what it costs to run. Even if you can find something with decent specs, the service techs bemoan “high efficiency garbage” as if the low efficiency equipment from the same era would be any better. Of course most of these service techs scoff at anything they can’t figure out the right refrigerant charge from a 30 year old cheat sheet.

12

One thing that comes to mind is the excessive gadgetry that was built into Japanese automobile dashboards in the mid-80’s. The instrument clusters of higher end models often looked like something out of a pinball machine. And I remember one vehicle that had a calculator build into the top of the dashboard. (It was very odd - the numeral buttons were lined up in one row 0-9).

Contrast some of the higher-end German cars which tended to stick with big round dials (steam gage) instrument clusters.

13

Russian tanks with their automatic loaders have been getting a lot of attention lately.

Try searching for discussions on the differences between Russian fighter aircraft and those from other countries.

Or, for a most obvious example - AK-47 versus M16?

14

You mention electrical engineer: obviously the first thing which comes to mind is the different voltages, frequencies, plugs used throughout the world.

15

I know a bit about this as a pilot, and I’ve actually had the opportunity to fly some vintage Soviet fighter aircraft (MiG-15, Yak 52 and the Czech built L-39).

The early MiGs were built to be operated out of dirt strips, and serviced by conscripts. So they were made very simple, and very tough. For example, the MiG-15 has no hydraulics because the fluid could freeze in places like Siberia. Comparable fighters of the time, such as the F-86, had begun using hydraulically boosted flight controls. The Soviet solution? The MiG had a longer stick to provide mechanical advantage to the pilot. There were a number of simple solutions like that.

This philosophy continued for a long while with Soviet fighters, and was also applied to their spacecraft. In general, Soviet flight hardware was much simpler and easier to maintain compared to what we built in the U.S… That’s not to say it was always better in the overall sense, but was certainly logical and practical given the conditions.

I’ve been told the same holds largely true for the AK-47 vs M16. Simplicity over complexity and advanced features definitely has some advantages. Frankly, I wish we had more of this influence in our engineering, particularly with cars, which seem focused on ever more features.

16

Cadbury chocolate in Australia has an additive so it doesn’t melt so easily in the heat we have here.

Vehicles of all kinds use different coolants/lubricants depending on the operating temperature of their location - lubricants which will freeze solid in the cold aren’t much good for operators in northern Canada, for example.

17

Maybe this is more design than engineering, but Japan uses a bluish color in place of green in its stoplights.

This Is Why Japan Has Blue Traffic Lights Instead of Green | Reader’s Digest (rd.com)

18

Diesel passenger cars are more popular in Europe than in the USA for a couple of reasons:

  • Motor fuel is heavily taxed in Europe, so the greater fuel economy of diesel cars compared to gasoline is more important; and

  • European diesel fuel has a higher cetane number. This results in somewhat less violent combustion events (a slower rate of pressure rise during the initial phase of combustion), making the engine smoother and quieter.

19

From what I understand the Russian auto-loaders are plenty reliable, but the catch is that they’re not designed for protected ammunition storage, since they have the rounds arrayed in a circular rotating tray that’s around/below the turret ring.

So when they get hit there, that ammunition can get set off and explode or burst into intense flame, both of which tend to blow the turret off the tank.

Contrast this with Western tanks, which store the ammunition in a protected bustle at the back of the turret that is equipped with blow-out panels. If the ammo bustle is hit, the ammo blows up/catches fire, and the blow-out panels blow out, and it basically burns itself out, without harming the crew. Western tanks either have a crewman who loads the gun, and opens/closes the armored hatch to the ammo storage compartment, or an autoloader that opens/closes a hatch automatically.

It’s a design choice that was almost certainly made back in the 1960s, when the T-64 and T-72 were originally developed (the T-80 is an improved T-64, and the T-90 is an improved T-72). The Russian overriding design philosophy at the time was (and still probably is) to make a very small, nimble tank with good armor protection and a big gun.

So to make that work, they had to put in autoloaders, not put in blowout panels, and in fact, they designed their tanks for the shorter side of personnel. And it worked… their tanks are considerably smaller than Western ones, fast, well armored, and have big guns. But the tradeoff was in survivability. Presumably the Russians have a more hard-nosed approach to this than the West does, and figure that having four tank crews for every three that the West has is better than having those three be well protected. Again, a doctrinal choice not necessarily a design flaw.

Yeah, I have a Dodge Dakota and a VW Passat that are six model years apart. The difference in complexity and just general maintenance bullshit is staggering. I can go into literally any store and buy fluids for my truck. There are LOTS of options for tires. Just about any mechanic can work on it, parts are easy to come by, etc… If I choose to work on it, it’s straightforward and uncomplicated.

Meanwhile, the Passat seems to have been designed by Elven engineers and artisans somewhere in an enchanted cave deep in the Black Forest. Things that are trivially easy on my truck are somehow fiendishly tough- stuff like changing light bulbs. Fluids are all very precious Euro fluids that are about 2x as expensive and not so easily found as the standard US stuff.

And other stuff seems to wear out at an abnormal rate- tires, wipers and batteries seem to have unnaturally short lives in that car for some reason. All I can come up with is that there were design choices for looks, or because that’s how it’s done in Wulfsburg, that are very strange.

20

I’ll back this up with my own car, a Q50 with a 3.7-liter V6. I drove home for lunch today, and when cruising at 30 MPH on level ground, the engine was turning at 1200 RPM.