Rivian's 3D printing cuts costs, just like right before 1929
Ford, Rivian and GM are expanding 3D printing to cut costs, and the printers are now mostly making smaller printers.
The breakroom at one Midwest car plant lost its last free chair on Saturday. A 3D printer was sitting in it, printing a slightly smaller 3D printer.
Ford, Rivian and GM have spent the year expanding 3D printing for prototypes, factory tools and low-volume parts, as CNBC reports. The industry calls this "democratizing" the technology. I call it what it is: printers backing printers, nineteen generations deep, each one collateral for the next.
We have seen this structure before. In 2008 it was mortgage bonds packed inside other mortgage bonds, the so-called CDO-squared, a debt pile built entirely from other debt piles. In 1637 it was tulips. Today it is a desktop machine whose only output is a slightly worse desktop machine. Nobody on the factory floor is asking who holds the last one when the plastic runs out.
"The nineteenth printer is the size of a thimble," said one short seller, who asked to be identified only by his net position. "It's printing a printer you'd need a microscope to bet against. That's not a product. That's a top."
Automakers say the printers lower costs and raise speed. Every collapse I have covered lowered costs and raised speed, right up until the last minute.
I have sold everything. I am long the chair.
