Reminds me of the old saying:
If you owe the bank $500,000 the bank owns you. If you owe the bank a billon or or three you own the bank.
Seriously, legal and tax issues are, generally, easily cleared.
I'll buy that...but there are still practical things you can't buy with money and time is the enemy here.
From what I've been watching (and I have the ability to watch it close for various reasons) and as others stated (and they are right) IA is not in a situation where they can easily change suppliers. If a single supplier can stop the production for month, what happens if another breaks away? The relationship between Ineos and its suppliers is already strained. Ineos has not the opportunity to switch between suppliers, at least not in a matter of days or even month.
If a new supplier is found you have to get the contracts right, negotiate the prices (which might involve negotiations with suppliers of the supplier), there will be a design phase, a test phase. You may have to respect licenses, you may loose licenses if a supplier is bankrupt and then you have to start from scratch. Then the material has to be sourced (which involves even more parties who need to be ready) and the material needs to be available. Maybe single parts need to be selected which need to fulfill close specifications, tools have to be manufactured, maybe parts have to be homologated, maybe these parts need to be shipped for production to somewhere in Asia and back again to Hambach (what is already the case for Grenadier parts). The supplier need to have or free up the capacity to produce it (often such things are produced in batches, so there is a delay until all is ready and then you get a limited amount of production time until the next customer is served). If electronic parts are affected homolgation is not enough, a test in the complete vehicle is necessary. And if it becomes really worse you have to perform crash tests again. Other parts (and their tools) may have to be adjusted, if another part is exchanged. Just imagine you have to switch from something round to something square because only the round part is available....that could brake the design and requires new parts around. The more individual parts are used, the worse it gets.
What if something need to be replaced which has an ECU? Owners already facing the nightmare of ECU and software integration.
Of course, all that that must not be the case, if it is a standard part available from many suppliers. Plastic clips, switches, pipes, rims, tyres, interior lights, even seat belts can be easily replaced. But go around your Grenadier and you'll find not so many standard parts. BTW, also the interior texture is not a standard one and linked to a license...also something which must be taken into account.
Take the headlight as an example. They could have choosen a standard 7" headlight. Easy to replace with other types and brands. But they decided to use unique size and a unique design only used in the Grenadier. Ineos owns parts of the development, but not all, as I know from Ineos. If they need to change the supplier, the whole chain of processes I described above has to start again and they have to pay it again. Just because of that single decision of the design department years ago. That was not smart, at least not when you start such an adventure. If they would have taken the 7" headlight they could nearly source it from every producer, taking it as it is or doing some small changes to the design (as long as the light technology is not affected you not even need to homologate it again, if you change only the bezel for example)....And there are more unique parts like this in the Grenadier.
AWo
