Julian has a good point about copying to get the best points return.
I think that sharing cost reports (and every other static event materials) between teams is a good thing. All teams and members can learn by observing best practice, it will also make it much less likely that we will see the most common form of cheating in the cost report, which is leaving parts out. It is much too likely that other teams will spot it.
In order to alleviate Julian's concern of reducing the value of the cost event, it would probably be worthwhile to review a couple of other potential changes:
- Make the overall cost worth less of the event and make it more about report quality and the manufacturing cases
- Make the costs much more linked to design decisions. There has been a great improvement in this area with the simplification of the cost report some years ago.
- Make sure that the full cost score is still spread over the entire field. Smaller design decisions might become more important if there is a big points incentive between $11k and $11.2k
...
When I first started in FSAE the cost event was an absolute shambles. It was very easy to cheat, and I was flat out told by the teams doing well exactly how they cheated. It was a massive effort to produce each year, and had students scouring the internet for the cheapest rod ends etc. that they didn't use to make their cost as low as possible. It has never reflected the true cost of cars.
The simplification of the cost event has made it much more manageable for teams and something that can be used in the design process. For teams that haven't gone through the exercise go and find out how many points $1000 on the final design is actually worth at comp. You might be surprised at how hard this is to make up on track. Then go through the report and figure out how you could change your design to reduce your cost without sacrificing performance. It is a real eye opener.
Less parts = lower cost
Simple parts substitution without losing performance = lower cost
Not all areas are valued equally
Less material needed (either waste or on car) = lower cost
Great lessons for jobs in design and manufacturing. As long as the cost of the car reflects the actual design there is no disadvantage to sharing the reports. Although maybe we only need to share the cost summaries.
Kev