[HN Gopher] The size of BYD's factory
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The size of BYD's factory
Author : elsewhen
Score : 107 points
Date : 2024-11-24 14:37 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Just wait till Trump hits 'em with tariffs. That'll fix 'em ---
| NOT!
|
| China is rapidly de-carbonizing and leaving the West behind.
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-07-16/chinas-renewa...
| passwordoops wrote:
| https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-has-more-than-...
|
| For reference, England consumed 1 billion tons of coal during
| it's peak coal consumption _decade_.
|
| So please stop with the "China is decarbonizing" crap, because
| they are not. A more accurate statement is "China understands
| the importance of energy and is applying an as-much-of-
| everything-approach to achieve its industrial goals"
| tzs wrote:
| Also please stop comparing absolute numbers between countries
| with more than an order of magnitude population difference.
| makotech221 wrote:
| cool now compare the population difference.
|
| In order to build renewable infrastructure, you do need to
| expend a lot of energy: mining, processing, transporting.
| China is using coal to build up that infrastructure and
| converting that dirty energy into clean.
| graemep wrote:
| Its not just about population. The UK was the world's
| foremost manufacturing nation at the time, just as China is
| now. It was the centre of manufacturing of an empire so the
| relevant comparison is with the population of the empire.
| There were no real alternative sources of energy - no
| nuclear, no solar, no wind (in a form suitable for most
| industry).
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The British Isles were not providing food, heating,
| cooling, electric light, raw materials etc for the
| population of the British Empire.
|
| And if you want to count the population consuming
| industrial goods as the population that "causes" those
| emissions, then China looks even better, because they are
| producing goods consumed by literally billions of people.
| graemep wrote:
| > The British Isles were not providing food, heating,
| cooling, electric light, raw materials etc for the
| population of the British Empire.
|
| Most of those did not use coal in most of the empire in
| the year of peak consumption: 1913.
|
| It was providing a lot of raw materials.
| passwordoops wrote:
| So when GHG absorbs energy from the sun, it's on a per
| capita basis?
| tzs wrote:
| No, but when talking about whether a country is emitting
| more than its "fair" share of GHG for any reasonable
| definition of "fair" per capita is what matters, unless
| someone can make a convincing argument that some people
| have some kind of natural or divine right to contribute
| more to GHG emissions than others.
|
| More details are in this comment [1].
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42229636
| ivewonyoung wrote:
| Why didn't you include England's total historical
| contributions to GHG emissions and technologies in your
| comparison then?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| You are comparing a country that was probably less than 5% of
| China's current population during that peak. And not only is
| China 17.5% of the world's population, it is also the major
| manufacturing hub for the majority of the world. 10 times as
| much coal as the UK's peak is still a tiny number.
|
| The reality is that China is emitting _much_ less CO2 per
| capita than the US or Canada, and just a bit more than the
| more industrious EU countries like Germany. And this is
| territorial emissions: if you take into account what
| percentage of those emissions is going into goods produced in
| China but bought by those very countries, it 's probably
| around the EU average if not lower.
|
| Is China anywhere near a net 0 goal? No, not even close. But
| among industrial powers, it is one of the ones that went by
| far the most into green power.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| Yes, China still uses a metric fuckton of a coal, but they
| _are_ decarbonizing: every year, the % of energy generated by
| coal goes down 1%, and renewables go up 1%.
|
| https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/china/
|
| Just to underline, this is not notional capacity (which
| inflates solar/wind), but actual power generation. This is
| all the more impressive because China's total consumption is
| simultaneously increasing rapidly.
| mdorazio wrote:
| The 100% tariffs are already in place under the Biden
| administration. Trump only needs to prevent a Mexico
| manufacturing loophole.
|
| However, BYD still has _the entire rest of the world_ to sell
| to. They will be fine.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Yes, BYD will be fine.
|
| And they know this is --- hence they are doubling the size of
| their already massive factory.
|
| Guess who won't be fine? US auto manufacturers. They won't be
| able to compete anywhere other than the USA. And China loves
| it.
| api wrote:
| US auto makers have been on the ropes since the 1980s. My
| hypothesis is that their heyday was 50s and 60s "greaser"
| culture and they kinda got their heads stuck in that era.
| "Golden ages" are incredibly dangerous.
|
| When people started wanting just practical small reliable
| affordable cars as the price of gas increased and cars
| became just an appliance they didn't respond to that market
| and the Japanese did. It's been either sideways or downhill
| since. The only thing keeping them alive now is
| unnecessarily large status symbol trucks and that is a
| limited market that will be trashed if oil spikes again.
| There's got to be a limit somewhere to how much people will
| pay to show off or own the libs or whatever motivates one
| to buy an F-5000 Super Chungus.
|
| They are still mostly missing the EV boat. First Tesla
| caught them asleep and now China. Culturally they still are
| not crazy about EVs because they do not go vroom vroom.
|
| Trump might string them along a bit longer with
| protectionism and a pull back on EVs to push more vroom
| vroom but meanwhile BYD will eat the entire world.
| wbl wrote:
| The US consumer does not buy small new cars.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| As has been pointed out, they sure did in the 70's when
| there was a huge financial incentive.
|
| I expect that acting like all American's want are $60K+
| luxury cars is what is going to take the US auto industry
| into the next massive downward spiral.
| peterbecich wrote:
| I.m.o. consumer weight on safety has dramatically
| increased since the 70s. Frugality has decreased. Of
| course it is an arms race with all the other giant cars
| already on the road. Consequently GM etc. are trying to
| appease US consumers with giant EVs.
| peterbecich wrote:
| I agree with you. I.m.o. consumer preference is the root
| cause of the issue.
|
| The 2008 bailout had some strings attached to modernize.
| I believe the Chevrolet Spark was one of these strings: h
| ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Spark#Third_genera
| ti.... It was eventually discontinued.
| parpfish wrote:
| I think there's a little bit more to the golden age
| story.
|
| The "malaise era" started in the early 70s as a perfect
| storm of fuel economy restrictions and more widespread US
| economic woes. This lead to decades of low quality cars
| being made.
|
| US automakers not only lost out on consumers looking for
| simple appliances to drive, but ALSO the enthusiasts that
| liked driving and cars. The car guys that came of age in
| this era have two choices: chase after the same American
| muscle cars your dad liked, or switch over to imported
| hot hatches and the JDM tuner scene
| jmb99 wrote:
| > This lead to decades of low quality cars being made.
|
| Really, it was only a bit over one decade. Taking GM as
| an example, their last great cars were produced for the
| 1973 model year, after which point the economy,
| emissions, and efficiency requirements resulted in
| drastic (bad) changes. It only took until the late 1980s
| for them to make some genuinely good vehicles though. For
| instance, the Buick Regal/Oldsmobile Cutlass/Pontiac
| Grand Prix from 1988 were well built, comfortable,
| handled (relatively) well, and were very reliable -
| especially from 1990 with the introduction of the 3.8L
| V6, what is likely GM's most reliable engine ever built
| (second possibly only to the small block V8). The same
| was tru for their sports cars (while not making much
| power out of the displacement, the TPI V8 firebird and
| corvette were similarly efficient to European sports cars
| at the time). Many GM cars from that era (late 1980s
| until early 2000s) are some of the most reliable American
| cars ever built.
|
| The same is true for Ford; for example, the 1988 Probe,
| while not the most popular vehicle, was very reliable,
| comfortable, efficient, and well-built, likely in part
| due to their partnership with Mazda. It could reasonably
| be argued that as early as 1980, Ford was making pretty
| good vehicles, with the Mercury Grand Marquis/LTD Crown
| Victoria being well-built and reliable, if very down on
| power with questionable efficiency.
|
| Not worth talking about Chrysler because they didn't know
| how to make good/reliable cars before the fuel crisis and
| they certainly didn't figure out how to afterwards.
|
| I know this isn't your main point but it's worth
| considering that the US did actually figure out how to
| build really good cars again, and it didn't take them
| _that_ long. Mid-90s to early-00s American cars were, in
| my opinion, at the perfect point of technological
| advancement: CAD and high-precision /low-tolerance
| manufacturing resulting in engines that last well over
| 300k miles without major servicing; enough computer
| advancement to have high precision per-cylinder fuel and
| spark control with accurate air metering leading to
| better power, efficiency, and reliability; and enough
| material advancement to have interior and exterior build
| quality that makes the car look like it wasn't built in a
| shed. But most importantly, they hadn't figured out how
| or where to cheap out on components, so you end up with
| the "unreliable" components (like the 4L60e and 4T60e
| transmissions) "only" lasting 200k miles before requiring
| a rebuild - which in today's money is still less than
| $1000, let alone 20-30 years ago.
|
| From the birth of the US auto industry until about 2010,
| the only period where there wasn't a single American car
| worth buying brand new was probably 1974-1981. The
| "malaise era" itself was by the loosest definitions only
| about 13 years, from 1974-1987.
| grecy wrote:
| > _US auto makers have been on the ropes since the
| 1980s._
|
| Without a doubt.
|
| In about 2000 the US automakers sued the EPA because
| their proposed clean air regulations for about 2009 were
| "impossible".
|
| They were actually more lax than what Japanese automakers
| were already selling cars for in the year 2000.
|
| So the automakers sued the US government to admit that in
| 2009 they couldn't build cars that were as clean as cars
| Japan was already making in 2000. That says a lot.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Their downfall was earlier than that. Post WW2 everyone
| was looking to buy a new car (people kept their old one
| during the war because production was going to the war
| effort). The car companies had such demand they moved to
| a 'car salesman' sales structure to milk every customer
| as much as possible because demand was so much higher
| than production. They got hooked on the easy money and
| entrenched a lot of bad business practices/policies as a
| result.
|
| GM for all intents and purposes died (remember we funded
| a whole new GM, a completely new business entity, during
| the 2008 financial crisis timeframe) and yet new GM just
| 'invested' 6 billion dollars in stock buybacks, millions
| in management bonuses while conducting employee layoffs.
| But they will have no problem coming and asking the
| government for billions 'to remain competitive' soon.
| F'm.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| > Guess who won't be fine? US auto manufacturers.
|
| The US is trying to do industrial policy (like now in
| China, and previously in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, and in
| Germany before that), but without the key aspect -- _export
| discipline_ -- that makes industrial policy work. I 'm
| thinking about Joe Studwell's _How Asia Works_. Everything
| I 'm seeing in the US reminds me more of the failures in
| Indonesia and India than of the successes in Japan and
| Korea. With the exceptions of -- "say what you will about
| Elon, but" -- Tesla and SpaceX. Bidenonics will take time
| to bear fruit, though, and could yet yield some successes.
|
| Point is, using tariffs to protect "infant industry" is the
| opposite of export discipline.
|
| (As a side note, most of those countries also had major
| land reform, whereas property rights -- sorry, "rule of
| law" -- are pretty sacred in the US )
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| The US government bailed out GM under Obama. Do you know
| what GM did this month? They spent billions on stock
| buybacks and millions on bonuses while firing a ton of
| people. F'em. They aren't a car company, they are a stock
| company that happens to make cars, a route most large
| American companies seem to be taking (see also Boeing,
| whose management cares so much about/is detached from their
| product that they relocated their management away from the
| business and to Washington DC).
| kwere wrote:
| Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia and many other countries turned
| sour on importing chinese EVs in favour of some kind of
| protectionism. Most developing countries dont have the
| infrastucture for EVs. Europe hit BYD with a 17 % tariff (10%
| being the standard)
| marcodiego wrote:
| BYD has factories in Brazil: https://valorinternational.glo
| bo.com/business/news/2024/09/0...
| https://en.byd.com/news/byd-company-announces-first-
| factory-...
| bdangubic wrote:
| why does that matter?! :)
| teractiveodular wrote:
| When they're locally built, tariffs don't apply. Like
| Japanese, Korean and European car manufacturers, BYD will
| do the same in Mexico and eventually the US if necessary.
| poniko wrote:
| The scale is just insane .. hard to comprehend a 3km/2mi wide
| factory.
| Archelaos wrote:
| To my knowledge the largest factory in the world is BASF
| Ludwigshafen (Germany) with 10 km2. Here is an aerial photo:
| https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:LudwigshafenBASF2017-0...
| Followed by Volkswagen Wolfsburg (also Germany) with 6.5 km2.
| Seems the BYD factory is competing with it for rank #2.
| 1equalsequals1 wrote:
| It will be 50 sq. km by the time the extension is finished
| [1].
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/TaylorOgan/status/1859149340897628545
| perihelions wrote:
| Is there a list of the world's largest factories, in a liberal
| sense of the word? The ones I'm aware of only consider
| _individual structures_ [0], which excludes industrial plants
| that span multiple buildings, like this one.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_buildings
| kzrdude wrote:
| One of the old classics in this genre of largest factories,
| BASF, https://www.basf.com/jp/en/who-we-
| are/organization/locations...
| buildbot wrote:
| Which if this BYD site is 2x2 miles for ~5sq km, BASF is
| twice as large at 10sq km! Wow
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > ~5sq km
|
| I get over 6 km^2.
|
| Point still taken.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| 2x2 miles is over 10km^2. Barely.
| tame3902 wrote:
| Volkswagen's main factory is also pretty large: "Spanning
| more than 6.5 km2, the Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg is now
| the largest automotive plant in Europe, employing more than
| 60,000 people."[0]
|
| [0]: https://www.volkswagen.de/de/marke-und-
| erlebnis/volkswagen-e...
| mrtksn wrote:
| I still see memes about how the large government is preventing
| progress and causing de-industrialisation being pushed on
| Twitter, usually putting some European countries graphs next to
| USA graphs and showing how EU performed worse than USA after
| 2008(I guess that's the year the regulations kicked in), however
| they never compare China and the USA on these graphs.
|
| Because then the libertarian propaganda turns into communist
| propaganda.
| ChumpGPT wrote:
| US/German manufacturers just do assembly, they don't manufacture
| parts, so they only need assembly plants. BYD is a vertically
| integrated manufacturer. They make everything in-house which
| helps drive down costs. This huge footprint results in having all
| those different manufacturing lines under one roof. They depend
| on no one for finished parts, the only supply chain is raw
| materials.
| saturn8601 wrote:
| People are waking up, and to be fair, Tesla really led the way
| in the US for the last few years because they had no choice(no
| one would take them seriously). The question is can the West
| turn the ship around before its too late?
| hnthrowaway0328 wrote:
| When Trump ups everything from China by 100% I guess US would
| be able to make something with profit?
| greenthrow wrote:
| That is not remotely how tariffs work.
| hnthrowaway0328 wrote:
| Doesn't a tariff drive up prices? (or at least intended
| for that)
| 8note wrote:
| I doubt it. It's much easier to either launder or
| manufacture the goods in a third country, that benefits
| from most of the same incentives that made Chinese
| manufacturing go through the roof.
|
| Americans will be buying Chinese goods with "made in
| Vietnam" or "made in Mexico" stamped on it. The American
| profit will be in setting up those laundering schemes
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Depends if we keep the CHIPS act and the IRA.
| https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/econographics/the-
| ira-...
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Not entirely correct. Boeing, despite all the bad press,
| actually reversed course on this recently. 787's wing was made
| by a supplier, but 777X's wing is actually built in-house,
| right next to the main factory, starting from carbon fiber
| fabric.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| How much can Boeing do this though? My understanding is in
| the past they used moving some of their production to a
| country as leverage to win contracts. They are a company that
| moved their headquarters to DC because management treats the
| product as secondary as if they make widgets. Until they
| reverse that they aren't moving in the right direction.
| harrall wrote:
| I believe outsourcing can be a symptom of not innovating
| anymore.
|
| Imagine having to contract out every prototype to a metal
| working shop -- it slows down your ability to iterate because
| you can't just go downstairs and _try it_.
|
| But once you have a design set in stone, outsourcing is cheaper
| than doing it in-house. These companies specialize in producing
| parts with economies of scale.
|
| But if you do it for too long, you kind of lose the ability to
| quickly iterate. Striking a balance is hard.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| So the factory accepts iron ore, crude oil, coal, lithium ore,
| bauxite, monazite, copper ores, rubber, and soy beans at one
| end and spits out finished cars at the other?
|
| They don't even outsource their nylon zip ties?
| billfor wrote:
| Just like Ford used to do.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Don't forget USA auto companies also outsource their design
| work, CAD, etc. My understanding is that TATA used to have a
| whole floor at Chrysler.
| rkagerer wrote:
| _the only supply chain is raw materials_
|
| Citation needed, this seems exaggerated. Eg. I'm sure they use
| IC's and I'd be very surprised if the facility includes a fab.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| They, BYD, have their own semiconductor R&D and manufacturing
| subsidiary called BYD semiconductor.
|
| EDIT: Seems like it is a division, so not a spin-off.
| edhelas wrote:
| All this to produce machines of 2T to displace 80kg of human on
| average (think about it, the battery weight more than what it
| actually need to move on average) and maintain/develop car
| dependency infrastructures.
|
| This is the worst way of improving our efficiency and progress
| toward a more optimized, efficient economy and reducing massively
| our climate and biodiversity impact.
|
| I want those kind of factories to produce trains, bicycles...
| everything that can move people in a more efficient way than
| those "cars".
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the worst way of improving our efficiency and progress
| toward a more optimized, efficient economy_
|
| The worst except the others. Like sure, retooling our
| metropolises might be nice. But it's also not only expensive
| but incredibly carbon intensive, to say nothing of not wanted
| by most of the world.
| wbl wrote:
| It's not that expensive to put down a bike lane.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _not that expensive to put down a bike lane_
|
| Scale-wise insufficient. We aren't going to get to net zero
| with bike lanes.
| recursive wrote:
| Who said net zero? Perfect is the enemy of good.
| jimjimjim wrote:
| Comments like these need to be included in almost any
| discussion about transport or in fact any discussion
| about any change. Most people (or both sides) dismiss
| ideas because they are not 100% perfect. And ignore the
| fact that nothing can be perfect
| robocat wrote:
| It is outrageously expensive.
|
| "Building 101km of cycleways across Christchurch to cost
| $301m", population 405000, So that is $750 per person,
| which is about 1% of median earnings for a year. That is
| paid for mostly by car owners (via petrol tax and car tax)
| and a bit by home owners.
|
| And the new infrastructure is visibly under-utilised - at
| best a few % of traffic. You could force people to bike
| using laws and economics I guess... I would be interested
| to see a per-trip cost analysis for cyclists.
|
| There is just no way to economically justify bikelanes
| everywhere - bikes are great for some trips and some
| demographics.
|
| Can you point me to a report that has a cost/benefit
| analysis of adding bike lanes for a city? A city that isn't
| "ideal" for cyclists...
| pg314 wrote:
| > It is outrageously expensive.
|
| Quite the opposite.
|
| > Can you point me to a report that has a cost/benefit
| analysis of adding bike lanes for a city? A city that
| isn't "ideal" for cyclists...
|
| https://www.benelux.int/wp-
| content/uploads/2023/03/Report_Cy...
| robocat wrote:
| The paper suggests biking only 118 days per year. The car
| ownership costs are not "saved" - the projected savings
| are wrong. Ownership car costs are 0.167/km and savings
| by riding a bicycle are 0.349/km.
|
| Two ignored real costs of bicycling are lack of
| optionality (planning ahead for weather changes, locked
| into transport mode) and carrying capacity (groceries,
| children, sports equipment, etcetera). And I'd like to
| see other costs of cycling (wet weather gear, helmets,
| locks) included.
|
| About the quality I expected.
| nehal3m wrote:
| 301 million dollars for 101km of infrastructure is cheap
| compared to building highways [0]. The price of the usual
| infrastructure is a burden on everyone as well, not just
| car owners.
|
| You shouldn't have to force anyone to choose any
| particular mode of transport. I think people choose what
| is most convenient and that happens to be cycling in
| urban areas where there is safe infrastructure for it.
|
| Your question reads pretty weird to me; building cycling
| infrastructure makes a city more ideal for cyclists,
| that's exactly the point. I didn't read it yet, but I
| found a paper that seems interesting and in the direction
| of your question. [1]
|
| [0]https://www.worldhighways.com/news/european-highway-
| construc... [1]https://economics.acadiau.ca/tl_files/site
| s/economics/resour...
| robocat wrote:
| > is cheap compared to building highways
|
| How about cycleways are cheap compared to building
| airports?
|
| Cycle lanes are not substitutes for highways nor
| airports.
| mkl wrote:
| This seems to be the source of that quote:
| https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-
| press/news/124611551/building-10...
|
| Note that this is NZ dollars, and that spend is over ~16
| years. I.e. ~NZ$46/year/person [?] US$27/year/person at
| current rates. The article compares the costs to road and
| motorway costs in Christchurch.
| 8note wrote:
| Bike lane construction tends to be lumped in with regular
| road maintenance, which makes it look expensive, but the
| really expensive part is doing repairs on the existing
| roads. "Building bike lanes" for 300M is more palatable
| than "fixing potholes and repainting" for 300M
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Bike lanes and bikes aren't alternatives to most of what
| motorized transport is providing.
| wbl wrote:
| Most car trips are very short, and commuting to a CBD is
| easily served by transit.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| That still doesn't solve last mile supply of stores and
| offices, nor does it solve construction, policing,
| emergency services, etc.
|
| Each of those likely has possible alternatives to
| motorized transport, but they're all _different_
| alternatives. Meanwhile, today, they all share the same
| road network with regular civilian commute, sharing costs
| and mutually improving efficiency.
|
| Put differently: instead of imagining all passenger cars
| replaced by bikes, imagine all _roads_ replaced by bike
| lanes, then extrapolate from that.
| acdha wrote:
| At least 80% of urban car trips could be replaced since
| the invention of the e-cargo bike. That doesn't mean it
| works everywhere, of course, but there are millions and
| millions of people driving a single digit number of
| miles, usually at slower than bicycle doors-to-door
| speeds, and are never carrying 3+ kids and hundreds of
| pounds of cargo.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Think roads, not cars.
| acdha wrote:
| I am. Most of our road costs are for suburban car
| commuters and for subsidized car storage. If it was
| business usage and transit we'd need far fewer lanes,
| especially since businesses would use rail transportation
| more if the roads weren't so heavily subsidized.
| dublinben wrote:
| 30% of the US can't drive, whether because of disability,
| age, financial hardship, immigration status, or any
| number of other reasons. Why don't you hold the current
| system of "motorized transport" to the same impossible
| standard of solving all transportation needs as you
| expect of bikes?
| at_compile_time wrote:
| The problem with car-dependent cities is that they are very
| spread out. Why does public transit suck and why don't many
| people use the bike lanes? Because everything is far away.
|
| We've built our cities this way. Our tax system encourages
| it (by not taxing land value directly and exempting
| development from taxation), and our zoning requires it (my
| city is almost entirely zoned exclusively for single-family
| detached housing). Bike lanes are nice, but they don't make
| a 25-km ride through endless suburbia any shorter.
|
| You can't just copy the superficial traits of bikeable
| European cities and hope to get the same results. We need
| to fundamentally rethink the way our cities are allowed and
| encouraged to grow.
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| Why can't both be done? Bicycles are already cheap, and an
| electric bike can be purchased under $1000. Not everyone is
| capable of limiting their commute to the ~10 mile radius an
| e-bike easily permits. Some of us still need cars,
| unfortunately. Sometimes the weather is bad, or we have things
| to haul around, or multiple people to move.
|
| Is there some technology that enables high-speed travel and
| weighs less than a human, which seems to be an important
| criteria to you?
| jbm wrote:
| In Japan electric bikes were relatively cheap as you say but
| in Canada, a bike to carry my family costs more than 5-6k,
| closer to 10k.
|
| I can't even import those electric mama charis because of
| unwarranted concern about batteries.
|
| Hard to support bike infrastructure when safetyism means bike
| routes are only for singles and the rich.
| okdood64 wrote:
| Sounds swell. But people like cars. Not realistic.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| Unfortunately the only places in the world that I know of
| building new cities are UAE, Saudi, Egypt, China. I don't think
| any of those are building for car-less.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| A bicycle is not suitable for the 100km trip to see my parents,
| and the only country that can operate trains at a satisfactory
| level is Japan (and maybe China, but I don't trust their data).
|
| So no, its either this or a gas car. Both are real solutions
| that work, today. Changing society from the bottom up is not.
| jajko wrote:
| For the 1000th time here, even extremely well developed public
| transport by US standards and various financial punishments for
| owning cars is simply not enough for people to drop them, the
| convenience is simply too high.
|
| Look at Switzerland, it has all you want - one of the best rail
| networks in the world, its tiny, rest of public transport is as
| good as western Europe can get yet... folks still keep buying
| new cars, highways are getting fuller every year.
|
| Maybe some AI driven community (or even private fleet) of
| shared cars to be hailed in Uber style on demand would work,
| reducing number of cars overall and the need to own personal
| one(s). Not there yet.
| okaram wrote:
| I don't think anyone envisions having _no_ cars; public
| transportation make it so we don 't _need_ cars, and other
| nudges make it so we have _fewer_ cars than we would
| otherwise have.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _All this to produce machines of 2T to displace 80kg of human
| on average (think about it, the battery weight more than what
| it actually need to move on average)_
|
| Actually, if you pay attention to scales and sizes, it's _so
| very little to achieve so much_. What you 're seeing is
| tremendous efficiencies concentrated on a small piece of land,
| affecting transportation on a vast scale.
| kristianp wrote:
| I agree that cars are at least double the mass they need to be.
| The size of cars needed for a school run or to drive to work
| are generally quite small, but most people seem to have giant
| trucks for the occasional times they go camping or carry
| something large.
| felipelemos wrote:
| > but most people seem to have giant trucks for the
| occasional times they go camping or carry something large.
|
| This is the reality in United States, but not in most of the
| world.
| acdha wrote:
| I'm a bike commuter, all on board for transit, etc. but too
| much of the world - especially North America - is built around
| cars exclusively and that's not changing any time soon because
| doing so would require things like massive rezoning to avoid
| people needing to travel such long distances just to function.
|
| If we are going to have cars, I'd prefer they be smaller, safer
| EVs contributing 1/3 the carbon footprint of the status quo.
| Every bit of savings buys years to make further changes, and it
| directly saves lives and improves quality of life for a billion
| people. Even if climate change was not happening, it'd be worth
| doing for the improvements in cardiovascular health, disruption
| of sleep patterns and other consequences of engine noise, local
| water and soil pollution, etc.
| p2detar wrote:
| There is a clear reason why such factories are being built in
| China and if you are a USA or German citizen, you wouldn't like
| it.
|
| In a BBC article from a couple of days ago [0], they hinted
| that China intends to take the lead into transitioning
| developing countries from fossil fuels to green tech. They
| produce batteries, EVs and solar panels. Just this year alone
| Pakistan of all the countries, imported 13 gigawatts (GW) of
| solar panels. For context - the UK has 17GW of installed solar
| in total.
|
| China is aiming to take place #1 as top world economy and it is
| near perfect how they plan to frame it - as a climate change
| friendly initiative.
|
| 0 - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3rx2drd8x8o
| lazyeye wrote:
| How is the power being generated for all this manufacturing
| capacity?
| timomaxgalvin wrote:
| Pakistan has better geography for solar.
| pornel wrote:
| World's response to the climate crisis is already dangerously
| delayed, and we're at a point where we need anything ASAP.
| We've ran out of time to massively overhaul infrastructure
| everywhere.
|
| The US and UK apparently can't even build a single high speed
| rail line any more.
|
| Car dependency sucks, but we won't be able to fix that in the
| short term, but at least we can fix its oil dependence.
|
| Cleaner grid will also need a lot of battery storage, and EV
| demand helps scale that up.
| 8note wrote:
| I don't think it's a particularly different timescale to swap
| from ICE to EV than to drastically reduce car dependence.
| What makes you think there's a big difference to where
| swapping to electric cars is easier than avoiding cars?
| greenthrow wrote:
| You might as well wish that the factories produced teleporters.
| You're putting the cart before the horse. You have to fix the
| demand side first. I know there's an online demand for public
| transportation and bikes and if you are in that bubble it can
| feel like the whole world is with you, but in the real world,
| most people (obvs not everyone) prefers to have their own car.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Believe it or not, but the buses and trains are also being
| manufactured in China. if you'd visit, you'd see that they have
| excellent public infrastructure, with multiple redundancies
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| The number of construction vehicles doing something versus
| sitting around waiting for labor in that shot is impressive.
| edot wrote:
| Yeah, I have never seen something like that in America in my
| life. Always plenty of machines sitting around, and every few
| weeks some guys will hop on them for the day, but other than
| that they just sit there. It almost looks AI generated how
| densely packed those are - though I assume that this is real
| footage.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| With China's real estate sector stagnating (because they've
| built enough housing for future demand to an excess, broadly
| speaking), all of that capacity is moving towards clean
| energy manufacturing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025
|
| https://thediplomat.com/2024/04/how-china-became-the-
| worlds-...
| hackernewds wrote:
| China scaling and efficiency is really something else. it
| seems they've latched on to something that works better
| than even democracy and capitalism
| bobthepanda wrote:
| They're certainly good at building.
|
| Actually utilizing that capacity is something else
| entirely; there are factories less than ten years old
| shuttering due to overcapacity.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/business/china-auto-
| facto...
|
| And the rush to subsidize more capacity is a big
| contributor to local government debt burdens in China,
| which is estimated to leave Chinese debt to GDP at 117%.
| Teever wrote:
| I wonder if they built that factory to be resistant to bombing
| and how much air defense they plan to put around it when they
| take Taiwan.
|
| I also wonder how fast it can be converted to spit out drones.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| EVs on the battlefield are as of yet untested. That makes the
| BYD factory at best possible dual use. A bad target for Taiwan
| and its allies for a host of reasons.
| Teever wrote:
| Drones seem to be quite an important facet of the current war
| in Ukraine and Russia.
|
| I wonder how fast this factory could be converted produce
| drones and how fast it could spit them out.
|
| Imagine a circular loop of larger carrier aircraft that load
| up FPV drones from this factory and fly to their destination
| to drop them off only to fly back to do it again.
|
| The FPV drones could have object recognition to target
| people, artillery, infrastructure so they could operate
| autonomously.
|
| I wonder if they will put the landing pads on the factory
| roof or next to the factory.
| poniko wrote:
| DJI is already the worlds largest drone maker, better to
| let them continue then rebuild a car factory.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| In past wars factories making steel pots made helmets. I can
| definitely imagine an ev plant making drones.
| EasyMark wrote:
| They won't be able to take Taiwan. Taiwan has enough missiles
| to wipe out China's navy 10x over before the US steps in with
| our navy
| kaashif wrote:
| Equally, China has enough missiles to blockade Taiwan
| permanently. There's no reason for them to attempt an
| amphibious landing or anything insane like that. It's unclear
| to me what the US response would be in a blockade situation,
| but Chinese hypersonic missiles do pose a threat to carriers.
|
| This isn't Desert Storm we're talking about here, China is a
| real threat.
| Animats wrote:
| Look at a map of Taiwan. Or better, look at it in Google
| Earth. Taiwan is a narrow island with a mountain range
| running north-south down the middle. The developed areas are
| west of the mountains, facing China, in a strip 15 to 30km
| wide.
|
| There's no defensive depth. And nowhere for all the people to
| go in an attack. It's not like Ukraine, where the current
| fighting is like battling over Iowa, one farm at a time. It's
| more like Gaza, with too many people crammed into too little
| land. But bigger.
|
| China has a large number of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.
| Bringing US Navy ships in the Taiwan strait means losing many
| of them. The PLAN has more ships than the US Navy, and is
| building more at a high rate.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Wild, fascinating, frightening.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| It's great news in the sense that this new energy storage and
| EV production capacity is (part of) our best chance to avoid
| catastrophic outcomes from climate change.
|
| It's terrifying because we (in the West) can't seem to motivate
| ourselves to do anything like this on the same timescale, and
| nations that suffered similar disparities in industrial
| capacity (not to mention energy production) haven't done well
| in the past.
| greenthrow wrote:
| Western country populations seem to be willfully falling for
| obvious fossil fuel propaganda over and over again. Future
| generations will rightfully curse our names. (Including
| today's children.)
| tsujamin wrote:
| Frightening?
| wumeow wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_Wor.
| ..
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| We Americans have more to fear from economic and
| technological dominance than we do from military invasion.
|
| As a budding superpower ready to unseat the US from it's
| throan. All China has to do is wait for progress and time
| to run it's coarse and emerge the victor. If anything, the
| US is the tigger happy country as we watch the inevitable,
| looking for any excuse to use to stop them.
|
| Remember, why the hell does China give two shits about war
| if China can surpass the US simply through economic
| progress. They don't care, in fact they want to avoid war.
| hackernewds wrote:
| why does they have to be a winner and loser. everyone can
| thrive? except the United States is being buoyed by two
| main elements.
|
| 1) the ability of the internet to extract value overseas
| while untaxed in the client country 2) The H1B visa which
| funnels the best talent from struggling countries 3)
| strong institutions and financial and education centers
| and 4) military industrial complex that thrives on
| basically manufacturing conflicts with other countries
|
| #4 is what is scary. not the dominance of any other
| country itself
| hackernewds wrote:
| frightening! depends on your perspective of who you are ;)
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| Can the west compete?
| testfoobar wrote:
| I don't believe so anymore - at least not in California.
|
| https://www.hoover.org/research/californias-businesses-stop-...
|
| "Between January 2022 and June 2024, employment in US private
| businesses increased by about 7.32 million jobs. Of these 7.32
| million jobs, about 5,400 were jobs created in California
| businesses--representing about .07 percent of the US figure.
| Put differently, if California private-sector jobs grew at the
| same rate as in the rest of the country, they would have
| increased by over 970,000 during that period, about 180 times
| greater than the actual increase."
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Didn't California shut down surfboard blank production? You
| can't even make traditional surfboards in California anymore.
| They don't want jobs that produce environmental waste. Not
| all states are like that.
| bdangubic wrote:
| west can compete. unlike byd's, which get bricked all the time
| without infrastructure to maintain and repair them, west (and
| japan even more so) build cars that last. this is china we are
| talking about, the last thing I want is a car made by them...
| :)
| acdha wrote:
| Do you have any data about that? I have only heard the
| opposite from owners and it sounds a lot like the things
| Americans used to say about Japanese cars prior to getting
| stomped by them in the 80s.
| bdangubic wrote:
| two friends in russia, traveled to mexico twice this year,
| boss from australia... story after story after story always
| the same, amazeballs for X number of days and then get
| bricked, interior issues, steering ...
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| This can't be a serious take, right? Chinese consumers don't
| expect much less when it comes to maintenance and repair. And
| given their 3M+/year vehicle production output, they're not a
| small player.
| bdangubic wrote:
| reach out to countries that sell these cars, find people on
| social media and/or if you have them in real life or
| travel... these cars are absolute garbage
| hackernewds wrote:
| not sure what your perspective is based on. gi your
| persistence, it seems it's likely not rooted in actually
| talking to these people, but perhaps some slight
| unconscious bias?
|
| most of the things you use in your kitchen and also your
| device. you're typing this on were manufactured in China
| Animats wrote:
| There were many terrible electric cars out of China for
| years. Every province had its own little EV manufacturers.
| China's car industry is less concentrated than the US, but
| the big players are winning.
|
| BYD is only the 9th largest carmaker in China. SAIC, Changan,
| and Geeley are the top 3. SAIC and Changan are state-owned,
| but Geeley is private, as is BYD. SAIC makes about 5 million
| vehicles a year. General Motors, over 6 million. BYD, around
| 3 million. Tesla, a little less than BYD.
|
| Reviews of newer BYD cars are quite favorable. It's not like
| five years ago, when China's electric cars were not very
| good.
|
| BYD has a simplified design for electric cars. The main
| component is the "e-axle", with motor, axle, differential,
| and wheels in one unit. There's a power electronics box which
| controls battery, motor, and charging. And, of course, the
| battery, made of BYD lithium-iron-phosphate prismatic cells.
| Talks CANbus to the dashboard and driver controls. BYD offers
| this setup in a range of sizes, up to box truck scale.
|
| BYD and CATL are spending huge amounts of money to get to
| solid state batteries. The consensus seems to be that they
| work fine but are very hard to make. The manufacturing
| problems will probably get solved.
|
| (Somebody should buy Jeep from Stellantis and put Jeep bodies
| on BYD E-axles. Stellantis is pushing a terrible "mild
| hybrid" power train with 21 miles of electric range, and an
| insanely overpriced all-electric power train. Stellantis
| prices went through the roof under the previous (fired) CEO,
| and sales went through the floor. Jeep sales are way down,
| despite customers who want them.)
| bdangubic wrote:
| it will take years before they can prove that their cars
| are made to last. I won't be lining up to buy them but in
| 5-10 years perhaps
| thewanderer1983 wrote:
| As someone from Australia, which hasn't shut its self off
| from the China EV market. I drive a BYD Dolphin. You should
| be worried. They are cheaper, and more full-featured than
| European equivalent. They aren't junk.
|
| Also, they aren't the only big player from China. Australia
| is soon getting GAC/Aion, Geely, Jaecoo, Leapmotor, Deepal,
| Xpeng.
|
| Here is an article if interested.
| https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-news/which-chinese-car-
| bran...
| kjellsbells wrote:
| People used to say the same things about things made in
| taiwan, then japan, then china for things like electronics
| and white goods. It was true until suddenly it wasnt.
|
| In engineering you ultimately have to build stuff. Over, and
| over, and over again. Youll mess it up a lot at first, and
| then one day youll realize that you havent.
|
| China is not stuck in 1965 trying to make an EV out of a
| saucepan and a backyard forge. They learn, and they keep
| trying. They have a domestic market that their government
| allows to be used as a test bed for everything they are
| doing, which sounds more coercive than it really is,
| especially given the fierce sino-centric patriotism they
| have.
|
| If Xi can last another 20 years without a palace coup, or
| manage a smooth transition of power that does not whipsaw
| policy, the West is in serious trouble.
| hackernewds wrote:
| your iPhone is manufactured in China :). your view is very
| outdated, or maybe even willfully. I'm sure they're plenty
| capable
| p2detar wrote:
| Define "the west". There was an interesting article here in HN
| the other day [0] "Almost 10% of South Korea's Workforce Is Now
| a Robot". China now surpasses all the west-aligned nations in
| terms of total industrial robots [1], however the west still
| has the upper-hand in terms of robot to population density
| ratio.
|
| I think it is a matter of strategy and it seems China's
| strategy is innovation, science and productivity. We on the
| west seem to like consumption before everything else and IMHO
| we are doing it wrong.
|
| 0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42225091
|
| 1 - https://www.statista.com/chart/31337/new-installations-of-
| in...
| timomaxgalvin wrote:
| Depends if the Chinese need a market to export to.
|
| The main issue with china is a reliance on exports and a
| declining population...
|
| All work and productivity is ultimately an enabler of
| consumption.
| richardw wrote:
| I think another axis is an underlying cultural difference:
| balance of collectivism vs individualism. China can say
| "there will be a factory here" because it's overall good to
| have one, even if a few noses are out of joint. In California
| it's decades of fights to get a train. The trick to competing
| is to find the right balance for the next decades. China used
| to be all-central-planning, which was sluggish and not agile.
| Now it's guided by central planning (great for overall
| alignment) over many years rather than jerky 4 year stints,
| combined with massively distributed efforts to generate high
| levels of competition and agility. What is the optimal
| balance for your country or state?
| mrtksn wrote:
| The problem with the west is that it's already developed.
| Everything in the west is a bit like the European automobile
| industry, it's highly refined for what it is and we expect to
| milk it for some time to come.
|
| Same thing happened with the financial institutions and
| internet infrastructure - those who had the early versions of
| it established early ended up lagging behind once the
| technology was superseded.
|
| The poorest countries in Europe had the best internet for a
| while because the richest countries wanted to milk the copper
| wires they invested on.
|
| The US for long had much worse payments systems than Europe and
| Africa because they were at advanced stage on adopting the
| early technology.
| hackernewds wrote:
| strongly disagree. the West has almost no manufacturing
| capability or labor force (at an affordable rate) at the
| moment. it's almost unsustainable even for a small business
| to be paying $20 an hour in some cities let alone run large
| factories
| mrtksn wrote:
| Is it maybe because centering divs was much better career
| choice than dealing with machines and chemicals for more
| than a decade now? If that's changing and manufacturing
| becomes a need, it should correct by itself.
|
| The west, especially the USA invested gargantuan money into
| high margin high scale businesses and the Chinese worked
| their way up in dealing with atoms with help of the west.
| Now they too can do many of the high margin stuff and the
| west will have to re-learn how to deal with atoms.
| richardw wrote:
| Any big grouping can compete if there's enough will. Look at
| how eg Russia has rejigged much of its war machine during the
| Ukraine war. Look at how Ukraine has turned themselves inside
| out to compete. At some level of pressure, countries transform.
| How much will it take? Is simple economic pressure enough? Can
| eg Europe gather enough of its massive educated population to
| transform?
|
| In economic competition, as with poker, if you don't know who
| the sucker is...you're it. China has been making suckers of
| many countries and they are slowly waking up.
| barbs wrote:
| Thanks, I hate it.
| zokier wrote:
| It's 2024, we can do better than blurry horribly blown out
| pictures these days. Check for example
| https://mapper.acme.com/?ll=34.39719,113.94792&z=15&t=SL&mar...
| for cleaner shot of the site (zoom in few notches for extra
| details). Google Maps annoyingly cuts half-way through the
| factory site.
|
| edit: that ACME mapper image looks to be from mid-2023, in more
| recent imagery the construction on the east side has been
| completed.
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