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Tesla plans China factory that can make 500,000 vehicles a year

latimes.com

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Re: Tesla plans China factory that can make 500,000 vehicles a year

#81

Post by stcredzero »

mywittyname wrote: post #57
stcredzero wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America has lost its manufacturing base and with it the skill set to build large scale manufacturing easily. There's a reason why the NUMMI factories failed in the first place. The Hawthorne factories were located in the wrong place. The region's culture and human capital couldn't support the best efforts and know how of Toyota. It worked in Brazil, however. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI#Makeover

I love this excerpt from your link: > the need Toyota had to start building cars in the United States, a requirement due to the possibility of import restrictions by the U.S. Congress. So much irony.

Irony for whom? I think free trade should be the norm.

Re: Tesla plans China factory that can make 500,000 vehicles a year

#83

Post by mywittyname »

stcredzero wrote: post #81
mywittyname wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this excerpt from your link: > the need Toyota had to start building cars in the United States, a requirement due to the possibility of import restrictions by the U.S. Congress. So much irony.

Irony for whom? I think free trade should be the norm.

Irony in the sense that this entire thread is dedicated to complaints about Chinese protectionism in the automotive sector through forced joint ventures, IP-sharing, and import tariffs when the NUMMI plant was built specifically as a joint venture between American and Japanese manufactures to share production techniques with American companies and skirt or head-off import tariffs.

Re: Tesla plans China factory that can make 500,000 vehicles a year

#84

Post by gamblor956 »

stcredzero wrote: post #28
api wrote: post #6

There's a story behind the story re: Tesla's scaling difficulties. America has lost its manufacturing base and with it the skill set to build large scale manufacturing easily. Tesla is going to China because that's where the expertise is.

America has lost its manufacturing base and with it the skill set to build large scale manufacturing easily. There's a reason why the NUMMI factories failed in the first place. The Hawthorne factories were located in the wrong place. The region's culture and human capital couldn't support the best efforts and know how of Toyota. It worked in Brazil, however. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI#Makeover

NUMMI failed because it was located thousands of miles away from the automotive parts supply chain centered in the Midwest. The distance made the logistics too expensive for the plant to be cost effective during the recession. If not for the recession reducing demand for automobiles, it is likely that the plant would have remained open and led to the development of a supply chain on the West Coast.

Meanwhile, the numerous aerospace factories in Hawthorne and the LA South Bay seem to be doing fine, largely because LASB is the center of the private aerospace parts supply chain.

Re: Tesla plans China factory that can make 500,000 vehicles a year

#86

Post by jonknee »

mikeash wrote: post #67
tomcam wrote: post #59

I can’t wait until they can run a factory in the USA that could make 500,000 vehicles per year!

They’re currently at about 350,000/year, so not too far off.

Using your numbers that would mean increasing their output by over 40% without a new factory... I'd say that is very much "far off". I mean they had to make a tent to try and convince Wall Street they can make 5,000 cars in a week.

In reality they make nowhere near 350k cars a year. They built 41k in Q2 which was their most ever by a long shot. They celebrated the 300,000th shipped Tesla in Q1 2018...

Re: Tesla plans China factory that can make 500,000 vehicles a year

#87

Post by omarforgotpwd »

mkhalil wrote: post #18

Tesla should be very wary of the very real threat from corporate espionage in China. Brining a factory to China would allow a bad actor to really get into enterprise and create even better clones. Tesla wouldn't be able to keep up financially if Chinese manufactures built cars using Tesla research resources. side thought: Maybe TESLA turns into a research company that sells its IP to manufactures instead of actually…

If someone wants to spy on Tesla and steal their secrets having the factory in the US or China or both is not going to make a difference.

Re: Tesla plans China factory that can make 500,000 vehicles a year

#88

Post by danans »

SCAQTony wrote: post #38
mkhalil wrote: post #18

Tesla should be very wary of the very real threat from corporate espionage in China. Brining a factory to China would allow a bad actor to really get into enterprise and create even better clones. Tesla wouldn't be able to keep up financially if Chinese manufactures built cars using Tesla research resources. side thought: Maybe TESLA turns into a research company that sells its IP to manufactures instead of actually…

Ancient Rome exported its wine agriculture technology to France so wine could be created in abundance and cheaper. Look how well that worked out for Italy. "...The founding of France's other great wine regions is not as clear. The Romans' propensity for planting on hillsides has left archaeological evidence of Gallo-Roman vineyards in the chalk hillsides of Sancerre. In the 4th century, the Emperor Julian had a viney…

From the same wiki article: "The wine trade in Italy consisted of Rome's sale of wine abroad to settlements and provinces around the Mediterranean Sea, yet by the end of the 1st century AD, its exports had competition from the provinces, themselves exporters to Rome. The Roman market economy encouraged the provinces’ exports, enhancing supply and demand. An elevated supply of wine meant lower prices for consumers."

If that's true, then it worked out well for Romans wine consumers, likely freeing them from local wine-making monopolies, and also for the development of regionally unique varieties of wine.

Also, what is the relationship between Roman wine making technology and Teslas? It's not like China doesn't know how to make electric vehicles - they already produce many more that the US does.

Re: Tesla plans China factory that can make 500,000 vehicles a year

#89

Post by ryanmercer »

Retric wrote: post #73
mikeash wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is about 1/3rd coal, 1/3rd gas, and the rest carbon neutral (mostly nuclear). China is about 2/3rds coal, a tiny bit of other burning stuff, and the rest carbon neutral (mostly hydro). Looks to me like the US is much better for emissions. Especially since US coal plants are probably a lot cleaner.

China is ~56.4% coal and dropping fast which is a long way from 2/3's. This is down from 81% in 2007 so having recent numbers is really important. USA happens to have a lot of natural gas which is better than coal for the environment but still much worse than solar/wind etc. Further, because they still use a lot of coal and they use more total fossil fuels it's not as a big a difference as you might think. Really the…

>China’s energy companies will make up nearly half of the new coal generation expected to go online in the next decade.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/climate/china-energy-comp...

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