Live data from Hacker News

The size of BYD's factory

twitter.com

11–20 of 651 posts

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#11

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...

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"

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.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#12
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

Also please stop comparing absolute numbers between countries with more than an order of magnitude population difference.

[flagged]

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#13

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...

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"

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.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#14
post #10

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

One of the old classics in this genre of largest factories, BASF, https://www.basf.com/jp/en/who-we-are/organization/locations...

Which if this BYD site is 2x2 miles for ~5sq km, BASF is twice as large at 10sq km! Wow

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#15
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

[deleted]

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

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.

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).

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#17
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.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#18
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also please stop comparing absolute numbers between countries with more than an order of magnitude population difference.

[flagged]

Relative numbers are what matters realistically when comparing countries. The comfort and buying power of 1.4 billion Chinese people counts as much as that of all of the citizens of the EU and USA together.

It is not in any way moral or acceptable to imagine that China or India should have lower total emissions than the EU or the USA, despite having many, many more citizens.

And this is not even discussing total historical emissions, which is what actually matters most for global warming, and where the first century of massive emissions was almost exclusively due to Europe and the USA.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#19
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.
Post reply on HN