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The size of BYD's factory

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Re: The size of BYD's factory

#91

Post by testfoobar »

brcmthrowaway wrote: post #83

Can the west compete?

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."

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#92

Post by [deleted] »

buildbot wrote: post #14
kzrdude wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[deleted]

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#93

Post by pg314 »

robocat wrote: post #76
wbl wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that expensive to put down a bike lane.

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 economi…

> 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...

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#94

Post by ssl-3 »

ChumpGPT wrote: post #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.

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?

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#95

Post by nehal3m »

robocat wrote: post #76
wbl wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that expensive to put down a bike lane.

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 economi…

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/sites/economics/resour...

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#96

Post by FooBarBizBazz »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #6
mdorazio wrote: 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.

> 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 )

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#97

Post by wbl »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #87
wbl wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that expensive to put down a bike lane.

Bike lanes and bikes aren't alternatives to most of what motorized transport is providing.

Most car trips are very short, and commuting to a CBD is easily served by transit.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#98

Post by bdangubic »

brcmthrowaway wrote: post #83

Can the west compete?

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… :)

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#99

Post by at_compile_time »

wbl wrote: post #32
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's not that expensive to put down a bike lane.

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.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#100

Post by edot »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #27

The number of construction vehicles doing something versus sitting around waiting for labor in that shot is impressive.

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.
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