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The size of BYD's factory

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Re: The size of BYD's factory

#231

Post by wiricon »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #197
hackernewds wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 manufa…

> why does they have to be a winner and loser. everyone can thrive? except the United States is being buoyed by two main elements. Why can’t there be a winner and a loser and both the winner and the loser cooperate and thrive with loser having the humility to admit he’s a loser? Isn’t this the same peaceful consequence? Just say China is better and admit inferiority for the everlasting peace. Why can’t you do it? Bec…

I don’t think anyone disputes that China can out-manufacture us. Does that make them “better”, they the winner and the West the loser? Obviously not; things don’t end, history continues and things can go in different directions in the future. Not to mention that there are other dimensions that matter besides manufacturing prowess, namely quality of life, individual freedom, etc.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#232

Post by tacticus »

tomjen3 wrote: post #73
edhelas wrote: post #25

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…

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.

or a bus.

But then again it's amazing how we ignore the infrastructure costs of building and maintaining the roads to run the cars everywhere.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#233

Post by rangestransform »

foxglacier wrote: post #217
pixelatedindex wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it seems they've latched on to something that works better than even democracy and capitalism Wouldn’t this just be plain old fashioned authoritarianism? America can latch on to this too, and we might based on how the Trump admin turns out.

No. One required component is plain old fashioned oversupply of labor. America doesn't have that because all employable people are too rich. China also has an oversupply of skilled labor like engineers, in part because the threat of poverty is a strong motivator to get rich. America also lacks that which you can see in capable young people doing arts degrees with no thought to their future income because it doesn't m…

That’s an easy enough problem to solve if we had the appetite to solve it, why couldn’t we legitimize the roles illegal immigrants currently do right now with a Singapore style migrant worker program?

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#234

Post by rangestransform »

hackernewds wrote: post #160
ninetyninenine wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

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 manufa…

So that I can afford cheap shit from poorer countries, if they stay poor they contribute less to climate change, less competition for finite rare resources

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#235

Post by chii »

Dalewyn wrote: post #228
meiraleal wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically, Chinese government wants a bigass factory and they will get a bigass factory because literally fuck you. And what's the difference from the US government when it wants a bigass factory? Isn't the difference that the US also wanted China to build bigass factories? They got too good at that.

[flagged]

not just that, but the fact that the US gov't does hold elections means that what they do generally is in line with the people.

At this moment, what the chinese gov't is doing is _also_ (presumably) in line with their people's wishes - after all, factories and exports means jobs and economic growth. It remains to be seen if this continues to be in the face of a potential war, tariffs, or some other external shock.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#236

Post by lordgroff »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #188
richardw wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 po…

There is a sense in which China has made a sucker of itself, too. China has some serious internal economic structure issues and it remains to be seen how long those issues and the downstream problems it creates are sustainable. For an example, remember the amazing speed of construct demonstrated by the Chinese government building covid quarantine facilities? Hundreds of square miles of em across every province. They'…

I always hear this as a criticism of China but then I watch some footage of the actual place and it looks like it lives in the future (to be fair, it's uneven, but let me tell you I've traveled to the US enough times to be shocked at how uneven it can get). Sure, there's real problems I'm sure, where isn't there, but here in Canada by the time we've built a kilometer of an LRT line massively over budget, China has added a new high speed rail line.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#237

Post by bobthepanda »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #187
bobthepanda wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%.

China’s debt load fluctuates if you consider just the central government, local governments, and SOEs owned by either the central or local governments. Then you have private sector debt. SOEs are where a lot of china’s shadow debt comes from (localities ask SOEs they control to fund public projects of their own books), this is what pushes China’s debt load over 100%.

There’s that and the LGFVs financed by land sales which are all off official balance sheets.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#238

Post by lordgroff »

bdangubic wrote: post #116
tokioyoyo wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

I had the pleasure of seeing one in Mexico recently. If this car is garbage, sign me up! But alas, it's impossible because we decided that since we can't compete we'll just make them essentially illegal.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#240

Post by trhway »

p2detar wrote: post #112
edhelas wrote: post #25

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…

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 (…

>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.

it is classic case of new dominant players emergence when paradigm shift happens. PC vs. mainframe, GPU vs. CPU, clean energy economy vs. fossil fuel based.

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