The number of construction vehicles doing something versus sitting around waiting for labor in that shot is impressive.
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I'm sure that's the one and only reason
The size of BYD's factory
321–330 of 651 posts
Re: The size of BYD's factory
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 pas…
The bread and butter of progress is competition and I think a lot of American companies “won” like Boeing or Intel in the 90s and no one else could compete. Unfortunately winning is disastrous because it makes you complacent. Perhaps the most flagrant and dumbest example is Internet Explorer 6. I do not approve of raising tariffs on foreign vehicles because it will dull our edge in the long term. Protectionism is a s…
Well even with 100% tariffs BYDs new sub 10k vehicles will be far cheapet than anything else the US market has to offer
Re: The size of BYD's factory
#323Re: The size of BYD's factory
#324Factory square footage is the new crowd sizes. Tell your friends.
Re: The size of BYD's factory
#325Twitter links no longer load at all on my iPhone. Can someone post an archive link or something?
You can replace all twitter.com (or x.com) links with xcancel.com:
Re: The size of BYD's factory
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
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No, it's when an authoritarian government wants something they'll get it. And by get it I mean "they'll take your house, ignore any local environment concerns and possibly just demolish entire villages and generational livelihoods". Everyone seems to have some "oh how great it is they just get things done " as though they haven't diligently turned up to complain about some development application of the local council…
From my visits to China, lI've come to conclude that Chinese people have more property rights than Westerners .
I saw roads built around houses because villagers refused to sell.
Eminent domain doesn't seem to exist there
Re: The size of BYD's factory
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you zoom out far enough in ACME mapper, the factory disappears. (I'm guessing that's an older image.)
Yep, pretty common for different zoom levels to be different time points. ACME is using plane photography for its high zoom images. You could try zoom.earth for hourly/12hourly satellite imagery.
Although it is generally true that aerial photography is used to supplant satellite imagery in these sorts of public map services, I'm pretty confident that the image of BYD factory here is actual satellite imagery.
Re: The size of BYD's factory
#328US/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.
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…
> 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.
Except you need to ship the parts to your factory and still employ QA people who must check whether you got what you paid for.. If the supplier has a bad defect ratio, you must order more parts. It's not as cut-and-dry as you think.
Every time your assembly-line halts, you're paying people for twiddling their thumbs. The more external suppliers you have, the higher the risk.
Re: The size of BYD's factory
#329Wild, fascinating, frightening.
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 pas…
> It's terrifying because we (in the West) can't seem to motivate ourselves to do anything like this on the same timescale
The sad thing is, we still can if we want to. When Russia throttled down the natural gas pipelines into the EU, it took them mere weeks until the first new floating natural gas terminal was put into operation. And they've collectively dumped an astonishing number of new terminals into the North Sea since then, all at the same time. Germany alone spent $6B in infrastructure investments before that first winter without Russian gas.
We could if we wanted to. But by and large, we don't want to.
Re: The size of BYD's factory
#330Can the west compete?
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…
Isn't robot density per 10,000 workers the standard metric used by
the International Federation of Robotics?
https://x.com/orikron/status/1859657159338025418?t=9J4ASQP_M...