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The size of BYD's factory

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Re: The size of BYD's factory

#351
post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not that life on minimal wage is comfortable, it's that we have been told for a generation now that 'just get a college degree and it will be fine'. Happily amplified by for-profit education investing a lot of money lying to young people (ads). Ask your local waiter with a college degree if they would have studied something else if they got the chance. My experience is that many would.

> Ask your local waiter with a college degree if they would have studied something else if they got the chance. My experience is that many would.

The problem of bad choices is orthogonal to the problem you are describing.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#352
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be 50 sq. km by the time the extension is finished [1]. [1] https://twitter.com/TaylorOgan/status/1859149340897628545

The wording is confusing, but I believe the Zhengzhou International Land Port is 50sqkm, not the factory. That also fits the numbers they're giving [1]: "Zhengzhou International Land Port Project announced ——total area of around 50 square kilometers", and that includes a lot of "open-air warehouse" (parking lot). It's still massive, but not quite as crazy. 1: https://www.zzhkgq.gov.cn/2024/01-28/2944537.html

Agreed, the factories clearly aren't the same size as Manhattan.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#353
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's relative. Relative to the rest of the world (and China), you can still live comfortably on minimum wage.

You can still live comfortably on US minimum wage if your cost of living is like in China?

What question is this? With a US minimum wage with China CoL you are rich.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Probably because the average Chinese is far more skilled than your average illegal immigrant. It's not just raw labor force. It's capable engineers, designers, architects, etc. How is illegal immigration going to solve this?

The amount of skilled people wanting to migrate to the US is almost infinite (unfortunately). If the US decided to open 20million green card spots, they would be filled.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#355

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

I'm 100% sure its a photo op. Think about the logistics of the trucks taking spoil away. How can there be one arriving and one leaving at each location at this time: the diggers near instantly fill their entire capacity? And the narrow access road is way too congested for all those to actually leave or arrive at that rate. Moments after the shot, the trucks will clearly all have to stop and wait. This being said, the…

A truck like this represents a substantial amount of investment that costs almost the same if its sitting there as it does doing actual work.

Not to mention the opportunity cost of having other similarly well equipped crews having to wait on you finishing the job.

Why would you be surprised that no time and effort is spared in coordinating the work of these machines? Its like being surprised that items are constantly rolling off the factory production line, and its not just the occasional item showing up at irregular intervals.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#356

BYD 900k employees vs Tesla 122k https://cnevpost.com/2024/09/13/byd-workforce-exceeds-900000...

So you're saying that since they have 24x the size of factory (pre-expansion), with just 5.3x the people, that Chinese workers are 4.52x as effective?

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China scaling and efficiency is really something else. it seems they've latched on to something that works better than even democracy and capitalism

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%.

10-year old ICE car factories idling is a sign of success in their transition to NEV.

> China has more than 100 factories with the capacity to build close to 40 million internal combustion engine cars a year. That is roughly twice as many as people in China want to buy, and sales of these cars are dropping fast as electric vehicles become more popular.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#358
post #153

It's 2024, we can do better than blurry horribly blown out pictures these days. Check for example https://mapper.acme.com/?ll=34.39719,113.94792&z=15&t=SL&mar... for cleaner shot of the site (zoom in few notches for extra details). Google Maps annoyingly cuts half-way through the factory site. edit: that ACME mapper image looks to be from mid-2023, in more recent imagery the construction on the east side has been com…

No freight train connection to the factory??

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 100% sure its a photo op. Think about the logistics of the trucks taking spoil away. How can there be one arriving and one leaving at each location at this time: the diggers near instantly fill their entire capacity? And the narrow access road is way too congested for all those to actually leave or arrive at that rate. Moments after the shot, the trucks will clearly all have to stop and wait. This being said, the…

A truck like this represents a substantial amount of investment that costs almost the same if its sitting there as it does doing actual work. Not to mention the opportunity cost of having other similarly well equipped crews having to wait on you finishing the job. Why would you be surprised that no time and effort is spared in coordinating the work of these machines? Its like being surprised that items are constantly…

I mean, I am surprised when my Factorios do that.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#360
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

strongly disagree. the West has almost no manufacturing capability or labor force (at an affordable rate) at the moment. it's almost unsustainable even for a small business to be paying $20 an hour in some cities let alone run large factories

Is it maybe because centering divs was much better career choice than dealing with machines and chemicals for more than a decade now? If that’s changing and manufacturing becomes a need, it should correct by itself. The west, especially the USA invested gargantuan money into high margin high scale businesses and the Chinese worked their way up in dealing with atoms with help of the west. Now they too can do many of t…

> correct by itself

As a mechanist there’s more tax on my work now than when I was centering Divs because it was considered "research and development", which comes with tax exemptions. I won’t share the salary difference but you can bet it’s inversely proportional to the tax.

This is in France but I’m sure other Europeans countries have found ways to favor IT startups over usefull industries.

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