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The size of BYD's factory

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Re: The size of BYD's factory

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are prima facie wrong, their overcapacity is bad and actively harmful, this isn't a sign of it succeeding, its a sign of desperation from it failing. There's a type of Western mind that gets distracted by their scale, and getting to build things we built a century ago. Dazzled by the spectacle, this misses that their economy is characterized by deflationary headwinds due to a massive, massive over-investment in…

> There's a type of Western mind that gets distracted by their scale, and getting to build things we built a century ago. The thing is, overcapacity combined with the 996 week and labor exploitation can be used to outcompete any Western company - especially the old ones, who are spread around the country. Look at the supply chain of the established (i.e. everyone but Tesla) companies... dozens of manufacturing plants…

Vertical integration, or a company claiming to take ownership of its supply chain, needs the democratic miracle that is exclusive security of supplies and their logistical distribution. No American company is ever going to militarily secure natural resources or a nanostate territory for its profits. And that's why all American companies (or any traditional, humanist company) will fail to achieve profits which ensure business survival.

Don't ever go long on an investment in the democratic military-industrial complex, surely. Elon Musk's Tesla and SpaceX are like baby boomers disguising themselves as healthy young kids of the future. Don't be fooled or tempted by the likely spiked Kool-Aid drink. Partaking in the ideology of techno-commercialist futurism will yield a negative return on investment. As the conceptual dynamics of optimal manufacturing methods' soteriology, looked at through democratic aspirations, is nothing but booby trapped thinking. In other words, much more blunt words, Tesla's theoretical economics and strategy is a wannabe Mark Zuckerberg, especially when there's an impending giant rug pull in the investment arena.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#392
post #365
post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, China tends to classify aerial survey photos as strategic intelligence assets. Did a scientific project there. It was a whole thing. The local/city/regional CCP branch was not cooperative with even the most innocuous low altitude drone data gathering from foreigners for ecology studies, despite sponsorship by local & national universities. There is even a random-geometric-distortion obfuscation layer that you h…

Why did you expect local officials to stick their necks out for you?

They don’t make the relevant laws but can be punished by higher authorities for breaking them.

Unless it could be legally guranteed any potential punishment would be transferred to your team’s shoulders, it’s bizarre to expect someone else sitting in some municipal office to take the risk.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#393

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"

https://globalenergymonitor.org/report/china-continues-to-le...

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/18/climate/climate-china-solar-w...

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a type of Western mind that gets distracted by their scale, and getting to build things we built a century ago Where in the US can one find the secret, cross-country high-speed rail built in the roaring twenties?! There's also a type of western mind that automatically dismisses the odds of a different country succeeding, based on nothing but the fact that they are using a different approach (on the surface)…

> Where in the US can one find the secret, cross-country high-speed rail built in the roaring twenties?! Nowhere because the USA has an excellent internal flight and interstate highway system instead. Railways were already becoming uncompetitive by the 1920s and now live on mostly in parts of the world where they already exist, where land is at a premium. The reason people think China will crash is that their system…

> Nowhere because the USA has an excellent internal flight and interstate highway system instead

Both being impossible to decouple from fossil fuels consumption at current scale, essentially.

> End result: when Yeltsin visited NASA in the 1980s he demanded a surprise inspection of a local supermarket. NASA didn't impress him, but the 30,000+ products for sale in a mundane shop blew him away

I have no idea whether this anecdote is true, but it wouldn't be surprise me one bit for an always-drank dude who made the army shell the parliament of his own country.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're building a large carwash facility near me and have taken over a year to get to the point of putting the roofs onto some steel framed sheds. I constantly think of the time when we were able to build the Empire State Building in 13 months.

The other really impressive part is that they also treated the workers really well during the construction. Cautionary Tales did an episode on this: https://timharford.com/2024/09/cautionary-tales-steel-and-ki... They paid good wages but also kept a high bar on quality and performance. The workers in turn were incentivized to do a good job and gave feedback like ideas on how to improve efficiency, e.g. build an inter…

You can't do something like the Empire State Building in an year without treating your workers well. (And the suppliers, and investing in machines quality, and safety...)

You can build it in a decade or two, and get something close to what you designed. But you can't build it in an year.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#397
post #254

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You can bribe officials in Vietnam/Mexico. So they'll be your country of "final assembly".

I doubt the Americans will let them do that so easily.

So they will have to bribe officials in Vietnam or Mexico and bribe officials in the US.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#398
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??

Toggle the layer to "Map" and you can find the railway lines easily, although train in the depot looks like a high speed train (huge, long windscreen).

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#399
post #310

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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.

Definitely not in the major cities, like Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Liberal governments also implement unpleasant decisions, for example: paying subsidies for solar panels, electric vehicles, banning good old cheap lightbulbs, banning cheap plastic bags, cheap cars etc.

You can still buy old lightbulbs, they are sold as heaters.
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