Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The size of BYD's factory

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 651 posts

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#441

Post by Cerium »

hwillis wrote: post #401
adrianN wrote: post #316

So much roof space, so little PV. I guess in China they don't do rooftop PV as much because the regulations allow for cheaper installations somewhere on a meadow?

China has more distributed/rooftop solar than the US, percentage-wise. It's hardly like every big building in the US has rooftop solar, and Zhengzhou is more to the north of the country where there is less incident light. That said a battery factory is a good place to put solar. The final stage of battery manufacturing is several priming charge/discharge cycles which build up resilient layers inside the battery. You…

China has extremely high installation rate for solar water heaters. Personally I have never observed any grid-tie solar electric installations on residential buildings. My travels are largely confined to Fujian province, so perhaps they have caught on in other regions.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#442

Post by 6510 »

HPsquared wrote: post #424
mazugrin2 wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you expect a foreigner who is not from China to realize that they'd be inhibited by the local authorities from doing work they were invited to do by those same local authorities? It's bizarre to think that it's bizarre that a foreigner might merely express some surprise by that.

Very common for one branch of a bureaucracy to be at odds with another branch.

not necessarily, it might just depend who is asking. You can get a lot done in general by having the right person/party ask for you.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#443

Post by rangestransform »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #262
wiricon wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the dimension of quality of life, technological prowess and economic GDP, China is likely going to match the US in western cities. Think about it. Manufacturing lies at the heart of everything. Do you think there's some universe where the US is good at designing things and then submits the design to China to manufacture and then suddenly China remains in the dark on how to design things? Don't be deluded on the wh…

China does have kangaroo courts and this fact does actually affect some relatives of mine

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#444

Post by mike_hearn »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #417
mike_hearn wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 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 fact that railways were becoming uncompetitive in the mid-1900s is why high-speed rail was developed. The Japanese pioneered high-speed rail in the 1960s, dramat…

People take HSR sometimes because it's heavily subsidized, especially in China. Without government intervention rail can't compete against airports and roads. China's railway is in a staggering amount of debt due to mass overbuilding of the sort that would have bankrupted any normal company in a market economy long ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/vt7jrz/a_whopping_90...

> China is not at all like the USSR ... China has an absolutely crazy abundance of consumer products

Products for export, yes. It doesn't have a particularly strong consumer economy because its model is to keep Chinese labour poor whilst building up huge foreign reserves and gutting foreign competitors. That's why Chinese consumption is still far below the US:

https://capx.co/xi-jinpings-coercion-is-destroying-his-own-e...

"private consumption accounts for just 39% of the economy – extremely low by world standards (the figure in the US is 68%). But there is no consumer confidence, with 80% of family wealth tied up in property and no meaningful social safety net."

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#445

Post by [deleted] »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #281
edot wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

[deleted]

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#446

Post by lucianbr »

torginus wrote: post #355
RugnirViking wrote: post #341

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…

Everything you wrote applies equally to western countries, and yet the results are different as we all well know. Whatever the reason is why trucks and other equipment stand around doing nothing, a reason clearly exists, and is clearly missing from your argument.

It may be that there is something going on in China that negates the exact reason that exists, and not in other countries, but you said nothing about that.

The fact is this construction site looks different than the way construction sites look usually. Your "trucks are expensive" argument explains nothing and provides no reason for this site to look different than others. Trucks are expensive everywhere, actually I think trucks are more expensive in the west than in China.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#448

Post by lucianbr »

torginus wrote: post #356
postmeta wrote: post #239

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?

Effectiveness of an employee measured by how much space he needs / occupies? If you send an employee to sit alone in a warehouse, you've increased his effectiveness by orders of magnitude by your logic.
Post reply on HN