What is BYD?
Chinese car manufacturer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Auto
The size of BYD's factory
451–460 of 651 posts
Re: The size of BYD's factory
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
The analysis in New Scientist isn't based historical trends. It's a causal analysis based on the rapid deployment of new low-carbon generation on China's grid, which is being deployed at rates higher than expected demand. Of course you could be right -- maybe forward demand will be much higher than anticipated, or maybe all of those solar panels will turn out not to be plugged in or something. But you need to make a…
Yes, but such stories have been pushed for many years. If we look at the period before the 2017+ rampup in emissions we can see the same sorts of talk about China's solar ramp: https://www.google.com/search?q=china+solar+deployment&sca_e... "China's Solar Surge Presents Future Opportunity" "China ramps up renewable energy deployment" "Why China Is Leading The World In Solar Power" etc. Solar can't replace fossil fuel…
The difference during those earlier times was that the amount of generation installed was still relatively small. Those articles use the term “future” because the hypothesis was that if exponential trends persisted, eventually generation would start to rival growth in demand. That appears to be actually happening now.
And solar (and wind and nuclear) absolutely can replace fossil fuels. What they can’t do is replace 100% of fossil fuels until storage is cheap and plentiful. With expanded grid capacity and dispatchable fossil generation, a 90%+ low-carbon grid is entirely feasible.
Re: The size of BYD's factory
#453Earlier 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…
Warren Buffet (as Berkshire Hathaway) bought Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) for a reason - it is very profitable.
The merger of Canadian Pacific with Kansas City Southern is even larger, and is now a railway that spans North America from Vancouver to Veracruz.
The freight railway system in North America is massive.
Re: The size of BYD's factory
#454Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
All that track connected to the depot you are talking about is high speed passenger infrastructure. Just touching the south side of the factory is what looks like an old single track line if you follow it to the west there's a passing loop just the other side of the nearest village. If you switch to back and forth between map view and satellite view this eventually leads to a spur shown in map view that stops at a road. Not sure if the line is under construction or decommissioned or what.
Re: The size of BYD's factory
#455Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If you bring in 20 million skilled workers, you'd have to bring in 200 million unskilled workers to support them.
Re: The size of BYD's factory
#456Earlier quoted context omitted.
No freight train connection to the factory??
There is. In fact it's called a "land port" for a reason, the park has a huge freight yard connected to 2 rail lines it's just not shown in this picture because it's shared infrastructure of the industrial park.
Yeah I think so. Zhengzhou has perhaps the largest yard in China. The factory is there for a reason.
Re: The size of BYD's factory
#457Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
My point is that it's an information problem, leading to (more) bad choices. OPs claim that people live happily enough on minimum wage is actually another example, hopefully no 17 year old reads it and thinks 'ohh so I can live comfortable on minimum wage'. If there is 17 year old reading this thread then I hope to be a counterweight:
'HEY 17 YEAR OLD! Get a sellable skill! English literature is probably not enough! Working for minimum wage sucks!'
Re: The size of BYD's factory
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could say it's central to their culture. Sort of goes for most Asian cultures, the education of children is something Asian parents will sacrifice greatly for.
Curious that education is valued so much, but then there are cycles of uprisings where educated people are targeted (Cambodia, Chairman Mao, ..)
It's a bit more complicated than that though.
Re: The size of BYD's factory
#459Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeltsin was trying to reform the Soviet system. He was a party higher up, surely he knew what he’d find in a supermarket. He’d had a long political career by the. My guy says the supermarket tour was “staged” in the sense that he knew what he was going to find and he knew what reaction would be politically helpful for his project. This isn’t to say the Soviet Union was, like, a good pleasant place to live. But we sho…
He didn't according to his biographer, and it definitely wasn't staged. The bafflement of his hosts is well recorded, as were his questions and his expressions as he explored the shop, see the photo on this page: https://www.cato.org/blog/happy-yeltsin-supermarket-day Soviet supermarkets were drastically more impoverished at that time. No comparison. Censorship is a problem because it affects everyone, especially the…
> The bafflement of his hosts is well recorded, as were his questions and his expressions as he explored the shop,
This isn’t really evidence that it wasn’t staged by him though. That is, he doesn’t need to tell the host that he’s going to react strongly. He was a political operator, I’m sure he’d be happy to dupe some supermarket owner.
> Soviet supermarkets were drastically more impoverished at that time. No comparison.
> Censorship is a problem because it affects everyone, especially the higher ups. That's why he'd got into the habit of demanding surprise inspections. As a factory manager he'd accepted that everyone was always hiding the truth from him. In systems like that there isn't any point in the hierarchy where you your boss takes you to one side and says Boris, listen, there's a vault with all our secrets and truths, let me show you. It never happens. The people at the top have to believe in the system the most of all.
Sure, but this wasn’t secret information. America was broadcasting information about our wealth around the world. I guess we probably have people on this site who were in the Soviet Union during the 80’s. Maybe they can recall what they thought was going on over here.
Re: The size of BYD's factory
#460Earlier 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
[flagged]
Chinese government in general doesn't just "get" a factory. They need to compensate private owners too if they need to use their land. But the state owns every piece of the land (it's a bit more complicated than that, especially not true for rural where collective ownership is a big thing).
IMO, labelling governments as "authoritarian" sometimes gives an inaccurate outlook. The government is not a single person that just orders other people around and magically gets nods everywhere. It's an organization and you can expect all kinds of messy and chaotic stuffs in it.
I have lived under both "kinds" of governments and I feel the democratic ones have a lot of "authoritarian" elements in it too, especially nowadays when national security touches everything. And surprisingly it is way more effective than the "authoritarian" government I lived in.