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The size of BYD's factory

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Re: The size of BYD's factory

#461

Post by mike_hearn »

chasil wrote: post #453
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…

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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BNSF_Railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Pacific_Kansas_C…

Yes but we're not talking about freight. HSR is never used for that.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#462

Post by mike_hearn »

bee_rider wrote: post #459
mike_hearn wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 compar…

> Sure, but this wasn’t secret information

Of course it was! All information about the true state of the west was censored and controlled. Today North Korea does the same thing for the same reason.

"Censorship in the Soviet Union was pervasive and strictly enforced":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_Soviet_Union

"Due to the appearance of foreign radio stations broadcasting in Russian territory and their immunity from censorship, as well as the appearance of a large number of shortwave receivers, massive jamming of these stations was applied in the USSR using high-power radio-electronic equipment. It continued for almost 60 years until the end of the Cold War. The Soviet radio censorship network was the most extensive in the world."

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#463

Post by themaninthedark »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #139
api wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US auto makers have been on the ropes since the 1980s. My hypothesis is that their heyday was 50s and 60s “greaser” culture and they kinda got their heads stuck in that era. “Golden ages” are incredibly dangerous. When people started wanting just practical small reliable affordable cars as the price of gas increased and cars became just an appliance they didn’t respond to that market and the Japanese did. It’s been e…

Their downfall was earlier than that. Post WW2 everyone was looking to buy a new car (people kept their old one during the war because production was going to the war effort). The car companies had such demand they moved to a 'car salesman' sales structure to milk every customer as much as possible because demand was so much higher than production. They got hooked on the easy money and entrenched a lot of bad busines…

Source for manufacturers making everyone go to dealers, wiki says the opposite. With the NADA lobbying to make it illegal for mfg to sell direct.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_dealerships_in_the_United_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_dealership https://caredge.com/guides/how-did-car-dealerships-become-so...

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#464

Post by willyt »

mike_hearn wrote: post #444
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 USS…

The TGV in France makes a profit. As does the Shinkansen in Japan. Intercity routes in the UK aren't high speed but are all profitable. Rural rail lines are not profitable and commuter lines are about break-even, depending on the fares charged. E.g. the tube in London is break even as it receives no operating subsidy, but it's quite expensive compared to e.g. the Paris / Madrid / Berlin metros. If you want to lubricate congestion in your city an easy way to do it is to encourage people to take a more space efficient form of transport by subsidising this. As a business proposition it probably makes sense for the overall region in the same way that it makes sense for a factory to move stuff around on conveyer belts rather than having everyone carry stuff from one station to the next. Britain has low productivity compared to the western EU average. It is posited that one of the big reasons for this is that our infrastructure is a bit shit.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#465

Post by hnthrowaway0315 »

rob74 wrote: post #310
aurareturn wrote: post #285

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?

It depends on where you are. Metropolitans and provincial capitals are expensive, but some smaller cities are cheaper. But then the public service is worse and you kinda want to live closer to bigger cities. I don't know how much $$ you are talking about, but it's easy to figure that out if you can give me a city in mind and I can check the cost for you.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#466

Post by themaninthedark »

grecy wrote: post #106
api wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US auto makers have been on the ropes since the 1980s. My hypothesis is that their heyday was 50s and 60s “greaser” culture and they kinda got their heads stuck in that era. “Golden ages” are incredibly dangerous. When people started wanting just practical small reliable affordable cars as the price of gas increased and cars became just an appliance they didn’t respond to that market and the Japanese did. It’s been e…

> US auto makers have been on the ropes since the 1980s. Without a doubt. In about 2000 the US automakers sued the EPA because their proposed clean air regulations for about 2009 were "impossible". They were actually more lax than what Japanese automakers were already selling cars for in the year 2000. So the automakers sued the US government to admit that in 2009 they couldn't build cars that were as clean as cars J…

They were right about those regulations. The CAFE is why we now have the proliferation of huge trucks and SUVs instead of sedans.

Cars from Japan, 2000 or current that are clean aren't street legal here because they don't meet the safety standards. Those safety features add weight, which in turn drive down the efficiency.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#468

Post by hnthrowaway0315 »

est wrote: post #311

If you search Zhengzhou many of the results from mainstream media were about ghost cities The rest are about Foxconn's factory. This BYD factory were build further down south of downtown.

The ghost cities are more likely to be cities previously built for mining and other activities that were gradually abandoned by young generations throughout the years. Zhengzhou should be (relatively) fine as a provincial capital as well as a railway center but I'm sure there might be a few high rising abandoned buildings here and there.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#469

Post by Filligree »

foxglacier wrote: post #221
nickdothutton wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately the only places in the world that I know of building new cities are UAE, Saudi, Egypt, China. I don’t think any of those are building for car-less.

Saudi Arabia's "The Line" is car-free.

And reality-free.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#470

Post by recursive »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #335
recursive wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said net zero? Perfect is the enemy of good.

> Who said net zero? OP is expressing dismay at EVs and suggesting building bike lanes instead . (Not in addition to.) The latter doesn’t solve the problem the former is being built to address. More bikes is nice. More EVs are necessary. Suggesting more bikes as an alternative to EVs isn’t perfect versus good, it’s fielding rubber ducks against battleships.

> Not in addition to

Interesting. I didn't read that at all, but now this conversation makes a little more sense.

But suggesting bike lanes, not positioned as an replacement to cars, is a great idea.

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