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The size of BYD's factory

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Re: The size of BYD's factory

#201

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Animats wrote: post #137
bdangubic wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

west can compete. unlike byd’s, which get bricked all the time without infrastructure to maintain and repair them, west (and japan even more so) build cars that last. this is china we are talking about, the last thing I want is a car made by them… :)

There were many terrible electric cars out of China for years. Every province had its own little EV manufacturers. China's car industry is less concentrated than the US, but the big players are winning. BYD is only the 9th largest carmaker in China. SAIC, Changan, and Geeley are the top 3. SAIC and Changan are state-owned, but Geeley is private, as is BYD. SAIC makes about 5 million vehicles a year. General Motors, o…

Chinese cars used to have lots of quality problems because they didn’t embrace automation, afraid that would take away jobs (Toyotas made in China 12-15 years ago were notoriously bad compared to ones made in Japan/usa). But in the last ten years, they’ve gone full speed ahead on it, as aggressive as the Japanese, and the quality increases are really noticeable. It’s not just a tech upgrade, they’ve really changed the way they are thinking about manufacturing (not just a jobs program).

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#202

Post by ysofunny »

saturn8601 wrote: post #52
ChumpGPT wrote: post #19

US/German manufacturers just do assembly, they don't manufacture parts, so they only need assembly plants. BYD is a vertically integrated manufacturer. They make everything in-house which helps drive down costs. This huge footprint results in having all those different manufacturing lines under one roof. They depend on no one for finished parts, the only supply chain is raw materials.

People are waking up, and to be fair, Tesla really led the way in the US for the last few years because they had no choice(no one would take them seriously). The question is can the West turn the ship around before its too late?

too late for what??

too late relative to what?

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#203

Post by mnau »

8note wrote: post #165
robocat wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is outrageously expensive. "Building 101km of cycleways across Christchurch to cost $301m", population 405000, So that is $750 per person, which is about 1% of median earnings for a year. That is paid for mostly by car owners (via petrol tax and car tax) and a bit by home owners. And the new infrastructure is visibly under-utilised - at best a few % of traffic. You could force people to bike using laws and economi…

Bike lane construction tends to be lumped in with regular road maintenance, which makes it look expensive, but the really expensive part is doing repairs on the existing roads. "Building bike lanes" for 300M is more palatable than "fixing potholes and repainting" for 300M

Depends on where you live I guess. "Fixing potholes" would be far more palatable than "bike lanes" over here.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#204

Post by robwwilliams »

Archelaos wrote: post #189
moffkalast wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think BASF really counts, it's more of a factorio district and not one single insanely large building.

I was refering to the size of the factory premises = land + buildings. It seems we need diffrent categories for a ranking: premises vs. base area of the buildings vs. floor area of the buildings vs. largest building per base area vs. largest building per floor area, etc. And then we would need to clarify what counts in each case ... Anyway, I live about 20 km from BASF and it is quite an impressive sight, especially…

Like an image ripped from Blade Runner.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#205

Post by seanmcdirmid »

mnau wrote: post #195
lazyeye wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the power being generated for all this manufacturing capacity?

60% coal, some baseload nuclear (5%), renewables (30%). They have massive dams (14% of electricity IIRC). Coal share is shrinking, a lot. Today, capacity factor of coal plants is below 50% (that's why you always see China builds coal plants... that stand idle) and their coal consumption has been more or less flat for a decade. The plan is to use coal plans when wind doesn't blow and sun doesn't shine. Natural gas is…

Out west coal drops a lot and green energy is more available. They are still limited by grid in getting green energy from west to east. They should probably be building more factories in the west, but I’m guessing water resources might limit that.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#206

Post by jojobas »

edhelas wrote: post #25

All this to produce machines of 2T to displace 80kg of human on average (think about it, the battery weight more than what it actually need to move on average) and maintain/develop car dependency infrastructures. This is the worst way of improving our efficiency and progress toward a more optimized, efficient economy and reducing massively our climate and biodiversity impact. I want those kind of factories to produce…

Next weigh up your house, get ashamed, tear it down and live in a tent.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#207

Post by foxglacier »

SoftTalker wrote: post #178
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.

And what blows my mind is that if I want to rent a tractor with a front loader for some landscaping work it’s hundreds a day. Yet even larger commercial earth moving equipment sits around unused for weeks.

Some of that may be due to the owner transporting it from job to job instead of storing it in their own yard.

Nonetheless, there's a lot of idle people/equipment in construction because things have to be done in the right order and sometimes it's more economical to over-provision than risk delaying the whole project because something wasn't available when it was needed.

Those hundreds per day will partly pay for all the sitting around unused in the hiring company's yard! You can see this in the pricing which is usually a lower rate if you hire it for a longer period.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#208

Post by znkynz »

bdangubic wrote: post #98
brcmthrowaway wrote: post #83

Can the west compete?

west can compete. unlike byd’s, which get bricked all the time without infrastructure to maintain and repair them, west (and japan even more so) build cars that last. this is china we are talking about, the last thing I want is a car made by them… :)

I have a chinese EV (GMW, not BYD.) I am a very happy owner; huge features for the price. I am not sure i can see buying of a "mainstream" manafacturer again. (My country has no tarrifs/no domestic car building.)

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#209

Post by Aeolun »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #190
matthewdgreen wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's great news in the sense that this new energy storage and EV production capacity is (part of) our best chance to avoid catastrophic outcomes from climate change. It's terrifying because we (in the West) can't seem to motivate ourselves to do anything like this on the same timescale, and nations that suffered similar disparities in industrial capacity (not to mention energy production) haven't done well in the pas…

> our best chance to avoid catastrophic outcomes from climate change The US and EU are long off-peak carbon emissions (emissions even decreased during the Trump administration I, even using a trendline ignoring COVID). The biggest emitter right now is China, and it's emissions are growing not shrinking, and a considerable amount of that (including 90% of the worlds new coal plants) goes to projects like this.

Kinda, but we’re not really in a position to blame them right? To some extend, sure, but that’s easy to say when you’ve already got yours.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#210

Post by robwwilliams »

tomcam wrote: post #183
matthewdgreen wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's great news in the sense that this new energy storage and EV production capacity is (part of) our best chance to avoid catastrophic outcomes from climate change. It's terrifying because we (in the West) can't seem to motivate ourselves to do anything like this on the same timescale, and nations that suffered similar disparities in industrial capacity (not to mention energy production) haven't done well in the pas…

Of course we can motivate ourselves. But they're acting like we did in the 1800s through the mid 1900s. They just build anywhere no matter what. They have no interest in dealing with environmental concerns. The officially released pollution levels in China are mind-boggling and they still do not represent how bad it really is. You think US manufacturers wouldn't be delighted to just buy a few hundred acres land and s…

Counterpoint: See the speed with which Colossus has been (is being) assembled in Memphis Tennessee. Yes, on an existing industrial site but this is still one damn impressive accomplishment.

https://www.servethehome.com/inside-100000-nvidia-gpu-xai-co...

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