511–520 of 749 posts
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We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47165849 and marked it off topic.
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'Company learns from mistakes, third time it does something it does it better, quicker'
The 4th one, in Germany, took 2 years.
Gigafactory Berlin is a different beast and produces a different product mix.
Gigafactory New York produces photovoltaic cells and Tesla Supercharger assemblies but does not produce batteries or vehicles yet another product mix.
Giga Shanghai just does final vehicle assembly (basically the easiest kind of factory and most minimally regulated) and is a million square feet smaller than the other factories and with no joint partnership/co buildout.
The article is just factually incorrect. It says, for example, that it's impossible to manufacture batteries in California and cites Tesla moving to Texas as the example. But Telsa still makes batteries in California in Fremont. They last did expansions on their battery manufacturing plants in 2023. It cites all the dangerous chemicals used in manufacturing, but those aren't banned in California. CA has safety requir…
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Those are the incorrect choices. You CAN actually do these processes, and still keep the environment clean. I believe in procedural symmetry: if you ACTUALLY care about people and the environment, then you wouldn't let other poorer do these thing. The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer, not through regulation, but through process. There is a difference. So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared ab…
> The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer We cannot. We are richer because we don't do it. We export it to areas so poor they view the environmental impact as a fair trade-off for being able to eat.
We can afford to do it right. It will cost more and we'll have to make more prudent, effective, efficient, etc... decisions about producing and allocating goods and services and would need to give up many of the net negative/zero economic activities we like.
We've also likely enriched ourselves by externalizing the negative externalities of some of our goods and services to other countries. That's our choice, and I don't think it's a great one.
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I’m married to a Brit and she is constantly in awe of how much better our healthcare is here in the US. And she paid for private insurance there too. Quality of facilities, low wait times, quality of staff interactions, organization, etc. She even freaks out about how we have free parking at our doctors and hospitals here! We’re on corporate insurance.
US healthcare is excellent – if you can afford it.
Do people want oil refineries that constantly catch fire or explode [1], or toxic superfund sites for fabs [2]?
There are opportunities to build safer systems of course, the capital is there but there's places with looser regulations where you can harm people for cheap.
Also, this website does not actually show what laws or reasons why things are banned, it just says it's impossible, no sources, how do I even know this is true?
[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/A-look-back-at-s... [2] https://www.theverge.com/23990525/semiconductor-biden-infras...
There is a reason these kind of things are no longer possible in much of the western world and especially Europe-like US states like California: After the deindustrialization people started to enjoy healthy air and clear water. As always when it comes to "the good old times" or "make great again", your brain will remember very selectively. I used to live next to a large river for about 35 years. As a kid, it was forb…
Those are the incorrect choices. You CAN actually do these processes, and still keep the environment clean. I believe in procedural symmetry: if you ACTUALLY care about people and the environment, then you wouldn't let other poorer do these thing. The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer, not through regulation, but through process. There is a difference. So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared ab…
America barely cares about the domestic poor[1] - do you think its captains of industry will care about the poor abroad? Charity begins at home.
1. See locations of Superfund sites. Or for a modern example, where they are choosing to build AI datacenters powered by on-site diesel generators or gas turbines.
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> Tesla's Fremont factory was the former NUMMI plant (GM/Toyota, operating since 1962). It was grandfathered in. When Tesla needed to expand battery production, they built the Gigafactory in Reno, Nevada — not California — because the permitting for battery cell manufacturing was effectively impossible. The Cybertruck factory went to Austin, Texas. What part am I misreading? How is it that tesla expanded their cell m…
> How is it that tesla expanded their cell manufacturing in 2023 in California They didn't, they built it in Reno.
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Here's a map of superfund sites in the US. https://hub.arcgis.com/datasets/EPA::superfund-national-prio... Using this I see that within 10 miles of me are - a microprocessor testing facility that contaminated soil and groundwater with 1,1,1-trichloroethane, trichloroethylene, Freon 113, 1,1-dichloroethane, and tetrachloroethane which affects 300k nearby residents - a semiconductor manufacturer that led to "trichloroe…
Yeah. It's especially relevant for the author's focus on shipbuilding. The old shipyard at Hunter's Point in San Francisco is horribly polluted, and they've been working to decontaminate it for more than three decades in order to reclaim the land for other uses (in particular, housing). Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island also have a lot of pollution from the former naval base there. There is a cost to overregulat…
It’s not a great example. I’d be more convinced if you picked a decommissioned shipyard with more conventional problems, like marinship.
There is a reason these kind of things are no longer possible in much of the western world and especially Europe-like US states like California: After the deindustrialization people started to enjoy healthy air and clear water. As always when it comes to "the good old times" or "make great again", your brain will remember very selectively. I used to live next to a large river for about 35 years. As a kid, it was forb…
There a lot of processes like those done in other states and in europe. PCB etching, cnc milling, allumunium anodizing are some of the ones that I order on a regular basis from european manufacturers. One thing is to regulate the industrial sector to be cleaner if waaaay more expensive and another is to just forbid stuff that can be reasonably be done cleanly (but again, waaaay more expensive than in asia, for exampl…
Then author just wanted to be over dramatic about how it’s not cost competitive to build in the Bay Area vs places like Reno where the land is cheaper and labor is less. Their scape goat or whipping boy is regulations but that’s highly myopic at best.