15 ms·

The size of BYD's factory

370 points by elsewhen 2y ago

jqpabc123 2y ago
Just wait till Trump hits 'em with tariffs. That'll fix 'em --- NOT! China is rapidly de-carbonizing and leaving the West behind. https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-07-16/chinas-renewable-energy-boom-breaks-records/104086640 https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-07-16/chinas-renewa...
- passwordoops 2y ago
  https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-has-more-than-1-bln-tonsyear-new-coal-mines-pipeline-report-says-2024-09-10/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-has-more-than-... For reference, England consumed 1 billion tons of coal during it's peak coal consumption decade. So please stop with the "China is decarbonizing" crap, because they are not. A more accurate statement is "China understands the importance of energy and is applying an as-much-of-everything-approach to achieve its industrial goals"
  - tzs 2y ago
    Also please stop comparing absolute numbers between countries with more than an order of magnitude population difference.
    - UltraSane 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - tsimionescu 2y ago
        Relative numbers are what matters realistically when comparing countries. The comfort and buying power of 1.4 billion Chinese people counts as much as that of all of the citizens of the EU and USA together. It is not in any way moral or acceptable to imagine that China or India should have lower total emissions than the EU or the USA, despite having many, many more citizens. And this is not even discussing total historical emissions, which is what actually matters most for global warming, and where the first century of massive emissions was almost exclusively due to Europe and the USA.
        UltraSane 2y ago
        I know it isn't fair. Life isn't fair and neither is climate change.
        tsimionescu 2y ago
        It's not about fairness. It's about the fact that countries which have huge emissions per capita can't rest on their laurels if they have relatively low total emissions. Instead, they need to take an active role in reducing emissions - both their own, and those of people in the developing world. If Germany or the UK or Norway or France (not to mention Canada or the USA) want to reduce emissions more but can't realistically reduce theirs as much, then they need to, for example, start donating green energy solutions for developing countries, to allow them to grow their economies and comfort while keeping their own CO2 emissions lower. What these countries can't do is start pointing fingers at others and claim that people in India say, who emit 2T CO2 per capita, are the real problem compared to their 14-7.
        RugnirViking 2y ago
        look at the trend lines of co2 emissions per capita for countries. You might find it interesting. heck, even just look at co2 emissions per capita NOW. we arent talking about a high and mighty high emissions population dictating down to countries with low emissions that they should reduce. We're talking about china with more emissions PER CAPITA than europe, and every individual country in europe. Many developing countries are worse than pretty much every european country. Libya, iran, malaysia, all worse than every country in europe. Europes emissions are going down over time. Chinas are going up - in an exponential curve. this is the point where people deflect and claim "oh, but those countries manufacture stuff the west uses, it's their fault" It's really not. A big part of the reason they manufacture those things and the west doesnt is because the west actually bothers to hold up any kind of environmental laws at all, driving companies away
        kalleboo 2y ago
        Yeah it's going to suck for Americans as the US has to lower their total emissions to match the country of Denmark.
      - DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
        Hey, I personally produce less CO2 than the entire USA combined. I guess the USA better up its game!
      - tzs 2y ago
        Absolute numbers matter when considering the total CO2 budget for the Earth. When considering how to divide that budget among the people of Earth absolute numbers for countries do not matter, because the atmosphere does not care about arbitrary lines humans draw on maps. One easy way to see that per capita is the correct way to allocate the budget rather than per country is to consider what happens if countries split. Suppose we agree on a worldwide budget of 4 x 10^10 tons of CO2/year. If we go by country each country's share is 2 x 10^8 tons/year. That would mean in a small country like Liechtenstein they could live a lifestyle that required 5000 tons/year/person. Meanwhile, in the US we could only live a 0.6 ton/year/person lifestyle--about what Zimbabwe uses today. That's about 1/25th of the current US lifestyle. That is not going to work. The US could hold a constitutional convention and dissolve with each of the current 50 states becoming an independent country, and at the same time make strong free trade and mutual defense treaties. They can call this the "American Union". That raises the number of countries in the world, so each country now gets a smaller slice of that 4 x 10^10 tons/year global emission budget. Collectively the total emissions budget of the combined states in the American Union is around 8 x 10^10 tons/year. That allows the American Union to live a 24 ton/year/person lifestyle as a whole (which is 60% more than the current US lifestyle). Of course China, which only gets a 0.16 ton/year/person lifestyle under the original country allocations could do the same thing. If they did the Chinese Union with the individual countries being what are now prefectures, that Chinese Union could have a 15 ton/year/person lifestyle (about the same as the current US CO2 emissions. Each time a large country does this "split into a strong union of separate countries" thing the boost in how carbon intensive a lifestyle that union's residents can lives comes at the expense of a drop in what the rest of the world can have. The limit of this is a world of thousands, or even millions, of micro-countries, each with about the same per capita CO2 allowance.
  - makotech221 2y ago
    cool now compare the population difference. In order to build renewable infrastructure, you do need to expend a lot of energy: mining, processing, transporting. China is using coal to build up that infrastructure and converting that dirty energy into clean.
    - graemep 2y ago
      Its not just about population. The UK was the world's foremost manufacturing nation at the time, just as China is now. It was the centre of manufacturing of an empire so the relevant comparison is with the population of the empire. There were no real alternative sources of energy - no nuclear, no solar, no wind (in a form suitable for most industry).
      - tsimionescu 2y ago
        The British Isles were not providing food, heating, cooling, electric light, raw materials etc for the population of the British Empire. And if you want to count the population consuming industrial goods as the population that "causes" those emissions, then China looks even better, because they are producing goods consumed by literally billions of people.
        graemep 2y ago
        > The British Isles were not providing food, heating, cooling, electric light, raw materials etc for the population of the British Empire. Most of those did not use coal in most of the empire in the year of peak consumption: 1913. It was providing a lot of raw materials.
    - passwordoops 2y ago
      So when GHG absorbs energy from the sun, it's on a per capita basis?
      - tzs 2y ago
        No, but when talking about whether a country is emitting more than its "fair" share of GHG for any reasonable definition of "fair" per capita is what matters, unless someone can make a convincing argument that some people have some kind of natural or divine right to contribute more to GHG emissions than others. More details are in this comment [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42229636 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42229636
  - tsimionescu 2y ago
    You are comparing a country that was probably less than 5% of China's current population during that peak. And not only is China 17.5% of the world's population, it is also the major manufacturing hub for the majority of the world. 10 times as much coal as the UK's peak is still a tiny number. The reality is that China is emitting much less CO2 per capita than the US or Canada, and just a bit more than the more industrious EU countries like Germany. And this is territorial emissions: if you take into account what percentage of those emissions is going into goods produced in China but bought by those very countries, it's probably around the EU average if not lower. Is China anywhere near a net 0 goal? No, not even close. But among industrial powers, it is one of the ones that went by far the most into green power.
  - teractiveodular 2y ago
    Yes, China still uses a metric fuckton of a coal, but they are decarbonizing: every year, the % of energy generated by coal goes down 1%, and renewables go up 1%. https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/china/ https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/china/ Just to underline, this is not notional capacity (which inflates solar/wind), but actual power generation. This is all the more impressive because China's total consumption is simultaneously increasing rapidly.
  - jqpabc123 2y ago
    https://globalenergymonitor.org/report/china-continues-to-lead-the-world-in-wind-and-solar-with-twice-as-much-capacity-under-construction-as-the-rest-of-the-world-combined/ https://globalenergymonitor.org/report/china-continues-to-le... https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/18/climate/climate-china-solar-wind-dg/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/18/climate/climate-china-solar-w...
  - snapcaster 2y ago
    They're making insane progress and they are decarbonizing in terms of their energy mix. Can you and others please stop with never letting china receive any praise for anything? it's so annoying when people seem incapable of pointing to ANYTHING in china and being like "nice". Is there anything positive you'll credit china with in this space or just nitpick?
- mdorazio 2y ago
  The 100% tariffs are already in place under the Biden administration. Trump only needs to prevent a Mexico manufacturing loophole. However, BYD still has the entire rest of the world to sell to. They will be fine.
  - jqpabc123 2y ago
    Yes, BYD will be fine. And they know this is --- hence they are doubling the size of their already massive factory. Guess who won't be fine? US auto manufacturers. They won't be able to compete anywhere other than the USA. And China loves it.
    - api 2y ago
      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 either sideways or downhill since. The only thing keeping them alive now is unnecessarily large status symbol trucks and that is a limited market that will be trashed if oil spikes again. There’s got to be a limit somewhere to how much people will pay to show off or own the libs or whatever motivates one to buy an F-5000 Super Chungus. They are still mostly missing the EV boat. First Tesla caught them asleep and now China. Culturally they still are not crazy about EVs because they do not go vroom vroom. Trump might string them along a bit longer with protectionism and a pull back on EVs to push more vroom vroom but meanwhile BYD will eat the entire world.
      - wbl 2y ago
        The US consumer does not buy small new cars.
        JKCalhoun 2y ago
        As has been pointed out, they sure did in the 70's when there was a huge financial incentive. I expect that acting like all American's want are $60K+ luxury cars is what is going to take the US auto industry into the next massive downward spiral.
poniko 2y ago
The scale is just insane .. hard to comprehend a 3km/2mi wide factory.
- Archelaos 2y ago
  To my knowledge the largest factory in the world is BASF Ludwigshafen (Germany) with 10 km². Here is an aerial photo: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:LudwigshafenBASF2017-07-29-12-44-06.jpg https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:LudwigshafenBASF2017-0... Followed by Volkswagen Wolfsburg (also Germany) with 6.5 km². Seems the BYD factory is competing with it for rank #2.
  - _aaed 2y ago
    It will be 50 sq. km by the time the extension is finished [1]. [1] https://twitter.com/TaylorOgan/status/1859149340897628545 https://twitter.com/TaylorOgan/status/1859149340897628545
    - luckylion 2y ago
      The wording is confusing, but I believe the Zhengzhou International Land Port is 50sqkm, not the factory. That also fits the numbers they're giving [1]: "Zhengzhou International Land Port Project announced ——total area of around 50 square kilometers", and that includes a lot of "open-air warehouse" (parking lot). It's still massive, but not quite as crazy. 1: https://www.zzhkgq.gov.cn/2024/01-28/2944537.html https://www.zzhkgq.gov.cn/2024/01-28/2944537.html
      - Oarch 2y ago
        Agreed, the factories clearly aren't the same size as Manhattan.
        morgango 2y ago
        But as a comparison of scale, both the airports in Denver and Dallas-Fort Worth are larger than Manhattan (27 mi2 or 70 km2). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Fort_Worth_International_Airport#:~:text=At%2017%2C207%20acres%20(26.89%20sq,Manhattan%20in%20New%20York%20City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Fort_Worth_Internationa.... While that is a ton of activity (and empty space, if you have ever seen those airports), the Big Apple might not be the best reference for scale.
perihelions 2y ago
Is there a list of the world's largest factories, in a liberal sense of the word? The ones I'm aware of only consider individual structures [0], which excludes industrial plants that span multiple buildings, like this one. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_buildings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_buildings
- kzrdude 2y ago
  One of the old classics in this genre of largest factories, BASF, https://www.basf.com/jp/en/who-we-are/organization/locations/europe/german-sites/ludwigshafen/the-site https://www.basf.com/jp/en/who-we-are/organization/locations...
  - buildbot 2y ago
    Which if this BYD site is 2x2 miles for ~5sq km, BASF is twice as large at 10sq km! Wow
    - JKCalhoun 2y ago
      > ~5sq km I get over 6 km^2. Point still taken.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - HWR_14 2y ago
      2x2 miles is over 10km^2. Barely.
      - buildbot 2y ago
        You are right - I intended to say 2 Sq miles, not 4 Sq miles :)
  - tame3902 2y ago
    Volkswagen's main factory is also pretty large: "Spanning more than 6.5 km², the Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg is now the largest automotive plant in Europe, employing more than 60,000 people."[0] [0]: https://www.volkswagen.de/de/marke-und-erlebnis/volkswagen-entdecken/factory-visit.html https://www.volkswagen.de/de/marke-und-erlebnis/volkswagen-e...
mrtksn 2y ago
I still see memes about how the large government is preventing progress and causing de-industrialisation being pushed on Twitter, usually putting some European countries graphs next to USA graphs and showing how EU performed worse than USA after 2008(I guess that's the year the regulations kicked in), however they never compare China and the USA on these graphs. Because then the libertarian propaganda turns into communist propaganda.
- sinuhe69 2y ago
  Do you deliberately ignore the fact that China has a mounting problem, not just in economy? And then please point out any other big government economy that works well for the long-run!?
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  I’m really surprised that there are people who still think China is really communist, and that the private companies that are succeeding are just stealth communist projects in disguise.
ChumpGPT 2y ago
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.
- rkagerer 2y ago
  the only supply chain is raw materials Citation needed, this seems exaggerated. Eg. I'm sure they use IC's and I'd be very surprised if the facility includes a fab.
  - TrackerFF 2y ago
    They, BYD, have their own semiconductor R&D and manufacturing subsidiary called BYD semiconductor. EDIT: Seems like it is a division, so not a spin-off.
- billfor 2y ago
  Just like Ford used to do.
- oldpersonintx 2y ago
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- baybal2 2y ago
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- saturn8601 2y ago
  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?
  - hnthrowaway0328 2y ago
baybal2 2y ago
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edhelas 2y ago
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 trains, bicycles... everything that can move people in a more efficient way than those "cars".
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > the worst way of improving our efficiency and progress toward a more optimized, efficient economy The worst except the others. Like sure, retooling our metropolises might be nice. But it’s also not only expensive but incredibly carbon intensive, to say nothing of not wanted by most of the world.
  - wbl 2y ago
    It's not that expensive to put down a bike lane.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > not that expensive to put down a bike lane Scale-wise insufficient. We aren’t going to get to net zero with bike lanes.
      - recursive 2y ago
        Who said net zero? Perfect is the enemy of good.
        jimjimjim 2y ago
        Comments like these need to be included in almost any discussion about transport or in fact any discussion about any change. Most people (or both sides) dismiss ideas because they are not 100% perfect. And ignore the fact that nothing can be perfect
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
The number of construction vehicles doing something versus sitting around waiting for labor in that shot is impressive.
- edot 2y ago
  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.
  - orangesun 2y ago
    It does seem to have an AI look to it. The resolution is pretty poor.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    With China's real estate sector stagnating (because they've built enough housing for future demand to an excess, broadly speaking), all of that capacity is moving towards clean energy manufacturing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025 https://thediplomat.com/2024/04/how-china-became-the-worlds-clean-tech-giant/ https://thediplomat.com/2024/04/how-china-became-the-worlds-...
    - hackernewds 2y ago
      China scaling and efficiency is really something else. it seems they've latched on to something that works better than even democracy and capitalism
      - bobthepanda 2y ago
        They’re certainly good at building. Actually utilizing that capacity is something else entirely; there are factories less than ten years old shuttering due to overcapacity. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/business/china-auto-factories-price-cuts.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/business/china-auto-facto... And the rush to subsidize more capacity is a big contributor to local government debt burdens in China, which is estimated to leave Chinese debt to GDP at 117%.
Teever 2y ago
I wonder if they built that factory to be resistant to bombing and how much air defense they plan to put around it when they take Taiwan. I also wonder how fast it can be converted to spit out drones.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  EVs on the battlefield are as of yet untested. That makes the BYD factory at best possible dual use. A bad target for Taiwan and its allies for a host of reasons.
  - Teever 2y ago
    Drones seem to be quite an important facet of the current war in Ukraine and Russia. I wonder how fast this factory could be converted produce drones and how fast it could spit them out. Imagine a circular loop of larger carrier aircraft that load up FPV drones from this factory and fly to their destination to drop them off only to fly back to do it again. The FPV drones could have object recognition to target people, artillery, infrastructure so they could operate autonomously. I wonder if they will put the landing pads on the factory roof or next to the factory.
    - poniko 2y ago
      DJI is already the worlds largest drone maker, better to let them continue then rebuild a car factory.
  - AnotherGoodName 2y ago
    In past wars factories making steel pots made helmets. I can definitely imagine an ev plant making drones.
- EasyMark 2y ago
  They won’t be able to take Taiwan. Taiwan has enough missiles to wipe out China’s navy 10x over before the US steps in with our navy
Devasta 2y ago
[flagged]
- saturn8601 2y ago
  Spoken like a true out of touch professional managerial class person. Regardless of country, your kind just got totally rebuked this past year. If you didn't realize, auto manufacturing was the last major home grown profession where you could have some semblance of stable middle class life. Once that is gone, the hollowing out of the middle class will be complete and there will be no money to transition to your garbage solution that the population clearly does not even want.
  - Devasta 2y ago
    Cars only survive as a viable means of transportation due to vast subsidies and a total reorganization of society around them, the most inefficient mode of transport you could imagine. They are not the future of transport, they shouldn't even be the present.
    - ivewonyoung 2y ago
      > I for one cannot wait for the total destruction of European and American auto manufacturers I am so confused, the only way that can happen is via cheap imports of cars from other countries including China. So why would that help "real transport solutions" ? If anything cheap EVs would make them less likely since a lot of nasty pollution from legacy ICE cars would be gone.
      - Devasta 2y ago
        Because even if ICE cars are entirely replaced by electric tomorrow in their entirety, they are still a blight choking up roads with traffic and noise, nevermind the destruction of the rural town or village. The incentive to preserve such an absurd status quo drops away when the loss of manufacturing jobs starts to be less of a question to contend with. They are gone either way, the only question will be if you want to continue having your population pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into foreign companies or not.
varelse 2y ago
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davedx 2y ago
Twitter links no longer load at all on my iPhone. Can someone post an archive link or something?
- primozk 2y ago
  You can replace all twitter.com (or x.com) links with xcancel.com: https://xcancel.com/taylorogan/status/1859146242519167249 https://xcancel.com/taylorogan/status/1859146242519167249
  - davedx 2y ago
    Thanks, that worked great. Crazy photos.
JKCalhoun 2y ago
Wild, fascinating, frightening.
- hackernewds 2y ago
  [flagged]
- matthewdgreen 2y ago
  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 past.
  - greenthrow 2y ago
    Western country populations seem to be willfully falling for obvious fossil fuel propaganda over and over again. Future generations will rightfully curse our names. (Including today's children.)
    - _carbyau_ 2y ago
      Sadly it comes down to "Show me the money." I vote for change, but I don't have the money to buy electric. Even running costs don't make the difference when it comes to multiple tens of thousands of dollars in purchase price. I'd love to "care for our environment by buying an electric car". I can't afford to.
      - aurareturn 2y ago
        Affordable EVs are a solved problem. China has solved it. The world responded by putting up tariffs.
        XorNot 2y ago
brcmthrowaway 2y ago
Can the west compete?
- testfoobar 2y ago
  I don't believe so anymore - at least not in California. https://www.hoover.org/research/californias-businesses-stop-hiring https://www.hoover.org/research/californias-businesses-stop-... "Between January 2022 and June 2024, employment in US private businesses increased by about 7.32 million jobs. Of these 7.32 million jobs, about 5,400 were jobs created in California businesses—representing about .07 percent of the US figure. Put differently, if California private-sector jobs grew at the same rate as in the rest of the country, they would have increased by over 970,000 during that period, about 180 times greater than the actual increase."
  - _DeadFred_ 2y ago
    Didn't California shut down surfboard blank production? You can't even make traditional surfboards in California anymore. They don't want jobs that produce environmental waste. Not all states are like that.
- bdangubic 2y ago
  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… :)
  - acdha 2y ago
    Do you have any data about that? I have only heard the opposite from owners and it sounds a lot like the things Americans used to say about Japanese cars prior to getting stomped by them in the 80s.
    - bdangubic 2y ago
      two friends in russia, traveled to mexico twice this year, boss from australia… story after story after story always the same, amazeballs for X number of days and then get bricked, interior issues, steering …
barbs 2y ago
Thanks, I hate it.
zokier 2y ago
It's 2024, we can do better than blurry horribly blown out pictures these days. Check for example https://mapper.acme.com/?ll=34.39719,113.94792&z=15&t=SL&marker0=34.76400%2C113.68400%2CZhengzhou https://mapper.acme.com/?ll=34.39719,113.94792&z=15&t=SL&mar... for cleaner shot of the site (zoom in few notches for extra details). Google Maps annoyingly cuts half-way through the factory site. edit: that ACME mapper image looks to be from mid-2023, in more recent imagery the construction on the east side has been completed.
- aaron695 2y ago
  [dead]
- skybrian 2y ago
  When you zoom out far enough in ACME mapper, the factory disappears. (I'm guessing that's an older image.)
  - ImaCake 2y ago
    Yep, pretty common for different zoom levels to be different time points. ACME is using plane photography for its high zoom images. You could try zoom.earth for hourly/12hourly satellite imagery.
    - zokier 2y ago
      Although it is generally true that aerial photography is used to supplant satellite imagery in these sorts of public map services, I'm pretty confident that the image of BYD factory here is actual satellite imagery.
      - mapt 2y ago
        Yeah, China tends to classify aerial survey photos as strategic intelligence assets. Did a scientific project there. It was a whole thing. The local/city/regional CCP branch was not cooperative with even the most innocuous low altitude drone data gathering from foreigners for ecology studies, despite sponsorship by local & national universities. There is even a random-geometric-distortion obfuscation layer that you have to apply to maps you're allowed to serve up publicly while doing business in China, like one of those distorted mesh grid paintings. Takes in WGS84 and spits out a nonsense projection a hundred meters away.
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
throwawaymaths 2y ago
This feels very paperclip maximization
0xbadcafebee 2y ago
[flagged]
- ClassyJacket 2y ago
  [flagged]
joecool1029 2y ago
Viewable link: https://nitter.poast.org/taylorogan/status/1859146242519167249 https://nitter.poast.org/taylorogan/status/18591462425191672...
postmeta 2y ago
BYD 900k employees vs Tesla 122k https://cnevpost.com/2024/09/13/byd-workforce-exceeds-900000/ https://cnevpost.com/2024/09/13/byd-workforce-exceeds-900000...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- inemesitaffia 2y ago
  They make batteries, regular cars and hybrids and the cost of labor is lower
  - woodrowbarlow 2y ago
    they're also one of the top suppliers for public transit busses.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
    Doesn't Tesla make batteries and 51% of its cars in China [1]? [1] https://insideevs.com/news/715427/tesla-ev-production-shanghai-vs-global/ https://insideevs.com/news/715427/tesla-ev-production-shangh...
    - inemesitaffia 2y ago
      Are they more efficient? Because you only substitute human labor for technology when wages are too high
  - ASalazarMX 2y ago
    American EV manufacturers should realize that designing aspirational products erodes their growth, even if it means short-term profits. BYD is building practical EVs at affordable prices, not fashion articles. If their offer wasn't a good deal, they wouldn't be growing so aggressively in Latin America. They're filling a niche western EVs have ignored for almost a decade.
- torginus 2y ago
DonnyV 2y ago
The power of centralized planning.
thecleaner 2y ago
Most of this is land being dug up, we don't know what it will be used for. Could just be holding area for stock, which is not a good thing. Premature to comment on the scale of BYD's factory.
est 2y ago
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.
- digitalsurgeonz 2y ago
  "western" mainstream media
- hnthrowaway0315 2y ago
  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.
adrianN 2y ago
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?
- hwillis 2y ago
  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 can push power into/out of the grid (or use discharging batteries to charge other cells) but having a big DC source nearby is still going to be convenient.
  - Cerium 2y ago
    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.
  - aqfamnzc 2y ago
    I wonder if (partially) they use discharge current from one batch of batteries to charge the next?
- pbasista 2y ago
  Since most solar panels, charging equipment, inverters and batteries are made in China, I would be very surprised if they did not utilize it on their own buildings, provided that they have sufficient money to fund it. That being said, China still has very high air pollution levels, especially in the urban areas. As a result, it might not be as economical to build solar power installations in there.
- deadfoxygrandpa 2y ago
  they do a lot of rooftop PV in china. maybe not on this one factory but it's extremely common and even mandatory for all new industrial developments in some chinese cities now
highwaylights 2y ago
Factory square footage is the new crowd sizes. Tell your friends.
dwighttk 2y ago
Looks like a picture of a motherboard
datavirtue 2y ago
I just got rickrolled into X.
wingerlang 2y ago
I don't know about elsewhere in the world, but the amount of BYD's I see on the streets of Bangkoks today compared to say two years ago must be an 1000% increase. They are absolutely everywhere.
- afh1 2y ago
  Same here in Brazil. Even in the countryside.
  - xtracto 2y ago
    I'm curious: Do Chinese cars have the stigma of being crap quality in other countries? Here in Mexico most anecdotes of people buying Chinese cars are that after less than a year something broke and they had to take it to the repair shop, where it stayed for a very long time due to a lack of pieces even by the manufacturer.
    - adventured 2y ago
      They have had that reputation for a long time and it persists. Assuming companies like BYD do things correctly, they'll come from the bottom up and improve quality as they go while working to keep their volume position. Pretty much all the major automakers should be terrified, as China is likely to have two or three juggernaut auto companies, they'll be permanently cash loaded by their gigantic domestic market, and they'll be able to use that to forever assault foreign markets (it's the same thing US tech companies do, using the US as the springboard to conquer the world). We'll see this pattern repeat with high tier engineering products going forward. Airbus and Boeing will be brutally mauled by China in a similar fashion, as nearly all domestic China planes switch over to being exclusively Chinese planes for nationalistic reasons (it'll cut Airbus and Boeing in half at a minimum). And China will use that scale and capability gain to conquer other markets like India et al.
      - alsodumb 2y ago
        Other countries, maybe. But China is never gonna conquer or do reasonable business in India for geopolitical reasons.
cnity 2y ago
Why do I read most tweets as if they are trying to sell me on something extremely urgent that I must know about? As if the thing they are telling me must be known or else I will be left behind? Something about the sentence structure? Anyone else have this feeling? It's why I had to uninstall Twitter in the end, I hate it.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
tantalor 2y ago
What is BYD?
- whynotmaybe 2y ago
  Chinese car manufacturer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Auto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Auto
6510 2y ago
For a tech website HN has very little about the Chinese insane scale projects. There is so much wildly amusing and inspiring footage online.
FarMcKon 2y ago
Folks, those buildings can be empty, either as a mind!@#% or just crazy future capacity forecasts that may not be real. Watching a bunch of arm-chair experts guess that this building means more than it is is a wastes of time. (Approx) 3% of comments here make sense, are enlightening, 97% are just self-assured "Dunning Kruger effect" amateurs guessing they can deduct real info from this is weird. Good waste of 10 minutes for me though.
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  Why bother discussing anything with this sort of attitude? Just shut the site down.
gamblor956 2y ago
LA purchased a few BYD e-Buses a few years ago and BYD is still trying to make a bus with a lifespan longer than about 1 month. While L.A. is trying to make the purchase work, most of their other U.S. transportation agency clients have simply demanded refunds. BYD succeeds in places where quality and safety doesn't matter. It's why they've taken off in Asia but have made minimal inroads in countries with strong automobile safety regulations.
- zppln 2y ago
  My city in Sweden use BYD buses (I think they're pretty much the only option?). My impression is that they've worked pretty well, with more cities buying into them.
  - Symbiote 2y ago
    Copenhagen has Man, Mercedes and Yutong electric buses, I think.
    - gaoryrt 2y ago
      Same as BYD, YUTONG is from Zhengzhou too.
- pavon 2y ago
  Albuquerque had a contract with BYD for buses. The first one arrived late and had tons of problems - the range was 1/3 less than contracted, there were broken welds, leaking axles, malfunctioning doors and wheelchair lifts, and brake problems. The second bus wasn't much better. They eventually canceled the contract and bought diesel buses from New Flyer, which was a step backwards, as most (if not all) of our other buses run on natural gas. The most frustrating part was that these were for a new dedicated bus lane which required the passenger door on the opposite side of the bus, so the city couldn't just use buses they already had in the meanwhile. Instead the lane went unused for nearly two years after it was built, in which we lost a lane of car traffic but were still having to share the remaining lanes with buses.
thefounder 2y ago
I wonder if China could get into an EV bubble like with the real-estate.
- sinuhe69 2y ago
  They certain made a big bet, in particular the CCP see it as the single opportunity to surpass Japan and German manufacturers. On the other hand, the adoption of EV is slower than expected, especially in key markets such as the EU. Charging network, green electricity supply are major headaches, which are not easily to solve in 5-10 years. The adoption in developing countries is however a surprise. Driven by much lower fuel cost compared to a combustion engine, people in developing countries could be swayed by cheap EV-models. They can accept the longer charging time and a bit of inconvenience (like the air-con is not so cold) for a cheap, working car. However, once the adoption of EV is sizable, I’ll expect a significant burden on the national grid of those countries and the tension arise from it is not easily to solve, especially when their nascent industry is already power hungry. Inextinguishable Li-Ion battery fire is another major concern as well. Then there is a third variable: the hydro full cells cars and trucks. When the extraction of hydrogen from newly discovered deposits is efficient enough, full cells technology could experience a big boom and of course, they would displace EV tech.
luciancaius 2y ago
Automation is transforming industries, and in marketing, tools like W3rocks can streamline lead generation, similar to how robots enhance coffee production.

370 points by elsewhen 2y ago

Just wait till Trump hits 'em with tariffs. That'll fix 'em --- NOT! China is rapidly de-carbonizing and leaving the West behind. https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-07-16/chinas-renewable-energy-boom-breaks-records/104086640 https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-07-16/chinas-renewa...

passwordoops 2y ago
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-has-more-than-1-bln-tonsyear-new-coal-mines-pipeline-report-says-2024-09-10/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-has-more-than-... For reference, England consumed 1 billion tons of coal during it's peak coal consumption decade. So please stop with the "China is decarbonizing" crap, because they are not. A more accurate statement is "China understands the importance of energy and is applying an as-much-of-everything-approach to achieve its industrial goals"
- tzs 2y ago
  Also please stop comparing absolute numbers between countries with more than an order of magnitude population difference.
  - UltraSane 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - tsimionescu 2y ago
      Relative numbers are what matters realistically when comparing countries. The comfort and buying power of 1.4 billion Chinese people counts as much as that of all of the citizens of the EU and USA together. It is not in any way moral or acceptable to imagine that China or India should have lower total emissions than the EU or the USA, despite having many, many more citizens. And this is not even discussing total historical emissions, which is what actually matters most for global warming, and where the first century of massive emissions was almost exclusively due to Europe and the USA.
      - UltraSane 2y ago
        I know it isn't fair. Life isn't fair and neither is climate change.
        tsimionescu 2y ago
        It's not about fairness. It's about the fact that countries which have huge emissions per capita can't rest on their laurels if they have relatively low total emissions. Instead, they need to take an active role in reducing emissions - both their own, and those of people in the developing world. If Germany or the UK or Norway or France (not to mention Canada or the USA) want to reduce emissions more but can't realistically reduce theirs as much, then they need to, for example, start donating green energy solutions for developing countries, to allow them to grow their economies and comfort while keeping their own CO2 emissions lower. What these countries can't do is start pointing fingers at others and claim that people in India say, who emit 2T CO2 per capita, are the real problem compared to their 14-7.
        RugnirViking 2y ago
        look at the trend lines of co2 emissions per capita for countries. You might find it interesting. heck, even just look at co2 emissions per capita NOW. we arent talking about a high and mighty high emissions population dictating down to countries with low emissions that they should reduce. We're talking about china with more emissions PER CAPITA than europe, and every individual country in europe. Many developing countries are worse than pretty much every european country. Libya, iran, malaysia, all worse than every country in europe. Europes emissions are going down over time. Chinas are going up - in an exponential curve. this is the point where people deflect and claim "oh, but those countries manufacture stuff the west uses, it's their fault" It's really not. A big part of the reason they manufacture those things and the west doesnt is because the west actually bothers to hold up any kind of environmental laws at all, driving companies away
        kalleboo 2y ago
        Yeah it's going to suck for Americans as the US has to lower their total emissions to match the country of Denmark.
    - DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
      Hey, I personally produce less CO2 than the entire USA combined. I guess the USA better up its game!
    - tzs 2y ago
      Absolute numbers matter when considering the total CO2 budget for the Earth. When considering how to divide that budget among the people of Earth absolute numbers for countries do not matter, because the atmosphere does not care about arbitrary lines humans draw on maps. One easy way to see that per capita is the correct way to allocate the budget rather than per country is to consider what happens if countries split. Suppose we agree on a worldwide budget of 4 x 10^10 tons of CO2/year. If we go by country each country's share is 2 x 10^8 tons/year. That would mean in a small country like Liechtenstein they could live a lifestyle that required 5000 tons/year/person. Meanwhile, in the US we could only live a 0.6 ton/year/person lifestyle--about what Zimbabwe uses today. That's about 1/25th of the current US lifestyle. That is not going to work. The US could hold a constitutional convention and dissolve with each of the current 50 states becoming an independent country, and at the same time make strong free trade and mutual defense treaties. They can call this the "American Union". That raises the number of countries in the world, so each country now gets a smaller slice of that 4 x 10^10 tons/year global emission budget. Collectively the total emissions budget of the combined states in the American Union is around 8 x 10^10 tons/year. That allows the American Union to live a 24 ton/year/person lifestyle as a whole (which is 60% more than the current US lifestyle). Of course China, which only gets a 0.16 ton/year/person lifestyle under the original country allocations could do the same thing. If they did the Chinese Union with the individual countries being what are now prefectures, that Chinese Union could have a 15 ton/year/person lifestyle (about the same as the current US CO2 emissions. Each time a large country does this "split into a strong union of separate countries" thing the boost in how carbon intensive a lifestyle that union's residents can lives comes at the expense of a drop in what the rest of the world can have. The limit of this is a world of thousands, or even millions, of micro-countries, each with about the same per capita CO2 allowance.
- makotech221 2y ago
  cool now compare the population difference. In order to build renewable infrastructure, you do need to expend a lot of energy: mining, processing, transporting. China is using coal to build up that infrastructure and converting that dirty energy into clean.
  - graemep 2y ago
    Its not just about population. The UK was the world's foremost manufacturing nation at the time, just as China is now. It was the centre of manufacturing of an empire so the relevant comparison is with the population of the empire. There were no real alternative sources of energy - no nuclear, no solar, no wind (in a form suitable for most industry).
    - tsimionescu 2y ago
      The British Isles were not providing food, heating, cooling, electric light, raw materials etc for the population of the British Empire. And if you want to count the population consuming industrial goods as the population that "causes" those emissions, then China looks even better, because they are producing goods consumed by literally billions of people.
      - graemep 2y ago
        > The British Isles were not providing food, heating, cooling, electric light, raw materials etc for the population of the British Empire. Most of those did not use coal in most of the empire in the year of peak consumption: 1913. It was providing a lot of raw materials.
  - passwordoops 2y ago
    So when GHG absorbs energy from the sun, it's on a per capita basis?
    - tzs 2y ago
      No, but when talking about whether a country is emitting more than its "fair" share of GHG for any reasonable definition of "fair" per capita is what matters, unless someone can make a convincing argument that some people have some kind of natural or divine right to contribute more to GHG emissions than others. More details are in this comment [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42229636 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42229636
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  You are comparing a country that was probably less than 5% of China's current population during that peak. And not only is China 17.5% of the world's population, it is also the major manufacturing hub for the majority of the world. 10 times as much coal as the UK's peak is still a tiny number. The reality is that China is emitting much less CO2 per capita than the US or Canada, and just a bit more than the more industrious EU countries like Germany. And this is territorial emissions: if you take into account what percentage of those emissions is going into goods produced in China but bought by those very countries, it's probably around the EU average if not lower. Is China anywhere near a net 0 goal? No, not even close. But among industrial powers, it is one of the ones that went by far the most into green power.
- teractiveodular 2y ago
  Yes, China still uses a metric fuckton of a coal, but they are decarbonizing: every year, the % of energy generated by coal goes down 1%, and renewables go up 1%. https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/china/ https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/china/ Just to underline, this is not notional capacity (which inflates solar/wind), but actual power generation. This is all the more impressive because China's total consumption is simultaneously increasing rapidly.
- jqpabc123 2y ago
  https://globalenergymonitor.org/report/china-continues-to-lead-the-world-in-wind-and-solar-with-twice-as-much-capacity-under-construction-as-the-rest-of-the-world-combined/ https://globalenergymonitor.org/report/china-continues-to-le... https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/18/climate/climate-china-solar-wind-dg/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/18/climate/climate-china-solar-w...
- snapcaster 2y ago
  They're making insane progress and they are decarbonizing in terms of their energy mix. Can you and others please stop with never letting china receive any praise for anything? it's so annoying when people seem incapable of pointing to ANYTHING in china and being like "nice". Is there anything positive you'll credit china with in this space or just nitpick?
mdorazio 2y ago
The 100% tariffs are already in place under the Biden administration. Trump only needs to prevent a Mexico manufacturing loophole. However, BYD still has the entire rest of the world to sell to. They will be fine.
- jqpabc123 2y ago
  Yes, BYD will be fine. And they know this is --- hence they are doubling the size of their already massive factory. Guess who won't be fine? US auto manufacturers. They won't be able to compete anywhere other than the USA. And China loves it.
  - api 2y ago
    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 either sideways or downhill since. The only thing keeping them alive now is unnecessarily large status symbol trucks and that is a limited market that will be trashed if oil spikes again. There’s got to be a limit somewhere to how much people will pay to show off or own the libs or whatever motivates one to buy an F-5000 Super Chungus. They are still mostly missing the EV boat. First Tesla caught them asleep and now China. Culturally they still are not crazy about EVs because they do not go vroom vroom. Trump might string them along a bit longer with protectionism and a pull back on EVs to push more vroom vroom but meanwhile BYD will eat the entire world.
    - wbl 2y ago
      The US consumer does not buy small new cars.
      - JKCalhoun 2y ago
        As has been pointed out, they sure did in the 70's when there was a huge financial incentive. I expect that acting like all American's want are $60K+ luxury cars is what is going to take the US auto industry into the next massive downward spiral.

poniko 2y ago

The scale is just insane .. hard to comprehend a 3km/2mi wide factory.

Archelaos 2y ago
To my knowledge the largest factory in the world is BASF Ludwigshafen (Germany) with 10 km². Here is an aerial photo: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:LudwigshafenBASF2017-07-29-12-44-06.jpg https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:LudwigshafenBASF2017-0... Followed by Volkswagen Wolfsburg (also Germany) with 6.5 km². Seems the BYD factory is competing with it for rank #2.
- _aaed 2y ago
  It will be 50 sq. km by the time the extension is finished [1]. [1] https://twitter.com/TaylorOgan/status/1859149340897628545 https://twitter.com/TaylorOgan/status/1859149340897628545
  - luckylion 2y ago
    The wording is confusing, but I believe the Zhengzhou International Land Port is 50sqkm, not the factory. That also fits the numbers they're giving [1]: "Zhengzhou International Land Port Project announced ——total area of around 50 square kilometers", and that includes a lot of "open-air warehouse" (parking lot). It's still massive, but not quite as crazy. 1: https://www.zzhkgq.gov.cn/2024/01-28/2944537.html https://www.zzhkgq.gov.cn/2024/01-28/2944537.html
    - Oarch 2y ago
      Agreed, the factories clearly aren't the same size as Manhattan.
      - morgango 2y ago
        But as a comparison of scale, both the airports in Denver and Dallas-Fort Worth are larger than Manhattan (27 mi2 or 70 km2). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Fort_Worth_International_Airport#:~:text=At%2017%2C207%20acres%20(26.89%20sq,Manhattan%20in%20New%20York%20City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Fort_Worth_Internationa.... While that is a ton of activity (and empty space, if you have ever seen those airports), the Big Apple might not be the best reference for scale.

perihelions 2y ago

Is there a list of the world's largest factories, in a liberal sense of the word? The ones I'm aware of only consider individual structures [0], which excludes industrial plants that span multiple buildings, like this one. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_buildings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_buildings

kzrdude 2y ago
One of the old classics in this genre of largest factories, BASF, https://www.basf.com/jp/en/who-we-are/organization/locations/europe/german-sites/ludwigshafen/the-site https://www.basf.com/jp/en/who-we-are/organization/locations...
- buildbot 2y ago
  Which if this BYD site is 2x2 miles for ~5sq km, BASF is twice as large at 10sq km! Wow
  - JKCalhoun 2y ago
    > ~5sq km I get over 6 km^2. Point still taken.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - HWR_14 2y ago
    2x2 miles is over 10km^2. Barely.
    - buildbot 2y ago
      You are right - I intended to say 2 Sq miles, not 4 Sq miles :)
- tame3902 2y ago
  Volkswagen's main factory is also pretty large: "Spanning more than 6.5 km², the Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg is now the largest automotive plant in Europe, employing more than 60,000 people."[0] [0]: https://www.volkswagen.de/de/marke-und-erlebnis/volkswagen-entdecken/factory-visit.html https://www.volkswagen.de/de/marke-und-erlebnis/volkswagen-e...

mrtksn 2y ago

I still see memes about how the large government is preventing progress and causing de-industrialisation being pushed on Twitter, usually putting some European countries graphs next to USA graphs and showing how EU performed worse than USA after 2008(I guess that's the year the regulations kicked in), however they never compare China and the USA on these graphs. Because then the libertarian propaganda turns into communist propaganda.

sinuhe69 2y ago
Do you deliberately ignore the fact that China has a mounting problem, not just in economy? And then please point out any other big government economy that works well for the long-run!?
seanmcdirmid 2y ago
I’m really surprised that there are people who still think China is really communist, and that the private companies that are succeeding are just stealth communist projects in disguise.

ChumpGPT 2y ago

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.

rkagerer 2y ago
the only supply chain is raw materials Citation needed, this seems exaggerated. Eg. I'm sure they use IC's and I'd be very surprised if the facility includes a fab.
- TrackerFF 2y ago
  They, BYD, have their own semiconductor R&D and manufacturing subsidiary called BYD semiconductor. EDIT: Seems like it is a division, so not a spin-off.
billfor 2y ago
Just like Ford used to do.
oldpersonintx 2y ago
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baybal2 2y ago
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saturn8601 2y ago
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?
- hnthrowaway0328 2y ago

baybal2 2y ago

[dead]

edhelas 2y ago

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 trains, bicycles... everything that can move people in a more efficient way than those "cars".

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> the worst way of improving our efficiency and progress toward a more optimized, efficient economy The worst except the others. Like sure, retooling our metropolises might be nice. But it’s also not only expensive but incredibly carbon intensive, to say nothing of not wanted by most of the world.
- wbl 2y ago
  It's not that expensive to put down a bike lane.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > not that expensive to put down a bike lane Scale-wise insufficient. We aren’t going to get to net zero with bike lanes.
    - recursive 2y ago
      Who said net zero? Perfect is the enemy of good.
      - jimjimjim 2y ago
        Comments like these need to be included in almost any discussion about transport or in fact any discussion about any change. Most people (or both sides) dismiss ideas because they are not 100% perfect. And ignore the fact that nothing can be perfect

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

The number of construction vehicles doing something versus sitting around waiting for labor in that shot is impressive.

edot 2y ago
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.
- orangesun 2y ago
  It does seem to have an AI look to it. The resolution is pretty poor.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  With China's real estate sector stagnating (because they've built enough housing for future demand to an excess, broadly speaking), all of that capacity is moving towards clean energy manufacturing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025 https://thediplomat.com/2024/04/how-china-became-the-worlds-clean-tech-giant/ https://thediplomat.com/2024/04/how-china-became-the-worlds-...
  - hackernewds 2y ago
    China scaling and efficiency is really something else. it seems they've latched on to something that works better than even democracy and capitalism
    - bobthepanda 2y ago
      They’re certainly good at building. Actually utilizing that capacity is something else entirely; there are factories less than ten years old shuttering due to overcapacity. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/business/china-auto-factories-price-cuts.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/business/china-auto-facto... And the rush to subsidize more capacity is a big contributor to local government debt burdens in China, which is estimated to leave Chinese debt to GDP at 117%.

Teever 2y ago

I wonder if they built that factory to be resistant to bombing and how much air defense they plan to put around it when they take Taiwan. I also wonder how fast it can be converted to spit out drones.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
EVs on the battlefield are as of yet untested. That makes the BYD factory at best possible dual use. A bad target for Taiwan and its allies for a host of reasons.
- Teever 2y ago
  Drones seem to be quite an important facet of the current war in Ukraine and Russia. I wonder how fast this factory could be converted produce drones and how fast it could spit them out. Imagine a circular loop of larger carrier aircraft that load up FPV drones from this factory and fly to their destination to drop them off only to fly back to do it again. The FPV drones could have object recognition to target people, artillery, infrastructure so they could operate autonomously. I wonder if they will put the landing pads on the factory roof or next to the factory.
  - poniko 2y ago
    DJI is already the worlds largest drone maker, better to let them continue then rebuild a car factory.
- AnotherGoodName 2y ago
  In past wars factories making steel pots made helmets. I can definitely imagine an ev plant making drones.
EasyMark 2y ago
They won’t be able to take Taiwan. Taiwan has enough missiles to wipe out China’s navy 10x over before the US steps in with our navy

Devasta 2y ago

[flagged]

saturn8601 2y ago
Spoken like a true out of touch professional managerial class person. Regardless of country, your kind just got totally rebuked this past year. If you didn't realize, auto manufacturing was the last major home grown profession where you could have some semblance of stable middle class life. Once that is gone, the hollowing out of the middle class will be complete and there will be no money to transition to your garbage solution that the population clearly does not even want.
- Devasta 2y ago
  Cars only survive as a viable means of transportation due to vast subsidies and a total reorganization of society around them, the most inefficient mode of transport you could imagine. They are not the future of transport, they shouldn't even be the present.
  - ivewonyoung 2y ago
    > I for one cannot wait for the total destruction of European and American auto manufacturers I am so confused, the only way that can happen is via cheap imports of cars from other countries including China. So why would that help "real transport solutions" ? If anything cheap EVs would make them less likely since a lot of nasty pollution from legacy ICE cars would be gone.
    - Devasta 2y ago
      Because even if ICE cars are entirely replaced by electric tomorrow in their entirety, they are still a blight choking up roads with traffic and noise, nevermind the destruction of the rural town or village. The incentive to preserve such an absurd status quo drops away when the loss of manufacturing jobs starts to be less of a question to contend with. They are gone either way, the only question will be if you want to continue having your population pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into foreign companies or not.

varelse 2y ago

[dead]

davedx 2y ago

Twitter links no longer load at all on my iPhone. Can someone post an archive link or something?

primozk 2y ago
You can replace all twitter.com (or x.com) links with xcancel.com: https://xcancel.com/taylorogan/status/1859146242519167249 https://xcancel.com/taylorogan/status/1859146242519167249
- davedx 2y ago
  Thanks, that worked great. Crazy photos.

JKCalhoun 2y ago

Wild, fascinating, frightening.

hackernewds 2y ago
[flagged]
matthewdgreen 2y ago
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 past.
- greenthrow 2y ago
  Western country populations seem to be willfully falling for obvious fossil fuel propaganda over and over again. Future generations will rightfully curse our names. (Including today's children.)
  - _carbyau_ 2y ago
    Sadly it comes down to "Show me the money." I vote for change, but I don't have the money to buy electric. Even running costs don't make the difference when it comes to multiple tens of thousands of dollars in purchase price. I'd love to "care for our environment by buying an electric car". I can't afford to.
    - aurareturn 2y ago
      Affordable EVs are a solved problem. China has solved it. The world responded by putting up tariffs.
      - XorNot 2y ago

brcmthrowaway 2y ago

Can the west compete?

testfoobar 2y ago
I don't believe so anymore - at least not in California. https://www.hoover.org/research/californias-businesses-stop-hiring https://www.hoover.org/research/californias-businesses-stop-... "Between January 2022 and June 2024, employment in US private businesses increased by about 7.32 million jobs. Of these 7.32 million jobs, about 5,400 were jobs created in California businesses—representing about .07 percent of the US figure. Put differently, if California private-sector jobs grew at the same rate as in the rest of the country, they would have increased by over 970,000 during that period, about 180 times greater than the actual increase."
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  Didn't California shut down surfboard blank production? You can't even make traditional surfboards in California anymore. They don't want jobs that produce environmental waste. Not all states are like that.
bdangubic 2y ago
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… :)
- acdha 2y ago
  Do you have any data about that? I have only heard the opposite from owners and it sounds a lot like the things Americans used to say about Japanese cars prior to getting stomped by them in the 80s.
  - bdangubic 2y ago
    two friends in russia, traveled to mexico twice this year, boss from australia… story after story after story always the same, amazeballs for X number of days and then get bricked, interior issues, steering …

barbs 2y ago

Thanks, I hate it.

zokier 2y ago

It's 2024, we can do better than blurry horribly blown out pictures these days. Check for example https://mapper.acme.com/?ll=34.39719,113.94792&z=15&t=SL&marker0=34.76400%2C113.68400%2CZhengzhou https://mapper.acme.com/?ll=34.39719,113.94792&z=15&t=SL&mar... for cleaner shot of the site (zoom in few notches for extra details). Google Maps annoyingly cuts half-way through the factory site. edit: that ACME mapper image looks to be from mid-2023, in more recent imagery the construction on the east side has been completed.

aaron695 2y ago
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skybrian 2y ago
When you zoom out far enough in ACME mapper, the factory disappears. (I'm guessing that's an older image.)
- ImaCake 2y ago
  Yep, pretty common for different zoom levels to be different time points. ACME is using plane photography for its high zoom images. You could try zoom.earth for hourly/12hourly satellite imagery.
  - zokier 2y ago
    Although it is generally true that aerial photography is used to supplant satellite imagery in these sorts of public map services, I'm pretty confident that the image of BYD factory here is actual satellite imagery.
    - mapt 2y ago
      Yeah, China tends to classify aerial survey photos as strategic intelligence assets. Did a scientific project there. It was a whole thing. The local/city/regional CCP branch was not cooperative with even the most innocuous low altitude drone data gathering from foreigners for ecology studies, despite sponsorship by local & national universities. There is even a random-geometric-distortion obfuscation layer that you have to apply to maps you're allowed to serve up publicly while doing business in China, like one of those distorted mesh grid paintings. Takes in WGS84 and spits out a nonsense projection a hundred meters away.

aaron695 2y ago

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throwawaymaths 2y ago

This feels very paperclip maximization

0xbadcafebee 2y ago

[flagged]

ClassyJacket 2y ago
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joecool1029 2y ago

Viewable link: https://nitter.poast.org/taylorogan/status/1859146242519167249 https://nitter.poast.org/taylorogan/status/18591462425191672...

postmeta 2y ago

BYD 900k employees vs Tesla 122k https://cnevpost.com/2024/09/13/byd-workforce-exceeds-900000/ https://cnevpost.com/2024/09/13/byd-workforce-exceeds-900000...

deleted 2y ago
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inemesitaffia 2y ago
They make batteries, regular cars and hybrids and the cost of labor is lower
- woodrowbarlow 2y ago
  they're also one of the top suppliers for public transit busses.
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
  Doesn't Tesla make batteries and 51% of its cars in China [1]? [1] https://insideevs.com/news/715427/tesla-ev-production-shanghai-vs-global/ https://insideevs.com/news/715427/tesla-ev-production-shangh...
  - inemesitaffia 2y ago
    Are they more efficient? Because you only substitute human labor for technology when wages are too high
- ASalazarMX 2y ago
  American EV manufacturers should realize that designing aspirational products erodes their growth, even if it means short-term profits. BYD is building practical EVs at affordable prices, not fashion articles. If their offer wasn't a good deal, they wouldn't be growing so aggressively in Latin America. They're filling a niche western EVs have ignored for almost a decade.
torginus 2y ago

DonnyV 2y ago

The power of centralized planning.

thecleaner 2y ago

Most of this is land being dug up, we don't know what it will be used for. Could just be holding area for stock, which is not a good thing. Premature to comment on the scale of BYD's factory.

est 2y ago

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.

digitalsurgeonz 2y ago
"western" mainstream media
hnthrowaway0315 2y ago
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.

adrianN 2y ago

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?

hwillis 2y ago
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 can push power into/out of the grid (or use discharging batteries to charge other cells) but having a big DC source nearby is still going to be convenient.
- Cerium 2y ago
  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.
- aqfamnzc 2y ago
  I wonder if (partially) they use discharge current from one batch of batteries to charge the next?
pbasista 2y ago
Since most solar panels, charging equipment, inverters and batteries are made in China, I would be very surprised if they did not utilize it on their own buildings, provided that they have sufficient money to fund it. That being said, China still has very high air pollution levels, especially in the urban areas. As a result, it might not be as economical to build solar power installations in there.
deadfoxygrandpa 2y ago
they do a lot of rooftop PV in china. maybe not on this one factory but it's extremely common and even mandatory for all new industrial developments in some chinese cities now

highwaylights 2y ago

Factory square footage is the new crowd sizes. Tell your friends.

dwighttk 2y ago

Looks like a picture of a motherboard

datavirtue 2y ago

I just got rickrolled into X.

wingerlang 2y ago

I don't know about elsewhere in the world, but the amount of BYD's I see on the streets of Bangkoks today compared to say two years ago must be an 1000% increase. They are absolutely everywhere.

afh1 2y ago
Same here in Brazil. Even in the countryside.
- xtracto 2y ago
  I'm curious: Do Chinese cars have the stigma of being crap quality in other countries? Here in Mexico most anecdotes of people buying Chinese cars are that after less than a year something broke and they had to take it to the repair shop, where it stayed for a very long time due to a lack of pieces even by the manufacturer.
  - adventured 2y ago
    They have had that reputation for a long time and it persists. Assuming companies like BYD do things correctly, they'll come from the bottom up and improve quality as they go while working to keep their volume position. Pretty much all the major automakers should be terrified, as China is likely to have two or three juggernaut auto companies, they'll be permanently cash loaded by their gigantic domestic market, and they'll be able to use that to forever assault foreign markets (it's the same thing US tech companies do, using the US as the springboard to conquer the world). We'll see this pattern repeat with high tier engineering products going forward. Airbus and Boeing will be brutally mauled by China in a similar fashion, as nearly all domestic China planes switch over to being exclusively Chinese planes for nationalistic reasons (it'll cut Airbus and Boeing in half at a minimum). And China will use that scale and capability gain to conquer other markets like India et al.
    - alsodumb 2y ago
      Other countries, maybe. But China is never gonna conquer or do reasonable business in India for geopolitical reasons.

cnity 2y ago

Why do I read most tweets as if they are trying to sell me on something extremely urgent that I must know about? As if the thing they are telling me must be known or else I will be left behind? Something about the sentence structure? Anyone else have this feeling? It's why I had to uninstall Twitter in the end, I hate it.

deleted 2y ago
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tantalor 2y ago

What is BYD?

whynotmaybe 2y ago
Chinese car manufacturer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Auto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Auto

6510 2y ago

For a tech website HN has very little about the Chinese insane scale projects. There is so much wildly amusing and inspiring footage online.

FarMcKon 2y ago

Folks, those buildings can be empty, either as a mind!@#% or just crazy future capacity forecasts that may not be real. Watching a bunch of arm-chair experts guess that this building means more than it is is a wastes of time. (Approx) 3% of comments here make sense, are enlightening, 97% are just self-assured "Dunning Kruger effect" amateurs guessing they can deduct real info from this is weird. Good waste of 10 minutes for me though.

PittleyDunkin 2y ago
Why bother discussing anything with this sort of attitude? Just shut the site down.

gamblor956 2y ago

LA purchased a few BYD e-Buses a few years ago and BYD is still trying to make a bus with a lifespan longer than about 1 month. While L.A. is trying to make the purchase work, most of their other U.S. transportation agency clients have simply demanded refunds. BYD succeeds in places where quality and safety doesn't matter. It's why they've taken off in Asia but have made minimal inroads in countries with strong automobile safety regulations.

zppln 2y ago
My city in Sweden use BYD buses (I think they're pretty much the only option?). My impression is that they've worked pretty well, with more cities buying into them.
- Symbiote 2y ago
  Copenhagen has Man, Mercedes and Yutong electric buses, I think.
  - gaoryrt 2y ago
    Same as BYD, YUTONG is from Zhengzhou too.
pavon 2y ago
Albuquerque had a contract with BYD for buses. The first one arrived late and had tons of problems - the range was 1/3 less than contracted, there were broken welds, leaking axles, malfunctioning doors and wheelchair lifts, and brake problems. The second bus wasn't much better. They eventually canceled the contract and bought diesel buses from New Flyer, which was a step backwards, as most (if not all) of our other buses run on natural gas. The most frustrating part was that these were for a new dedicated bus lane which required the passenger door on the opposite side of the bus, so the city couldn't just use buses they already had in the meanwhile. Instead the lane went unused for nearly two years after it was built, in which we lost a lane of car traffic but were still having to share the remaining lanes with buses.

thefounder 2y ago

I wonder if China could get into an EV bubble like with the real-estate.

sinuhe69 2y ago
They certain made a big bet, in particular the CCP see it as the single opportunity to surpass Japan and German manufacturers. On the other hand, the adoption of EV is slower than expected, especially in key markets such as the EU. Charging network, green electricity supply are major headaches, which are not easily to solve in 5-10 years. The adoption in developing countries is however a surprise. Driven by much lower fuel cost compared to a combustion engine, people in developing countries could be swayed by cheap EV-models. They can accept the longer charging time and a bit of inconvenience (like the air-con is not so cold) for a cheap, working car. However, once the adoption of EV is sizable, I’ll expect a significant burden on the national grid of those countries and the tension arise from it is not easily to solve, especially when their nascent industry is already power hungry. Inextinguishable Li-Ion battery fire is another major concern as well. Then there is a third variable: the hydro full cells cars and trucks. When the extraction of hydrogen from newly discovered deposits is efficient enough, full cells technology could experience a big boom and of course, they would displace EV tech.

luciancaius 2y ago

Automation is transforming industries, and in marketing, tools like W3rocks can streamline lead generation, similar to how robots enhance coffee production.