The problem with the west is that it’s already developed. Everything in the west is a bit like the European automobile industry, it’s highly refined for what it is and we expect to milk it for some time to come.
Same thing happened with the financial institutions and internet infrastructure - those who had the early versions of it established early ended up lagging behind once the technology was superseded.
The poorest countries in Europe had the best internet for a while because the richest countries wanted to milk the copper wires they invested on.
The US for long had much worse payments systems than Europe and Africa because they were at advanced stage on adopting the early technology.
strongly disagree. the West has almost no manufacturing capability or labor force (at an affordable rate) at the moment. it's almost unsustainable even for a small business to be paying $20 an hour in some cities let alone run large factories
Is it maybe because centering divs was much better career choice than dealing with machines and chemicals for more than a decade now? If that’s changing and manufacturing becomes a need, it should correct by itself.
The west, especially the USA invested gargantuan money into high margin high scale businesses and the Chinese worked their way up in dealing with atoms with help of the west. Now they too can do many of the high margin stuff and the west will have to re-learn how to deal with atoms. It happened because the west’s rich were simply shittier than Chinese bureaucrats and invested badly by choosing wrong KPI or ideas. Wonder what happens if the AI thing doesn’t pan out after pouring enormous money on it(instead of on something strategically important but not as potentially lucrative).
IMHO things are reversible, especially for the USA. Europe is in a worse place as its demographics and energy situation is less favorable.
Define "the west". There was an interesting article here in HN the other day [0] "Almost 10% of South Korea's Workforce Is Now a Robot". China now surpasses all the west-aligned nations in terms of total industrial robots [1], however the west still has the upper-hand in terms of robot to population density ratio.
I think it is a matter of strategy and it seems China's strategy is innovation, science and productivity. We on the west seem to like consumption before everything else and IMHO we are doing it wrong.
I think another axis is an underlying cultural difference: balance of collectivism vs individualism. China can say “there will be a factory here” because it’s overall good to have one, even if a few noses are out of joint. In California it’s decades of fights to get a train. The trick to competing is to find the right balance for the next decades. China used to be all-central-planning, which was sluggish and not agile. Now it’s guided by central planning (great for overall alignment) over many years rather than jerky 4 year stints, combined with massively distributed efforts to generate high levels of competition and agility. What is the optimal balance for your country or state?
> however the west still has the upper-hand in terms of robot to population density ratio.
Considering that latest data shows that China industrial robot density is only lower than SG and SK (surpassing Japan and German recently), then the west doesn't have the upper hand anymore.
> China's strategy is innovation, science and productivity. We on the west seem to like consumption before everything else and IMHO we are doing it wrong.
What is this even supposed to mean? You can't have productivity without consumption - who are you producing things for? Well, consumers - duh.
China is the beneficiary of having relatively low marginal costs, but it's worth noting that's been changing and production has been moving out of China and into other cheaper regions - i.e. Vietnam.
Any big grouping can compete if there’s enough will. Look at how eg Russia has rejigged much of its war machine during the Ukraine war. Look at how Ukraine has turned themselves inside out to compete. At some level of pressure, countries transform. How much will it take? Is simple economic pressure enough? Can eg Europe gather enough of its massive educated population to transform?
In economic competition, as with poker, if you don’t know who the sucker is…you’re it. China has been making suckers of many countries and they are slowly waking up.
There is a sense in which China has made a sucker of itself, too. China has some serious internal economic structure issues and it remains to be seen how long those issues and the downstream problems it creates are sustainable.
For an example, remember the amazing speed of construct demonstrated by the Chinese government building covid quarantine facilities? Hundreds of square miles of em across every province. They're all gone now.
I always hear this as a criticism of China but then I watch some footage of the actual place and it looks like it lives in the future (to be fair, it's uneven, but let me tell you I've traveled to the US enough times to be shocked at how uneven it can get). Sure, there's real problems I'm sure, where isn't there, but here in Canada by the time we've built a kilometer of an LRT line massively over budget, China has added a new high speed rail line.
"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."
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.
What does "the west" even means ? You can't find two countries that agree on half of the topics of the day, no matter how small or meaningless the topic is
Nope, we're too busy talking about our tiny little problems now (which flavor of politician will get to pillage the gold chest for themselves and their little friends for the next X years, ecology, genders, migration, &c.), and we already sold/moved all our heavy industries to... well... China. We're left with services but guess what, you don't build an healthy/sustainable economy on uber eats, airbnb and a crumbling public service system on the verge of dying due to demographic issues
Meanwhile China's totalitarian regime allows them to do things 10-100x times more efficiently than we could, mixed in with a bit of state capitalism, add the fact that they became our factories for pretty much everything, that they have access to most raw materials needed for pretty much anything. Sprinkle with a bit of spirit of revenge for the century of humiliation and you got a pretty good cocktail.
They have a long term vision, no counter powers, a fraction of our regulations and the will we lost sometimes in the last 50 years
Temu and Shein are 25% of packages transiting in France for example, they'll do the same things with their car, until they destroyed local companies, then they'll buy them for scraps. Can't blame them, we're letting them do it
Not with NEPA (and CEQA and friends). The current environmental movements will have to be dismantled since they are extractive rent-seekers on production. Fortunately, a new administration will soon be power so there is an opportunity to remove the roadblocks to America’s future success.
A world with a Chinese hegemony is not going to be pretty, as online DoorDash hammer and sickle communists are about to discover.
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… :)
People used to say the same things about things made in Taiwan, then Japan, and then China, for things like electronics and white goods. It was true - until suddenly it wasn't.
In engineering you ultimately have to build stuff. Over, and over, and over again. You'll mess it up a lot at first, and then one day you'll realize that you haven't.
China is not stuck in 1965 trying to make an EV out of a saucepan and a backyard forge. They learn, and they keep trying. They have a domestic market that their government allows to be used as a test bed for everything they are doing, which sounds more coercive than it really is, especially given the fierce Sino-centric patriotism they have.
If Xi can last another 20 years without a palace coup, or manage a smooth transition of power that does not whipsaw policy, the West is in serious trouble.
Yeah but Japan has long had a cultural obsession with delivering high quality products. I don't know if China ever did, but if it did, much of it was wiped out during cultural revolution and replaced with succeed at all costs.
And there is a difference between success and excellence.
For example there have been zero bullet train fatalities in its entire history, and several Chinese HSR fatal accidents already. For political reasons the quality of the HSR wheels in China took a sharp downturn so expect more accidents in the coming two years.
As someone from Australia, which hasn't shut its self off from the China EV market. I drive a BYD Dolphin. You should be worried. They are cheaper, and more full-featured than European equivalent. They aren't junk.
Also, they aren't the only big player from China. Australia is soon getting GAC/Aion, Geely, Jaecoo, Leapmotor, Deepal, Xpeng.
Does Australia ask manufacturers to setup factories locally? I always think it's a good idea for employment and perhaps technology transfer. I don't know why Canada is not doing that. Getting a couple of big car factories could be huge for the locals. That's thousands and thousands of employment.
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, over 6 million. BYD, around 3 million. Tesla, a little less than BYD.
Reviews of newer BYD cars are quite favorable. It's not like five years ago, when China's electric cars were not very good.
BYD has a simplified design for electric cars. The main component is the "e-axle", with motor, axle, differential, and wheels in one unit. There's a power electronics box which controls battery, motor, and charging. And, of course, the battery, made of BYD lithium-iron-phosphate prismatic cells. Talks CANbus to the dashboard and driver controls. BYD offers this setup in a range of sizes, up to box truck scale.
BYD and CATL are spending huge amounts of money to get to solid state batteries. The consensus seems to be that they work fine but are very hard to make. The manufacturing problems will probably get solved.
(Somebody should buy Jeep from Stellantis and put Jeep bodies on BYD E-axles. Stellantis is pushing a terrible "mild hybrid" power train with 21 miles of electric range, and an insanely overpriced all-electric power train. Stellantis prices went through the roof under the previous (fired) CEO, and sales went through the floor. Jeep sales are way down, despite customers who want them.)
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).
This can't be a serious take, right? Chinese consumers don't expect much less when it comes to maintenance and repair. And given their 3M+/year vehicle production output, they're not a small player.
reach out to countries that sell these cars, find people on social
media and/or if you have them in real life or travel… these cars are absolute garbage
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.
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 …
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.)
The problem with the west is that it’s already developed. Everything in the west is a bit like the European automobile industry, it’s highly refined for what it is and we expect to milk it for some time to come.
Same thing happened with the financial institutions and internet infrastructure - those who had the early versions of it established early ended up lagging behind once the technology was superseded.
The poorest countries in Europe had the best internet for a while because the richest countries wanted to milk the copper wires they invested on.
The US for long had much worse payments systems than Europe and Africa because they were at advanced stage on adopting the early technology.
strongly disagree. the West has almost no manufacturing capability or labor force (at an affordable rate) at the moment. it's almost unsustainable even for a small business to be paying $20 an hour in some cities let alone run large factories
This is a ridiculous statement. The west has absolutely staggering manufacturing capacity.
China has more. And the trends are in the wrong direction, to be sure. But Germany and the US, among many others, have tremendous capacity.
Is it maybe because centering divs was much better career choice than dealing with machines and chemicals for more than a decade now? If that’s changing and manufacturing becomes a need, it should correct by itself.
The west, especially the USA invested gargantuan money into high margin high scale businesses and the Chinese worked their way up in dealing with atoms with help of the west. Now they too can do many of the high margin stuff and the west will have to re-learn how to deal with atoms. It happened because the west’s rich were simply shittier than Chinese bureaucrats and invested badly by choosing wrong KPI or ideas. Wonder what happens if the AI thing doesn’t pan out after pouring enormous money on it(instead of on something strategically important but not as potentially lucrative).
IMHO things are reversible, especially for the USA. Europe is in a worse place as its demographics and energy situation is less favorable.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automotive_assembly_pl...
Define "the west". There was an interesting article here in HN the other day [0] "Almost 10% of South Korea's Workforce Is Now a Robot". China now surpasses all the west-aligned nations in terms of total industrial robots [1], however the west still has the upper-hand in terms of robot to population density ratio.
I think it is a matter of strategy and it seems China's strategy is innovation, science and productivity. We on the west seem to like consumption before everything else and IMHO we are doing it wrong.
0 - https://www.statista.com/chart/31337/new-installations-of-in...
I think another axis is an underlying cultural difference: balance of collectivism vs individualism. China can say “there will be a factory here” because it’s overall good to have one, even if a few noses are out of joint. In California it’s decades of fights to get a train. The trick to competing is to find the right balance for the next decades. China used to be all-central-planning, which was sluggish and not agile. Now it’s guided by central planning (great for overall alignment) over many years rather than jerky 4 year stints, combined with massively distributed efforts to generate high levels of competition and agility. What is the optimal balance for your country or state?
Isn't robot density per 10,000 workers the standard metric used by the International Federation of Robotics?
https://x.com/orikron/status/1859657159338025418?t=9J4ASQP_M...
> however the west still has the upper-hand in terms of robot to population density ratio.
Considering that latest data shows that China industrial robot density is only lower than SG and SK (surpassing Japan and German recently), then the west doesn't have the upper hand anymore.
> China's strategy is innovation, science and productivity. We on the west seem to like consumption before everything else and IMHO we are doing it wrong.
What is this even supposed to mean? You can't have productivity without consumption - who are you producing things for? Well, consumers - duh.
China is the beneficiary of having relatively low marginal costs, but it's worth noting that's been changing and production has been moving out of China and into other cheaper regions - i.e. Vietnam.
Depends if the Chinese need a market to export to.
The main issue with china is a reliance on exports and a declining population...
All work and productivity is ultimately an enabler of consumption.
Any big grouping can compete if there’s enough will. Look at how eg Russia has rejigged much of its war machine during the Ukraine war. Look at how Ukraine has turned themselves inside out to compete. At some level of pressure, countries transform. How much will it take? Is simple economic pressure enough? Can eg Europe gather enough of its massive educated population to transform?
In economic competition, as with poker, if you don’t know who the sucker is…you’re it. China has been making suckers of many countries and they are slowly waking up.
There is a sense in which China has made a sucker of itself, too. China has some serious internal economic structure issues and it remains to be seen how long those issues and the downstream problems it creates are sustainable.
For an example, remember the amazing speed of construct demonstrated by the Chinese government building covid quarantine facilities? Hundreds of square miles of em across every province. They're all gone now.
I always hear this as a criticism of China but then I watch some footage of the actual place and it looks like it lives in the future (to be fair, it's uneven, but let me tell you I've traveled to the US enough times to be shocked at how uneven it can get). Sure, there's real problems I'm sure, where isn't there, but here in Canada by the time we've built a kilometer of an LRT line massively over budget, China has added a new high speed rail line.
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I don't believe so anymore - at least not in California.
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."
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.
What does "the west" even means ? You can't find two countries that agree on half of the topics of the day, no matter how small or meaningless the topic is
Nope, we're too busy talking about our tiny little problems now (which flavor of politician will get to pillage the gold chest for themselves and their little friends for the next X years, ecology, genders, migration, &c.), and we already sold/moved all our heavy industries to... well... China. We're left with services but guess what, you don't build an healthy/sustainable economy on uber eats, airbnb and a crumbling public service system on the verge of dying due to demographic issues
Meanwhile China's totalitarian regime allows them to do things 10-100x times more efficiently than we could, mixed in with a bit of state capitalism, add the fact that they became our factories for pretty much everything, that they have access to most raw materials needed for pretty much anything. Sprinkle with a bit of spirit of revenge for the century of humiliation and you got a pretty good cocktail.
They have a long term vision, no counter powers, a fraction of our regulations and the will we lost sometimes in the last 50 years
Temu and Shein are 25% of packages transiting in France for example, they'll do the same things with their car, until they destroyed local companies, then they'll buy them for scraps. Can't blame them, we're letting them do it
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alexandre-Monnin/public...
Not with NEPA (and CEQA and friends). The current environmental movements will have to be dismantled since they are extractive rent-seekers on production. Fortunately, a new administration will soon be power so there is an opportunity to remove the roadblocks to America’s future success.
A world with a Chinese hegemony is not going to be pretty, as online DoorDash hammer and sickle communists are about to discover.
No. Nixon et al handed us to CCP whole. But hey, cheap TVs, clothes and what not.
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… :)
People used to say the same things about things made in Taiwan, then Japan, and then China, for things like electronics and white goods. It was true - until suddenly it wasn't.
In engineering you ultimately have to build stuff. Over, and over, and over again. You'll mess it up a lot at first, and then one day you'll realize that you haven't.
China is not stuck in 1965 trying to make an EV out of a saucepan and a backyard forge. They learn, and they keep trying. They have a domestic market that their government allows to be used as a test bed for everything they are doing, which sounds more coercive than it really is, especially given the fierce Sino-centric patriotism they have.
If Xi can last another 20 years without a palace coup, or manage a smooth transition of power that does not whipsaw policy, the West is in serious trouble.
Yeah but Japan has long had a cultural obsession with delivering high quality products. I don't know if China ever did, but if it did, much of it was wiped out during cultural revolution and replaced with succeed at all costs.
And there is a difference between success and excellence.
For example there have been zero bullet train fatalities in its entire history, and several Chinese HSR fatal accidents already. For political reasons the quality of the HSR wheels in China took a sharp downturn so expect more accidents in the coming two years.
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As someone from Australia, which hasn't shut its self off from the China EV market. I drive a BYD Dolphin. You should be worried. They are cheaper, and more full-featured than European equivalent. They aren't junk.
Also, they aren't the only big player from China. Australia is soon getting GAC/Aion, Geely, Jaecoo, Leapmotor, Deepal, Xpeng.
Here is an article if interested. https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-news/which-chinese-car-bran...
Does Australia ask manufacturers to setup factories locally? I always think it's a good idea for employment and perhaps technology transfer. I don't know why Canada is not doing that. Getting a couple of big car factories could be huge for the locals. That's thousands and thousands of employment.
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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, over 6 million. BYD, around 3 million. Tesla, a little less than BYD.
Reviews of newer BYD cars are quite favorable. It's not like five years ago, when China's electric cars were not very good.
BYD has a simplified design for electric cars. The main component is the "e-axle", with motor, axle, differential, and wheels in one unit. There's a power electronics box which controls battery, motor, and charging. And, of course, the battery, made of BYD lithium-iron-phosphate prismatic cells. Talks CANbus to the dashboard and driver controls. BYD offers this setup in a range of sizes, up to box truck scale.
BYD and CATL are spending huge amounts of money to get to solid state batteries. The consensus seems to be that they work fine but are very hard to make. The manufacturing problems will probably get solved.
(Somebody should buy Jeep from Stellantis and put Jeep bodies on BYD E-axles. Stellantis is pushing a terrible "mild hybrid" power train with 21 miles of electric range, and an insanely overpriced all-electric power train. Stellantis prices went through the roof under the previous (fired) CEO, and sales went through the floor. Jeep sales are way down, despite customers who want them.)
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).
> BYD is only the 9th largest carmaker in China. SAIC, Changan, and Geeley are the top 3
Protip: when you calc Chinese numbers, be sure to lookup the latest data. 1 year or 2 means landslide difference.
SAIC sales dropped > 11% and profit down by 27% in the first two quaters 2024. Think about that for a second.
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it will take years before they can prove that their cars are made to last. I won’t be lining up to buy them but in 5-10 years perhaps
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This can't be a serious take, right? Chinese consumers don't expect much less when it comes to maintenance and repair. And given their 3M+/year vehicle production output, they're not a small player.
reach out to countries that sell these cars, find people on social media and/or if you have them in real life or travel… these cars are absolute garbage
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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.
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 …
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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.)
your iPhone is manufactured in China :). your view is very outdated, or maybe even willfully. I'm sure they're plenty capable