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The size of BYD's factory
- FarMcKon 2y agoFolks, 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 agoWhy bother discussing anything with this sort of attitude? Just shut the site down.
- gamblor956 2y agoLA 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 agoMy 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.
- pavon 2y agoAlbuquerque 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 agoI wonder if China could get into an EV bubble like with the real-estate.
- sinuhe69 2y agoThey 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 agoAutomation is transforming industries, and in marketing, tools like W3rocks can streamline lead generation, similar to how robots enhance coffee production.
- jqpabc123 2y agoJust 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 agohttps://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 agoAlso please stop comparing absolute numbers between countries with more than an order of magnitude population difference.
- UltraSane 2y ago[flagged]
- tsimionescu 2y agoRelative 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.
- poniko 2y agoThe scale is just insane .. hard to comprehend a 3km/2mi wide factory.
- Archelaos 2y agoTo 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 agoIt 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 agoThe 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 agoAgreed, the factories clearly aren't the same size as Manhattan.
- morgango 2y agoBut 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 agoIs 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 agoOne 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 agoWhich if this BYD site is 2x2 miles for ~5sq km, BASF is twice as large at 10sq km! Wow
- tame3902 2y agoVolkswagen'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 agoI 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 agoDo 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 agoI’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 agoUS/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.
- oldpersonintx 2y ago[dead]
- baybal2 2y ago[dead]
- saturn8601 2y agoPeople 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 agoWhen Trump ups everything from China by 100% I guess US would be able to make something with profit?
- greenthrow 2y agoThat is not remotely how tariffs work.
- hnthrowaway0328 2y agoDoesn't a tariff drive up prices? (or at least intended for that)
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- baybal2 2y ago[dead]
- edhelas 2y agoAll 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 agoIt'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 agoWho said net zero? Perfect is the enemy of good.
- jimjimjim 2y agoComments 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 agoThe number of construction vehicles doing something versus sitting around waiting for labor in that shot is impressive.
- edot 2y agoYeah, 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.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoWith 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 agoChina 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 agoThey’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 agoI 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 agoEVs 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 agoDrones 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 agoDJI is already the worlds largest drone maker, better to let them continue then rebuild a car factory.
- AnotherGoodName 2y agoIn past wars factories making steel pots made helmets. I can definitely imagine an ev plant making drones.
- EasyMark 2y agoThey 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 agoSpoken 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 agoCars 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.
- 00N8 2y ago> the most inefficient mode of transport you could imagine Rockets, helicopters, trebuchet-and-parachute?
- 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 agoBecause 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]
- brcmthrowaway 2y agoCan the west compete?
- testfoobar 2y agoI 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 agoDidn'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 agowest 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… :)
- hackernewds 2y agoyour iPhone is manufactured in China :). your view is very outdated, or maybe even willfully. I'm sure they're plenty capable
- acdha 2y agoDo 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.
- JKCalhoun 2y agoWild, fascinating, frightening.
- ASalazarMX 2y agoThe first thing that came to mind with the word "frightening" was a battery fire there.
- matthewdgreen 2y agoIt'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 agoWestern 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 agoSadly 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 agoAffordable EVs are a solved problem. China has solved it. The world responded by putting up tariffs.
- barbs 2y agoThanks, I hate it.
- zokier 2y agoIt'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.
- jcranmer 2y agoThe thing about that image that amuses me the most is that there is a local grid pattern that isn't aligned north-south, and the factory goes "don't care" and instead smashes itself through everything on a straight cardinal direction alignment.
- dirkt 2y agoThough you can see the same alignment as the factory in town further to the west, with newer streets. I guess it makes sense to align the factory to this grid, and not to the older grid that followed the fields.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- skybrian 2y agoWhen you zoom out far enough in ACME mapper, the factory disappears. (I'm guessing that's an older image.)
- ImaCake 2y agoYep, 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.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- throwawaymaths 2y agoThis feels very paperclip maximization
- 0xbadcafebee 2y ago[flagged]
- ClassyJacket 2y ago[flagged]
- joecool1029 2y agoViewable link: https://nitter.poast.org/taylorogan/status/1859146242519167249 https://nitter.poast.org/taylorogan/status/18591462425191672...
- postmeta 2y agoBYD 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 agoThey make batteries, regular cars and hybrids and the cost of labor is lower
- ASalazarMX 2y agoAmerican 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.
- woodrowbarlow 2y agothey're also one of the top suppliers for public transit busses.
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y agoDoesn'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 agoAre they more efficient? Because you only substitute human labor for technology when wages are too high
- torginus 2y ago
- DonnyV 2y agoThe power of centralized planning.
- thecleaner 2y agoMost 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 agoIf 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 agoThe 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.
- davedx 2y agoTwitter links no longer load at all on my iPhone. Can someone post an archive link or something?
- adrianN 2y agoSo 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?
- deadfoxygrandpa 2y agothey 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
- hwillis 2y agoChina 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.
- aqfamnzc 2y agoI wonder if (partially) they use discharge current from one batch of batteries to charge the next?
- Cerium 2y agoChina 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.
- pbasista 2y agoSince 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.
- highwaylights 2y agoFactory square footage is the new crowd sizes. Tell your friends.
- dwighttk 2y agoLooks like a picture of a motherboard
- datavirtue 2y agoI just got rickrolled into X.
- wingerlang 2y agoI 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.
- daghamm 2y agoLargest EV manufacturer in the world, of course you would see them everywhere.
- wingerlang 2y agoMy point was more in how fast it has gone from 0 to every other car I see in a very short time.
- divbzero 2y agoThey aren’t everywhere yet here in the United States. The only one I’ve seen so far was a public bus in a rural town.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoYou won't see them in the US due to punitive tariffs.
- csomar 2y agoThey have definitively taken over in Thailand and Malaysia. All new cars are Chinese. I've asked one of the Grab drivers about it and it really boils down to cost. The Dolphin is really cheap and good.
- TaylorAlexander 2y agoYep even in Oakland California where they don’t sell BYD cars, they recently replaced all the school busses with BYD electric. https://thedriven.io/2024/09/04/the-biggest-electric-school-bus-fleet-in-the-us-is-about-to-feed-the-grid/ https://thedriven.io/2024/09/04/the-biggest-electric-school-...
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- cnity 2y agoWhy 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 agoWhat is BYD?
- whynotmaybe 2y agoChinese car manufacturer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Auto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Auto
- 6510 2y agoFor a tech website HN has very little about the Chinese insane scale projects. There is so much wildly amusing and inspiring footage online.