- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/50900195
Robotics has catapulted Beijing into a dominant position in many industries
“It’s the most humbling thing I’ve ever seen,” said Ford’s chief executive about his recent trip to China.
“Their cost and the quality of their vehicles is far superior to what I see in the West,” Farley warned in July.
Andrew Forrest, the Australian billionaire behind mining giant Fortescue – which is investing massively in green energy – says his trips to China convinced him to abandon his company’s attempts to manufacture electric vehicle powertrains in-house.
Other executives describe vast, “dark factories” where robots do so much of the work alone that there is no need to even leave the lights on for humans.
“We visited a dark factory producing some astronomical number of mobile phones,” recalls Greg Jackson, the boss of British energy supplier Octopus.
In Britain, Shenzhen-based BYD multiplied its September sales by a factor of 10 this year – overtaking far more established brands such as Mini, Renault and Land Rover.
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I think I’d rather just make fewer, more durable things. One computer per year per person is way way too many. And cars barely need to exist at all, compared to the number of cars actually in existence. Vans, trucks, trains, and buses are of course a different story.
One computer per year per person is way way too many.
It’s on you if you’re buying them at that rate.
“Their cost and the quality of their vehicles is far superior to what I see in the West,”
Which is exactly why Americans aren’t allowed to have them.
We hate competition.
Ceos discovering what investing profits into the business and communities can do instead of pocketing every goddamn cent for the investors.
Whaaat you mean just aiming for metrics to increase stock prices is not actually creating value? YOU CAN MAKE MORE MONEY BY CREATING VALUE???
Investing into business, in this case. Unless you mean robot communities.
The US as a whole has been stripped bare by private equity and these conservative fat fuck neck beards are so scared of brown people that they are willingly giving the country away.
That and they can’t understand that the world is leaving the US behind.
As these types of articles always do, they leave out China’s huge unemployment problem and dismiss the existential threat of wealth inequality.
dismiss the existential threat of wealth inequality.
Wealth inequality is worse in the US than in China.
That doesn’t mean it’s not a problem, right? There’s always a country that’s even worse off.
Wealth inequality is worse in the US than in China.
Could be, that data for wealth isn’t easily available for both countries.
Income inequality is about the same in USA and China though, Gini coefficient around 0.41 in both countries. Most figures put China slightly more inequal than USA for income.
It appears those are specifically problems China is on the trajectory of solving/improving for itself.
The American CEOs going to China are returning to find those issues getting worse everyday with no solution in sight.
It felt a bit implied and would seem really contrived to reassure the reader China has those problems.
How’d they end up with a huge unemployment problem after the 1 child policy plus being the biggest manufacturer in the world?
Still just too many people for the amount of good paying jobs.
Like most developed countries with youth unemployment, there’s work to be done, but most of it doesn’t pay a livable wage.
Dealing with surplus humans has never been a problem for communist countries. Just stop allocating them food for 2 months.
Not sure if China is a communist country these days though, but it sure retained the authoritarian parts.
American car industry literally got bailout after bailout. If GM and Ford had just been allowed to succumb to their shit management Tesla may never had been in a position to be bought by a nazi.
Because they have run our country into the ground for their own personal profit, nepotism and corruption while destroying our education system, opportunities and infrastructure. Check mate idiots
Yeah, but WE pay, the oligarchs, in their privilege-bubbles, don’t.
That’s why they’re into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism , aka torch-us-so-they-get-golden-rulership … style of driving our lobbied/bribed “governments”.
WHEN one ideologically-rejects that souls have any future-Eternity, any “reaping of what they have sown”, as the root-guru of the Christians rendered the concept “karma”,
THEN torching-our-entire-future-for-narcissistic-momentary-pleasure is logical , rightttt?
Political-systems invariably divorce authority from accountability, and that itself proves political-systems unfit for ruling our world.
Responsibilityarchy’s the only survivable alternative.
Human-habit opposes responsibilityarchy, with its automatic-accountability mechanisms, more-fundamentally than it opposes ideology-rule, by far.
_ /\ _
Sometimes oligarchs get destroyed by supporting fascism.
“Their cost and the quality of their vehicles is far superior to what I see in the West,” Farley warned in July.
If you want to see what the Chinese car market is like, check out Wheelsboy. The features that are just standard in Chinese cars are crazy.
Do they do any reviews of cars after a few years of wear and use or only brand new from the factory?
Mostly new, some prototypes even. But I also know that the build quality and safety of Chinese automobiles has increased dramatically in the last decade-ish.
Got any specific videos to recommend?
I did notice that the one posted today is not one of my favorites. The ones I’m used to seeing are hosted by Eric, and are really just car reviews like you’d see anywhere … just for Chinese cars in China.
“It’s the most humbling thing I’ve ever seen,” said Ford’s chief executive about his recent trip to China.
Report from June 2025: ‘The Most Humbling Thing I’ve Ever Seen’: Ford CEO On China’s Car Industry’
It’s the kind of quotes that gets more recent with each passing day.
Sorry, what? How does that work?
Europe : “stop industry, stop production, cease consumption !”
USA : “stop science, let’s go back to religion !”
China : “hold my beer 🤣”I’m suspicious of an article about advanced robotics without any description or depiction of said robots. Humanoid robots are for advertising brochures. They’re impractical for almost everything.
This is some anecdote from executives jotted down by journalists who never got near these factories.
Not saying its fake, just lazy and incurious journalism.
The whole “dark factory” thing was invented by the Japanese, decades ago, ttbomk.
Huge factory, no lights on in it, simply because there weren’t any humans in it.
Patrols for surprise-errors/mistakes/malfunctions were done by flashlight.
Japanese-management got things down to a few cosmetic-blemishes per million units back in the VCR days.
Their quality-control was 2nd to none.
That other Asian industries can learn from the Japanese, in ways that our culture prohibits us from doing, shouldn’t be surprising.
All the people who insist that the only thing that China produces is shit-quality “Chinesium”, iPhones were produced in China for years ( no idea if they still are, & don’t care ) and those things were far tighter quality than anything I’ve ever built, or than anything ANY of the North Americans I’ve worked-with have ever built.
China produces a spectrum, ranging from shit-quality to stunning-quality.
Same as we do.
Ideological “glasses” blind us, they don’t “help” us see what’s actually going-on.
& as another already-identified, “robotics” in no way implies humanoid.
Car-manufactories have been using giant robotic-arms for series-spot-welding for … decades, now?
I’d do all the fuselage-riveting of old-style sheet-aluminum aircraft by robot, if I was a manufacturer of those things:
once you get the programming right, then you don’t have “human error” sabotaging your product-integrity.
It’s the same at all scales: what we are good-at, isn’t what robots are good-at, & either we segregate the work so that we are doing the adaptive/innovative/human-process-centered stuff, & leave all the mechanical-repitition to robots, XOR we’re sabotaging our own competitive-ability.
Exactly as the “strategy” of letting the short-term bottom-line now proves, when Asian industries invest strategically, in future-competitive-capability.
Decades-ago there was an example of the US steel-industry: they coasted on their establishment, while Japan invested in more-precision-chemistry & better foundries, then … after some years, those investments came on-line, & the US steel industry, which couldn’t compete with that, just got the US gov’t to establish protectionism, to tarriff the Japanese steel industry, to protect the anti-strategic US companies.
( this is from one of the strategic-management textbooks of Blackwell: it’s literally a reference-text case )
Accountability won’t ever be tolerated by opportunistic-authority, including industry-incumbents, therefore “protectionism” damages the market to protect the anti-strategy of the incumbent players at the cost of our world’s finite-opportunity.
That is normal: S. O. P.
Different cultures value different things.
Some people value making things right, whereas other people value corrupting everything that they can, as much as they can, for sake of how much the “get away with” ( the word “shoddy” is actually the real name of a guy who established that paradigm in the US )
We wouldn’t invest in what Asia’s invested-in: why should we have any ability to compete?
That is our “strategy”.
And when we are economically-butchered by our “strategy”, then … then the oligarchs will simply protect themselves, & exploit the then-current situation, same as now.
Nothing changes, fundamentally…
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They don’t need to be humanoid.
The telegraph is a low-quality right-wing rag in the UK that frames everything with a hint of xenophobia. I’d say it’s a pretty poor source for “world news”. Definitely take it with a large dose of salt.
I think the picture in the article was just AI bullshit art. It’s not how anyone really thinks robotic factories look.
It’s been in quite a few articles since last March.
Isn’t this just Chinese propaganda?
If you’re an idiot, sure.
Chinese propaganda by Western media. Ok, sure.
By the Telegraph, based on accounts from US and British executives?
you mean the same executives that are currently trying their best to circumvent democracy in their countries of origin?
the same ones that are actively demonstrating their disdain for the economies that helped them grow to the massive sizes they are today?
the very same people who have been warning their employees of the bad Chinese companies that manufacture shitty products but secretly began moving operations overseas decades ago?
those guys?
totally trustworthy!
An analyst I heard figured Musk is giving up on cars after visiting China and seeing what they do and trying to pivot to robotics.
You’d think he’d just buy from them wholesale and slap a Tesla logo on it then charge 1000% more
Ah teslabot.
Gets stuck on an at grade pedestrian crossing.
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Yeah but ford is only alive because of bailouts. A strong breeze should humble them
Ford was the one US automaker that didn’t take those bailouts.
Hmmm. You’re right. They still make shitty cars though.
And Ford notably didn’t give pay rises to their workers back in the day too.
