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.
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.
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“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.
Europe : “stop industry, stop production, cease consumption !”
USA : “stop science, let’s go back to religion !”
China : “hold my beer 🤣”“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.
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.
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.
I think the picture in the article was just AI bullshit art. It’s not how anyone really thinks robotic factories look.
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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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.
They don’t need to be humanoid.
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.
Ah teslabot.
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.
A few weeks ago there was a report on some US VC investors who made a similar trip to China and were then ‘terrified’ … Now this. Is it somewhat similar to the influencer trips to Xinjiang that then tell the world that the genocide of Uyghurs is not true?
How much do you see in such PR trips? Go a bit upstream the value chain to get the full picture …
Is it somewhat similar to the influencer trips to Xinjiang that then tell the world that the genocide of Uyghurs is not true?
Am not an influencer, have been to Urumqi, should be going back in like a month or so.
Maybe it’s the people who have never been there and whose job requires them to create/amplify hostile evidence whom are lying, and not every person who travels to Xinjiang.
Stop fedposting. Shitbird.
It’s ironic that you’re making innuendo about agendaposting, when your whole account seems to be entirely dedicated solely to anti-China posts.
Here is practically the same article, posted less than three weeks ago. It’s the same narrative posted by the same user.
I didn’t say you were wrong, I said you were a hypocrite.
I don’t hate a country or an individual. This is your weird interpretation.
Ah see now you’re just being straight up dishonest now. It’s trivial for anyone to check your post history and see that this isn’t true.
Up til now I’d given you the benefit of the doubt in assuming you were just a slight oddball with an axe to grind for personal reasons, but now it’s clear this is a troll farm account. On the block list you go.
Good when anti China posted and bad when pro China posted /s
