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Former GM Executive: BYD cars are good in terms of design, features, price, quality. If we let BYD into the U.S. market, it could end up destroying american manufacturers

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  • I think that's kind of the point. What the current case industry is doing is getting them smoked. They need to let go of the past the "institutional knowledge" that's exactly why Ford and Chevy won't compete with Chinese EV. Those are built from the ground up for the modern era with modern leadership modern supply chains building institutional knowledge that matters today and into the future. I would love nothing more than to drive a Ford EV. I am considering the f150 lightning but in comparison to things I see online it's really far behind.

    Well they'd have to cut c-suite and shareholder's cut because everything else that could be squeezed out has already been squeezed out, so the c-suite and shareholder will convert their money into the political power it takes to just block out the competition.

  • Not enough Americans will buy small euro cars. Do you seriously think they wouldn't just do that if they could justify the cost of switching off a f150 assembly line to make a small car they would. Ford and Chevy both had a ton of small cars throughout the years but the sales aren't there anymore.

    Ford stopped making cars because they can't compete with the current crop of cars coming from Japan/Korea and Europe regardless of how much money they throw at the problem. They have their niche with trucks and SUVs and are happy to stay there. China builds cars using massive government subsidies, slave labor, and local resources that aren't available to anyone else in the world which is why I think it's right to fight against them because it's impossible to compete against them just like a small local grocery store can't compete against Walmart.

  • When Americans of all political stripes finally wake up to global realty, they'll most likely do it lying on a sidewalk, naked in the rain, with their fingers in their ears saying na-na-na-na-na-na...

    People will eventually have to face that the economic golden age of the 1950s and 60s wasn't a normal state we can return to if greedy billionaires just let us. The rich definitely grabbed the biggest share of the prosperity, but that brief era of prosperity wasn't normal, it was entirely abnormal, and it's been over for quite a while. We've been fooling ourselves and keeping it going for the last half century by living on credit, and that's about to end. I don't know what new era is about to start, but the American era is over.

  • The same thing happened in the 80s with Japan. The Japanese were no longer making crappy cars but small and very reliable, affordable cars. Detroit was still making rust buckets, obsessing over powerful engines with bodies that rotted out and defects galore. Detroit got beaten up badly (Chrysler had to get a gov bailout) until they cleaned up their act and improved their products. Protecting Detroit from competition would've just saddled US consumers with decades more of crappy, overpriced, low quality, cars.

    We still don't let in the small pickups the rest of the world enjoys.

    defects galore

    A friend of mine from high school attended the GM Institute and became an engineer for them. One of his first projects was on a team that bought a Lexus and an Infiniti when they first came on the market and took them apart to see how many production defects they had. He said a typical American car at the time (and this was in the '90s after quality had rebounded somewhat from its disastrous nadir) had 300-400 defects. The Infiniti they took apart had 2. The Lexus had 0.

  • So they dont care about making cars for the world market, they just want regulations to allow them to milk the american market...

  • So here is the thing.
    U lost. The moment I need American people to bail you out, you need to treat American people way way the fuck better.

    Worker rights, mandatory vacations, work protections, pensions, guaranteed healthcare etc.

  • No shit, people want cheap, reliable transport and workers would want to build them, build and work on replacement parts, build batteries, etc. The only people supported by blocking BYD in the US are executives, shareholders, and the politicians they bought.

    US is not a country, there is no strong federal power to choose direction.
    US is like Poland before being divided, everything run by oligarchs and every oligarch just pulling for himself.

  • We can't buy Chinese EV's in Canada thanks to the 100% tariff imposed by the GoC. I wish they'd get rid of the tariff. Our cheapest EV option right now is the Fiat 500e and that starts at over $30,000.

    I guarantee u US pressured Canada into not allowing byd

  • I will strongly disagree with “over engineered”. Why a car company with all their money and bailouts that they can’t compete with Apple/Android on touchscreen features and responsiveness is the whole reason why Chinese cars will kill American car companies. Chinese cars support Android auto even when Google play services isn’t even available in China (last I checked).

    Okay, I'll concede that point to you. U.S. carmakers suck at software. And, even on the hardware, they're resistant to change and slow to innovate.

  • So they dont care about making cars for the world market, they just want regulations to allow them to milk the american market...

    As is tradition

  • I think that's kind of the point. What the current case industry is doing is getting them smoked. They need to let go of the past the "institutional knowledge" that's exactly why Ford and Chevy won't compete with Chinese EV. Those are built from the ground up for the modern era with modern leadership modern supply chains building institutional knowledge that matters today and into the future. I would love nothing more than to drive a Ford EV. I am considering the f150 lightning but in comparison to things I see online it's really far behind.

    The problem is the world is transitioning to EVs, and burying your head in the sand won’t change that. Legacy manufacturers could be trying to find their place in the new world while they can, or they can stick with technology of the past, let someone else come to dominate the new technologies, and be left with a ever shrinking market until they disappear

  • The same thing happened in the 80s with Japan. The Japanese were no longer making crappy cars but small and very reliable, affordable cars. Detroit was still making rust buckets, obsessing over powerful engines with bodies that rotted out and defects galore. Detroit got beaten up badly (Chrysler had to get a gov bailout) until they cleaned up their act and improved their products. Protecting Detroit from competition would've just saddled US consumers with decades more of crappy, overpriced, low quality, cars.

    We still don't let in the small pickups the rest of the world enjoys.

    I would kill for a small electric truck... Telo is calling my name, but they don't have a functioning product yet.

  • So build them here, like every other foreign auto maker.

    They accomplish two completely different effects by two completely different mechanisms. The former being available to every manufacturer.

    So it's not free market after all because the big 3 can make vehicles at home and sell abroad while the others have to make them in the US for the US market. In what way is it not a form of favoring the domestic auto companies?

  • Is it a level playing field? In China workers rights are pretty non-existent and there’s no OSHA equivalent, at least not to the degree we have in the US. Then add in government subsidies, lower worker pay, reduced R&D costs because they pilfered the engineering from a US company, and you end up with a very lopsided market.

    To be clear, I am in no way defending the US auto industry. They have little customer loyalty for a reason – low quality, overpriced, subscription dependent vehicles with terrible warranties, expensive service requirements, and invasive telemetry. They need more competition to force them to make more consumer-friendly decisions, but China is hardly a fair competitor.

    In China workers rights are pretty non-existent and there’s no OSHA equivalent, at least not to the degree we have in the US

    How much maternity leave d'you get in the US? Cause in China it's a minimum of 90 days up to 180. And an extra 15~30 days of pat leave. Mandatory paid holiday? US: 0 China: 11. Sick leave? US: 0 China: months (at reduced rate). Vacation? US: 0, China: 1 to 3 weeks.

    An employer that fails to allow an employee to take annual leave must pay that employee 300% of the employee’s daily wages for each unused vacation day

    The work sfatey certainly remains an issue, like any developing country, but things are rapidly improving.

    Efforts at work safety shall be oriented around people and reflect the principle of people first and life first, with top priority given to people's life safety. The philosophy of safe development shall be adhered to and the principles of safety first, prevention as the main target as well as comprehensive administration shall be followed to forestall and resolve major safety risks at the source.

    Things aren't all roses in China, but y'all have to get off of your high horse when you know fuck all other than bland ass propaganda.

  • I'd think enrollment rates would be a severe lagging indicator of education quality. Institutions could likely coast on reputation for quite some time after education quality tanks. Inertia is powerful, and some could even knowingly decide to go to poor educational institutions just for the status it still gives among peers and in their community.

    That said, I have no first hand experience with US higher education, and wouldn't know what the quality really is, just saying that enrollment rates probably aren't a great indicator of it.

    True, I would argue though that after a certain amount of time, nobody even cares about the quality, it's the university name on the degree that is truly important.

    You can go anywhere on the planet even decades from now and say you're from Harvard (take your pick) and you'll be regarded as a knowledge god even if you were the last in the class to graduate.

    Educational quality isn't everything for getting into a good career, it's the reputation, and that is what schools in the US (and a few abroad) have in spades.

  • Okay, I'll concede that point to you. U.S. carmakers suck at software. And, even on the hardware, they're resistant to change and slow to innovate.

    Software is the answer to many of the mechanical issues too though. Granted, the physical engineering is definitely over engineered, but would they really need to have 6 different taillight frames when LEDs can be multicolor and just tuned with software for each market? I also see zero reason why manufacturers can’t start from a base and tweak for different market configurations. You also see car companies complain about complex regulation, but then in this day and age when east Asia can make you anything, that’s not an excuse I’m willing to be fed. I fucking hate Elmo like everyone else here, but why the hell is the Model Y the most popular car in the world. None of the other companies want to copy Tesla? They don’t want to compete? We’ve gotten to the point where it’s ludicrous that they’re not competing.

  • Dam maybe some of the American automakers who took billions in subsidies should have built cheaper cars instead of the largest trucks possible to skirt regulations.

    I literally can't afford an American car, i can afford a BYD tho.

    I can afford neither, but if I had to save up for one it would be the BYD.

    American cars are just large, stupid and inefficient. Also the parts are very expensive here in New Zealand

  • American manufacturing seems very incapable of change. If things worked this way for decades, why change it? Meanwhile the world moved on and they ask themselves why doesn't anyone wanna buy american...?

  • I don't disagree with the criticisms of American cars -- overpriced, uninspired, unreliable, over-engineered, etc. -- but to everyone saying "we should just compete", do you realize the realities that Chinese workers experience? Have you heard of 996? It's shorthand for a common work schedule in China: 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week. Benefits that are common in the U.S., even in non-union shops, like retirement plans, PTO, worker's comp, and overtime pay are rare. So, yeah, things can be made much cheaper if you are willing to feed your workforce into the grinder.

    Have you heard of 996? It’s shorthand for a common work schedule in China: 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week

    So a typical American teacher’s schedule?

  • Very few children work in china right now, Chinese workers even have 5 days of vacation a year by law.

    That's 5 more than the US....

    There were probably more children working on farms in the US than in china, and I remember something about Florida wanting to reinstate child labour again?

    Yes, there may not be child labor. But in places we cannot see, there are still black industry chains. A brick factory was exposed some time ago. They let some people with low IQ or disabilities work. They were not given masks, and the air was full of dust. They may work more than ten hours a day or even more. What is the difference between this and slavery? I just want to give this example to illustrate that there are still many black-hearted factories in society, and there is also the possibility of employing child labor. In China, young people who have not studied will choose to work in factories, but they must be at least 16 years old. If they are younger, they will not be hired. Back to the issue of BYD, although we are proud that it can be recognized by the world as a Chinese brand, and many people in China also buy it. But recently there have been some news that they blindly work overtime within the company, and have meetings after get off work, etc. Someone exposed the chat records within the company. We are all ordinary people. We just want to fight for our rights. Even if it is a big company, as long as it exploits people, we must oppose it.

  • 74 Stimmen
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    The point is not visuals, though I know what you mean. The point is to gain the introspection and Brain chemistry changes. Micro dosing less than . 5 grams daily for short periods NOT LONGTERM, are very effective control vs SSRIs. Large mega doses are where the real changes happen. I highly recommend significant research and carrful planning if you choose this route. Safety. Trip sitters. Be safe. There has been major changes in PTSD war veterans and all sorts if mental health issues.
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    Does anybody know of a resource that's compiled known to be affected system or motherboard models using this specific BMC? Eclypsium said the line of vulnerable AMI MegaRAC devices uses an interface known as Redfish. Server makers known to use these products include AMD, Ampere Computing, ASRock, ARM, Fujitsu, Gigabyte, Huawei, Nvidia, Supermicro, and Qualcomm. Some, but not all, of these vendors have released patches for their wares.
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    eyekaytee@aussie.zoneE
    They will say something like solar went from 600gw to 1000 thats a 66% increase this year and coal only increased 40% except coal is 3600gw to 6400. Hrmmmm, maybe these numbers are outdated? Based on this coal and gas are down: In Q1 2025, solar generation rose 48% compared to the same period in 2024. Solar power reached 254 TWh, making up 10% of total electricity. This was the largest increase among all clean energy sources. Coal-fired electricity dropped by 4%, falling to 1,421 TWh. Gas-fired power also went down by 4%, reaching 67 TWh https://carboncredits.com/china-sets-clean-energy-record-in-early-2025-with-951-tw/ are no where close to what is required to meet their climate goals Which ones in particular are you talking about? Trump signs executive order directing US withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement — again https://apnews.com/article/trump-paris-agreement-climate-change-788907bb89fe307a964be757313cdfb0 China vowed on Tuesday to continue participating in two cornerstone multinational arrangements -- the World Health Organization and Paris climate accord -- after newly sworn-in US President Donald Trump ordered withdrawals from them. https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250121-china-says-committed-to-who-paris-climate-deal-after-us-pulls-out What's that saying? You hate it when the person you hate is doing good? I can't remember what it is I can't fault them for what they're doing at the moment, even if they are run by an evil dictatorship and do pollute the most I’m not sure how european defense spending is relevant It suggests there is money available in the bank to fund solar/wind/battery, but instead they are preparing for? something? what? who knows. France can make a fighter jet at home but not solar panels apparently. Prehaps they would be made in a country with environmental and labour laws if governments legislated properly to prevent companies outsourcing manufacturing. However this doesnt absolve china. China isnt being forced at Gunpoint to produce these goods with low labour regulation and low environmental regulation. You're right, it doesn't absolve china, and I avoid purchasing things from them wherever possible, my solar panels and EV were made in South Korea, my home battery was made in Germany, there are only a few things in my house made in China, most of them I got second hand but unfortunately there is no escaping the giant of manufacturing. With that said it's one thing for me to sit here and tut tut at China, but I realise I am not most people, the most clearest example is the extreme anti-ai, anti-billionaire bias on this platform, in real life most people don't give a fuck, they love Amazon/Microsoft/Google/Apple etc, they can't go a day without them. So I consider myself a realist, if you want people to buy your stuff then you will need to make the conditions possible for them to WANT to buy your stuff, not out of some moral lecture and Europe isn't doing that, if we look at energy prices: Can someone actually point out to me where this comes from? ... At the end of the day energy is a small % of EU household spending I was looking at corporate/business energy use: Major European companies are already moving to cut costs and retain their competitive edge. For example, Thyssenkrupp, Germany’s largest steelmaker, said on Monday it would slash 11,000 jobs in its steel division by 2030, in a major corporate reshuffle. https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/High-Energy-Costs-Continue-to-Plague-European-Industry.html Prices have since fallen but are still high compared to other countries. A poll by Germany's DIHK Chambers of Industry and Commerce of around 3,300 companies showed that 37% were considering cutting production or moving abroad, up from 31% last year and 16% in 2022. For energy-intensive industrial firms some 45% of companies were mulling slashing output or relocation, the survey showed. "The trust of the German economy in energy policy is severely damaged," Achim Dercks, DIHK deputy chief executive said, adding that the government had not succeeded in providing companies with a perspective for reliable and affordable energy supply. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/more-german-companies-mull-relocation-due-high-energy-prices-survey-2024-08-01/ I've seen nothing to suggest energy prices in the EU are SO cheap that it's worth moving manufacturing TO Europe, and this is what annoys me the most. I've pointed this out before but they have an excellent report on the issues: https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/97e481fd-2dc3-412d-be4c-f152a8232961_en?filename=The+future+of+European+competitiveness+_+A+competitiveness+strategy+for+Europe.pdf Then they put out this Competitive Compass: https://commission.europa.eu/topics/eu-competitiveness/competitiveness-compass_en But tbh every week in the EU it seems like they are chasing after some other goal. This would be great, it would have been greater 10 years ago. Agreed
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    Obviously the law must be simple enough to follow so that for Jim’s furniture shop is not a problem nor a too high cost to respect it, but it must be clear that if you break it you can cease to exist as company. I think this may be the root of our disagreement, I do not believe that there is any law making body today that is capable of an elegantly simple law. I could be too naive, but I think it is possible. We also definitely have a difference on opinion when it comes to the severity of the infraction, in my mind, while privacy is important, it should not have the same level of punishments associated with it when compared to something on the level of poisoning water ways; I think that a privacy law should hurt but be able to be learned from while in the poison case it should result in the bankruptcy of a company. The severity is directly proportional to the number of people affected. If you violate the privacy of 200 million people is the same that you poison the water of 10 people. And while with the poisoning scenario it could be better to jail the responsible people (for a very, very long time) and let the company survive to clean the water, once your privacy is violated there is no way back, a company could not fix it. The issue we find ourselves with today is that the aggregate of all privacy breaches makes it harmful to the people, but with a sizeable enough fine, I find it hard to believe that there would be major or lasting damage. So how much money your privacy it's worth ? 6 For this reason I don’t think it is wise to write laws that will bankrupt a company off of one infraction which was not directly or indirectly harmful to the physical well being of the people: and I am using indirectly a little bit more strict than I would like to since as I said before, the aggregate of all the information is harmful. The point is that the goal is not to bankrupt companies but to have them behave right. The penalty associated to every law IS the tool that make you respect the law. And it must be so high that you don't want to break the law. I would have to look into the laws in question, but on a surface level I think that any company should be subjected to the same baseline privacy laws, so if there isn’t anything screwy within the law that apple, Google, and Facebook are ignoring, I think it should apply to them. Trust me on this one, direct experience payment processors have a lot more rules to follow to be able to work. I do not want jail time for the CEO by default but he need to know that he will pay personally if the company break the law, it is the only way to make him run the company being sure that it follow the laws. For some reason I don’t have my usual cynicism when it comes to this issue. I think that the magnitude of loses that vested interests have in these companies would make it so that companies would police themselves for fear of losing profits. That being said I wouldn’t be opposed to some form of personal accountability on corporate leadership, but I fear that they will just end up finding a way to create a scapegoat everytime. It is not cynicism. I simply think that a huge fine to a single person (the CEO for example) is useless since it too easy to avoid and if it really huge realistically it would be never paid anyway so nothing usefull since the net worth of this kind of people is only on the paper. So if you slap a 100 billion file to Musk he will never pay because he has not the money to pay even if technically he is worth way more than that. Jail time instead is something that even Musk can experience. In general I like laws that are as objective as possible, I think that a privacy law should be written so that it is very objectively overbearing, but that has a smaller fine associated with it. This way the law is very clear on right and wrong, while also giving the businesses time and incentive to change their practices without having to sink large amount of expenses into lawyers to review every minute detail, which is the logical conclusion of the one infraction bankrupt system that you seem to be supporting. Then you write a law that explicitally state what you can do and what is not allowed is forbidden by default.
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    that's not just useless defeatism, but also false. effective end to end encryption exists in multiple forms today. signal, maybe even with a custom server. matrix if the server is being ran on trusted hardware. XMPP too with the right extensions.
  • Why doesn't Nvidia have more competition?

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    It’s funny how the article asks the question, but completely fails to answer it. About 15 years ago, Nvidia discovered there was a demand for compute in datacenters that could be met with powerful GPU’s, and they were quick to respond to it, and they had the resources to focus on it strongly, because of their huge success and high profitability in the GPU market. AMD also saw the market, and wanted to pursue it, but just over a decade ago where it began to clearly show the high potential for profitability, AMD was near bankrupt, and was very hard pressed to finance developments on GPU and compute in datacenters. AMD really tried the best they could, and was moderately successful from a technology perspective, but Nvidia already had a head start, and the proprietary development system CUDA was already an established standard that was very hard to penetrate. Intel simply fumbled the ball from start to finish. After a decade of trying to push ARM down from having the mobile crown by far, investing billions or actually the equivalent of ARM’s total revenue. They never managed to catch up to ARM despite they had the better production process at the time. This was the main focus of Intel, and Intel believed that GPU would never be more than a niche product. So when intel tried to compete on compute for datacenters, they tried to do it with X86 chips, One of their most bold efforts was to build a monstrosity of a cluster of Celeron chips, which of course performed laughably bad compared to Nvidia! Because as it turns out, the way forward at least for now, is indeed the massively parralel compute capability of a GPU, which Nvidia has refined for decades, only with (inferior) competition from AMD. But despite the lack of competition, Nvidia did not slow down, in fact with increased profits, they only grew bolder in their efforts. Making it even harder to catch up. Now AMD has had more money to compete for a while, and they do have some decent compute units, but Nvidia remains ahead and the CUDA problem is still there, so for AMD to really compete with Nvidia, they have to be better to attract customers. That’s a very tall order against Nvidia that simply seems to never stop progressing. So the only other option for AMD is to sell a bit cheaper. Which I suppose they have to. AMD and Intel were the obvious competitors, everybody else is coming from even further behind. But if I had to make a bet, it would be on Huawei. Huawei has some crazy good developers, and Trump is basically forcing them to figure it out themselves, because he is blocking Huawei and China in general from using both AMD and Nvidia AI chips. And the chips will probably be made by Chinese SMIC, because they are also prevented from using advanced production in the west, most notably TSMC. China will prevail, because it’s become a national project, of both prestige and necessity, and they have a massive talent mass and resources, so nothing can stop it now. IMO USA would clearly have been better off allowing China to use American chips. Now China will soon compete directly on both production and design too.
  • Tiny LEDs May Power Future AI Inteconnects

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  • Meta Reportedly Eyeing 'Super Sensing' Tech for Smart Glasses

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    I see your point but also I just genuinely don't have a mind for that shit. Even my own close friends and family, it never pops into my head to ask about that vacation they just got back from or what their kids are up to. I rely on social cues from others, mainly my wife, to sort of kick start my brain. I just started a new job. I can't remember who said they were into fishing and who didn't, and now it's anxiety inducing to try to figure out who is who. Or they ask me a friendly question and I get caught up answering and when I'm done I forget to ask it back to them (because frequently asking someone about their weekend or kids or whatever is their way of getting to share their own life with you, but my brain doesn't think that way). I get what you're saying. It could absolutely be used for performative interactions but for some of us people drift away because we aren't good at being curious about them or remembering details like that. And also, I have to sit through awkward lunches at work where no one really knows what to talk about or ask about because outside of work we are completely alien to one another. And it's fine. It wouldn't be worth the damage it does. I have left behind all personally identifiable social media for the same reason. But I do hate how social anxiety and ADHD makes friendship so fleeting.