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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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  • Overall, love it. We had a hybrid RAV 4 and wanted to move to a larger vehicle. When we discovered that Toyota was releasing a hybrid Sienna for 2021, we jumped at it. We get ~35mpg on average. And we've put just a bit over 55k miles on it since we got it. Maintenance has mostly been routine, though we did have an odd issue with one of the sliding doors filling up with water. According to the tech at the service center, there is a drain which was clogged and needed to be cleared. This was likely exacerbated by the fact that it's parked outside, in a wooded area. So, it sees a lot of leaf litter. And that is one down side, the back hatch can accumulate leaves and crap in the space between the top of the door and the body of the vehicle. Annoying, but you just have to clean it out on the regular. The adjustment rails for the rear seats are also hard to clean, if anything gets in them. So, that can be annoying.

    As for performance, it moves well enough. It's a mini-van, so you're not going to beat a small car off the line, but you do get up to speed at a good clip. The turning radius is surprisingly narrow for such a large vehicle. At speed, the vehicle feels stable and handles ok. I'll also say that the adaptive cruise control is insanely addictive. I've been driving in traffic this week and I can go a long time without touching the pedals. I'd also recommend getting to the trim level where you get the backup camera with the false overview of the vehicle, makes parking super simple.

    We mostly use it for routine tasks like getting groceries or taking the kids places. We also go camping regularly and we can pack all our stuff into the back and put the kayaks on top. Its not a vehicle I'd take off road on anything challenging, but it handles unpaved roads ok.

    So ya, we've been happy with it and I'd give it a recommendation.

    Thanks for the review; I'm glad it's working out well for you. Time for me to meander out for a test drive.

  • Sienna's are great! I've owned 4 of them (because I tend to total cars), and been happy with all of them. Gets decent mileage for a van, and they hold value better than just about any other mini van. Never felt safer when ramming into the back of a semi while going 70mph! The van was totaled, but me and the kids were perfectly fine.

    That is a surprisingly strong recommendation. I'm glad everyone was safe, keep it shiny side up.

  • Sucks to suck, our car companies suck and they absolutely should loose and be forced to fire people if they can't compete. Give me my cheap and decent Chinese cars please. I live in a capitalist country so lets act like it instead of being fucking pussys

    It the country wasn't so hostile, also pretty racist when talking about Chinese (99% of the time people say Chinese not CCP as an insult to anything about creativity, invention, culture, whatever), to Chinese consumer big ticket goods, I'd imagine BYD and other would build manufacturing plants in the US. If things weren't so hostile, the Chinese battery companies like CATL may be willing to build batteries in the US without major concern of a hostile nation stealing their battery tech

    It isn't even a truly political idealism conflict that causes the split. Americans were fine with South Korean and Taiwanese products when those countries were military dictatorships. Vietnam has the company VinFast selling cars in the US and it's political structure is a lot closer to China than the US. Americans have never shown appetite for reigning in how American companies treat labor in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Really not even domestically like in makeshift housing that American farmers pack migrant workers into or meatpacking plants. So it's really just rich/powerful people not liking to see non-European descendants take the leading role in global trade of high margin goods and services that are often cutting edge technology

    If China was still primarily a labor country, damn near no one would care about Chinese domestic issues like famines. In my mind the inevitability will be another wave of xenophobia that will eventually target India and the Indian diaspora as their military and domestic military and technology companies develop

  • That is a surprisingly strong recommendation. I'm glad everyone was safe, keep it shiny side up.

    I'm not sure your location, but I highly advise spending the extra money on AWD. If you have hills plus rain or snow, it's the difference between peeling out from a stop and just going.

    My first Sienna was FWD. We live on the side of a hill - steep enough that a family pass time is watching cars struggle in the winter. Had to park at the bottom several times with the FWD. Never had a problem with the AWDs.

  • China is performing a new colonialism. Exploiting poor countries for their cheap resources.

    While the rest of the world is trying to steer away from it because it is so horrible. So please, don't praise China for it.

    You don't understand colonialism much. They aren't taking anything by force like the rest of the west did for centuries.

    They are doing business, there is a difference.

  • 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.

    Yes but they are trying to better themselves, it's a slow process, but there is progress. And they came a long way since the 70's.

    Countries like America are going backwards. At this rate the USA is a worse country for the working class than China in 20 years, if not already.

  • ....we removed both parties comments because you both were going

    you: no your a troll

    them: no your a troll

    you: no your a troll

    them: no your a troll

    Not because we took sides.

    Calling eachother trolls is not being excellent to eachother (rule 3), if you want to talk about disagreements do it like adults.

    I asked sources for his claims, like an adult, he posted a link to an article debunking his own nonsense.
    So this guy starts calling me a troll while he was demonstrably lying,
    These are the facts.

  • I asked sources for his claims, like an adult, he posted a link to an article debunking his own nonsense.
    So this guy starts calling me a troll while he was demonstrably lying,
    These are the facts.

    Well it unfolded into what I described, so we removed the comments.

  • Buying what you prefer itself isn't an issue, but that should be the reason instead of "I need it because X, Y, Z." Most truck/SUV owners don't need a truck/SUV, they just want one.

    My issue with trucks and SUVs are that they make the road more dangerous, since there's only so much a car manufacturer can do to protect against a vehicle more than twice as massive. That, and they're artificially cheap here in the US because of stupid regulations intended for farmers that got applied to them to reduce emissions standards.

    Some people don't need a car but will buy one anyway, not sure what point you're making there. I see no problem in people buying what they want over what they need. Choice is good and if you want to spend more on a vehicle for
    any reason, that's OK.

    Buses, dump trucks, ambulances, 18 wheelers, tow trucks etc. are all heavy and dangerous. The focus should be on better designed roads and better driver training, not limiting what people can drive.

  • Some people don't need a car but will buy one anyway, not sure what point you're making there. I see no problem in people buying what they want over what they need. Choice is good and if you want to spend more on a vehicle for
    any reason, that's OK.

    Buses, dump trucks, ambulances, 18 wheelers, tow trucks etc. are all heavy and dangerous. The focus should be on better designed roads and better driver training, not limiting what people can drive.

    I see no problem in people buying what they want over what they need.

    Neither do I, I just don't like it when people excuse their choices by using terms like "need." People make a lot of silly choices because they claim to "need" something.

    I just want people to be more honest with themselves and others about needs vs wants. If we classify things properly, I think people will naturally be more efficient with their resources and we'd have less consumer debt and whatnot.

  • 66 Stimmen
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    In April, Nigeria asked Google, Microsoft, and Amazon to set concrete deadlines for opening data centers in the country. Nigeria has been making this demand for about four years, but the companies have so far failed to fulfill their promises. Now, Nigeria has set up a working group with the companies to ensure that data is stored within its shores. Just onshoring the data center does not solve the problems. You can't be sure no data travels to the US servers, some data does need to travel to the US servers, and the entire DC is still subject to US software and certificate keychains. It's better, but not good or safe. I need to channel my inner Mike Ehrmantrout to the US tech companies and government: you had a good thing going you stupid son of a bitch. You had everything you needed and it all ran like clockwork. You could have shut your mouth, cooked, and made as much money as you needed, but you just had to blow it up, you and your pride and your ego. Seriously, this is a massive own goal by the US government. This is a massive loss to US hegemony and influence around the world that's never coming back. It has never been easier to build sovereign clouds with off the shelf and open source tooling. The best practices are largely documented, software is commoditized, and there are plenty of qualified people out there these days and governments staring down the barrel of existential risk have finally got the incentive to fund these efforts.
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    When it comes to public outreach, the question is more “why not?”
  • The British jet engine that failed in the 'Valley of Death'

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    Giving up advancements in science and technology is stagnation. That's not what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting giving up some particular, potential advancements in science and tecnology, which is a whole different kettle of fish and does not imply stagnation. Thinking it’s a good idea to not do anything until people are fed and housed is stagnation. Why do you think that?
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    Mr President, could you describe supersonic flight? (said with the emotion of "for all us dumbasses") Oh man there's going to be a barrier, but it's invisible, but it's the greatest barrier man has ever known. I gotta stop
  • My character isn't answering me

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    Niemand hat geantwortet
  • 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.
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    Meta? Isn't that owned by alleged pedophile Mark Zuckerberg? I heard he was a pedo on Facebook.
  • Things at Tesla are worse than they appear

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    halcyon@discuss.tchncs.deH
    [image: a4f3b70f-db20-4c1d-b737-611548cf3104.jpeg]