Comment by dragontamer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dragontamer | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

While I agree with you in principle, your application is wrong.

IMO, China's innovation is in large-scale PCBs and other such manufacturing. See Apple's investment of CNC machines in China as an example. China has several other innovations that does in fact make them a world leader in certain fields.

As far as battery tech goes however, Japan has that on lockdown. Panasonic's Silicon-Lithium batteries are light-years ahead of the competition, even as US battery manufacturers (A123 systems) try to break through. Japan (and Panasonic really: now that Panasonic owns Sanyo / Eneloop) has all of the major high-quality battery manufacturing facilities: Energizer, Duracell, Panasonic (owner of Sanyo / Eneloop).

Korea has the next best bet as far as I can tell. LG Chem's batteries were chosen by GM probably for some reason.

If China were to be making good batteries, then we'd first see some manufacturing companies make some batteries. Most "top-down grown" companies, be in the USA or China, fall flat on their face for the first few decades. It takes a long time to build up expertise.

-------------

There's no reason why China can't grow into a battery powerhouse. Except for the fact that Panasonic is so massive.

China's innovation is being able to adopt their society rapidly for adopting new technologies in general.

Tolerating the violating of foreigner's IP laws, which stand in the way of progress, is one of the things that helped enable their success.

Right now China has progressed to the point were things that are done by the Chinese simply cannot be duplicated anywhere else on the planet. It's not just a matter of scaling their production... They are simply the only game in town. You CANNOT do what they do in China anywhere else.

It's no longer a issue of cheap labor. They have innovated their way past their competitors in USA and Europe.

The part where China falls short is quality control. In the mad rush to produce goods at the cheapest price possible they habitually cut corners and undermine their own foreign markets.

When USA and European companies use China to produce high quality goods they just have to have people on-site to ensure quality and use robust post-production testing. Otherwise things tend to go sideways. Right now places like Japan, Germany, and Korea have a slight end in quality, but for most purposes it's a wash.

The biggest threat to the Chinese economy is their own government policies spiraling the place into a massive depression.

It's worth noting that Panasonic does a lot of it's lithium battery manufacturing in China.

What exactly is produced in China that can't be produced elsewhere? The only thing I can think of is rare earths at cheap cost, since no one else is willing to pollute their environment so much with the lack of environemtal protections needed to achieve that. Then we have the whole QR payment systems that can't really exist without the lack of pervasive credit card infrastructure.

China has lots of labor resources, they have developed supply chains that have been left to rot elsewhere, but those can be ressurected relatively quickly if the need arises. They still have no modern fabs to speak of, and can't build a decent jet turbine or avionics for their own aviations efforts.

> they have developed supply chains that have been left to rot elsewhere, but those can be ressurected relatively quickly if the need arises

how long would it take to recreate a complete electronics manufacturing supply chain outside of China?

perhaps more interesting, how long would it take for one single country to develop the electronics manufacturing supply chain which China currently has?

Silicon Valley wasn't called Silicon Valley because it had lots of sand. It had the whole supply chain before it upped out to Asia. Even today, china does not produce many of the higher end components that go into say an iPhone, not as much as Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. The supply chain still depends on lots of imports, and none of that is coming to china anytime soon (or it would already be there, like high end fabs).

i can grant you all of that, but i still have little idea how long it would take to resurrect the parts of the supply chain which have been moved to China (and left to rot in various places outside of China).

maybe it's better to focus the question on a single region: how long would it take to resurrect the manufacturing component of SV's economy to the level it was at 25 years ago?

a year or two? five years? a decade? what would the time scale be?

The question is really moot as long as china is willing to do the dirty work for us at a discount (actually ruining their environment in the process), there is just no incentive to regrow that capacity. No one in the west will say no to free money.

But as long as the need and incentives were there, it would be rebuilt pretty quickly, possibly in radically different and improved ways (more automation, 3D printing, upgraded processes....).

If you consider the Ipad came out in 2011, which was 5 years ago (for a few more days), I would say 5 years. Touchscreen devices make up about half of the global electronics industry, so by extension half of Shenzhen was built to accommodate that.

With a focused agenda, the US could rebuild a supply chain in 5 years if it wanted to. I think it is unlikely to want to however.

I now see Panasonic involvment in Tesla's GigaFactory differently. EV is probably the future most demanding market in terms of innovation. If Panasonic can and need to grow it's advance it's here.

serious question: do you know who made the exploding samsung batteries? can the same kind of thing happen to car or home batteries?

As I understand it, the problem was that the anode and cathode wound up touching, causing a short, causing heat, boom.

This was, in turn, caused by the manufacture of the case: they didn't leave enough (or any?) expansion room for the battery, and since when charged they heat up and expand, and there wasn't room to expand, boom.

So, probably, the batteries in question, if packaged properly, would have been fine.

> do you know who made the exploding samsung batteries?

I do not know.

> can the same kind of thing happen to car or home batteries?

Of course. Lithium is a very reactive metal and will create fires in specific circumstances.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com