Hyundai acquires controlling stake in Boston Dynamics for $880M

You are right, modern car manufacturers still use humans in assembly lines.

But to see how much robots actually do nowadays, compare that to auto assembly from decades ago when robots were new, or further back when they did not exist

The Google Image search isn't reflective of an actual car factory.. There are of course hundreds of workers there but final assembly facilities produce something like 1 car/minute. They're heavily reliant on robots - most of the parts move around the floor on autonomous transports, the stamping is all robotic, all of the frame welding is robotic, paint is of course robotic.

GM is of course tied in with the UAW, so they're going to be as favorable to labor as possible in their promo videos, but take a look at this video of one of their production facilities, this is reflective of the amount of manual input into modern automotive production:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ow7gmZTIpo

You're using the wrong terms. Add "advanced manufacturing" to the query to get some idea of the current state of things. I toured a new automotive plant over 10 years ago and up until the final configuration stage, the only manual labor was cabling and quality control. This included sheet metal unloading and delivery (from rail), stamping of the chassis, welding, paint, installation of doors, hood, suspension, etc, powertrain installation, and many others. From my estimate, 2/3 of the factory was very close to being "lights out." The entire welding and paint process was fully automated and required a line stop to enter the area.

Humans do the basic stuff that robots aren't any good at: pulling wires through, putting some pieces in an inconvenient place,etc. All the welding, painting and many others are fully automated.

Humans spend 15h to 60h of labour to build a car. After, humans worked on individual parts, shipping, loading etc.

My rule of thumb is that there is about 10% of manufacture cost that are direct or indirect cost connected to payroll.

If I may add another axis of reflexion that I consider fundamental for modern engineers to consider, food for machines for producing a car (44% natural gas when smithing things) is about 15 to 25% of the energy cost to use the car in its lifetime, according to the EU. Or about 2,400 euro of a 8L/100km car.

So in a world where energy gets more expensive, automation needs to definitely evolve, but not solely to be faster or replace more humans.

https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/9/2396/pdf

I believe DARPA is a national treasure, and has driven a ton of otherwise neglected innovation, but let's not overstate their contribution to Moderna. For exsmple, AstraZeneca did a deal with Moderna including a $240MM upfront to another $180MM for potential milestones six months before the DARPA money. That is all on top of a pile of venture money and other corporate deals over those few years. The value of the DARPA $25MM wasn't the money per se, it was the incentive for Moderna to keep a toe in infectious disease, which was a hobby for them (and the industry) at best before COVID. I believe the platform would have been established with or without the DARPA money.

https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-d...

Oh this one deeply paid off. Great find.

The legal landscape in the U.S. may be harder to navigate, labor laws more strict, and salaries necessarily higher. This all makes it hard for U.S. manufacturing to compete on production of commodities.

Like many of the EU industries, viable U.S. industries tends to produce and export unique things with relatively small physical volume: complex chips, complex chemical compounds (like medicines), precision mechanics, high-performance agricultural equipment, aircraft, spacecraft, etc. Of course the U.S. does produce higher-volume things, too, from cars to foods to fuels, but these are more for domestic consumption, and often face competition from imported goods even domestically.

You can see this in the Unitree videos, nearly everything is on a flat plane and while it was a video from 2019 it seemed to struggle climbing stairs a bit.

Forgive me if I'm wrong but I though motors aren't the main cost, rather the rest of the actuator?

Also Unitree is going to make so much money selling these as well as get so much mass producing experience they'll probably be able to figure out the algorithms. Methinks the code is easier to figure out than reliable and cheap hardware.

The more expensive versions of the Go1 have Lidar.

Robot dogs are going to look like dogs - a body with legs. According to the about page, the CEO has been developing quadruped robots since 2013 (his masters thesis). https://www.unitree.com/aboutus

Looks like they've take venture capital money: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/unitree-robotics

Ideally yes, but there's a lot of hurdles to overcome. For many it would work just fine, but for other there's going to be minor details that makes it work less well.

Firstly we need to spread out peoples work day. We can't all be at the office a 8:00, and go home at 16:00. it wouldn't make economical sense in have a fleet large enough to handle peak hours, but have the cars do nothing most of the day.

There's also details like: I would like a car to pick me up at 15:45, and drive me to the kindergarten, and that car MUST have a seat for a three year old (but not a seat of brand X, Y, or Z, because they're to small). Or I need a car with a trailer, or a truck, because I'm moving 500kg of dirt to the recycling station.

Most people shop around for cars and pick very specific cars that fit their needs. So renting for a fleet of cars also need a rather large variety and flexibility in allowed usage.

I believe that many would still want to buy their own cars, even if it's self-driving, to ensure it's available when they need it, and that it fulfil their specific needs.

If we didn't have all these specific needs, most of us could just take the bus, which in turn would make it feasible to have all the bus routes people would need.

>just order one from a fleet of autonomous cars if you are in need of mobility.

I find it confusing that one reason the tech crowd cheered on Uber's success was because taxis were often filthy and poorly maintained. But autonomous car fleets won't be?

A basic form of low-speed self-driving would be automated valet parking. Drop people off or pick them up at the entrance, then go park far away.

If there was a common communication standard, the vehicles could also park much more tightly than is done in a normal parking lot. You don't need to keep empty space behind each car when you can coordinate the parked cars to move and clear a path. My guess is that you could park almost twice as many cars in the same space.

The combination of reducing parking lot size and freeing people from walking to/from the lot would open up many interesting options for increasing density and walkability in commercial areas.

>I don't want to drive to work at 20km/h, but once I'm out of the car, I don't really care how slowly it goes.

The other people on the road trying to get to work probably do.

As a South Korean, I can share some perspective. There has always been pro-American and anti-American atmosphere in South Korea. Recently, the scale seems to be more and more skewed towards the United States. We're definitely not in favor of North Korea, and even regarding China, more and more South Korean are seeing them as a threat rather than a partner. We don't love the US either, but when faced to choose between the US and China, most Korean would choose the US. I guess the GP was just salty about the Trump administration.

The South Korean position locally is actually not that challenging in a particular sense, despite typical media exaggerations. It's almost straightforward. SK has strong economic and cultural ties to its neighbors that can be accessed to stabilize relations if needed. North Korea is not really a liability in itself. KJU has been acting consistently towards opening up the North Korean economy on NK's own terms, which would benefit both nations tremendously. Those kinds of attempts are being stonewalled by Biden, and that's causing the U.S. to lose favor even among some pro-Americanists. As for the kimchi problem, I don't know what to say. That's the same kind of bickering as when France tells people to stop labeling things as champagne. I understand that those things can get brutal, but it's nothing world-changing. Beneath the headlines, South Korea has been quietly strengthening relations with China, because South Korea is not suicidal. The groundwork has to be laid today for the eventuality of a Chinese economy that is at least twice the strength of the U.S. economy. But even without China, at some point people are going to have to learn to live in a way that isn't dictated by the fears of the American empire.

Tenet would beg to differ.