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Comment by Signez | Hacker News Reader

Does this mean that those iPhone components will be manufactured in the US, then shipped overseas to be incorporated into new iPhones, which will then be shipped back to the US?

I understand that this makes sense, but at the same time, I wonder how many tons of CO₂ will be emitted because of this kind of "onshoring".

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Shipping of tiny electronic components around the globe doesn't have any substantial CO2 emissions, as long as they are shipped in bulk (and preferably by sea), simply because each component is so small/light.

Shipping your bags of clothes when you go on holiday has a far bigger impact. Those are shipped by air (~50x the CO2), are far larger/heavier, and in a weeks time will be shipped back, perhaps unused.

Nobody ships high value small expensive components by sea. It’s ok for reels of generic resistors. But not good for project specific parts.

They are normally shipped by sea to distributors.

Almost all electronic components are shipped by sea. It is only finished goods that have a minuscule but real chance of being shipped by air.

And even then, it is normally planned that finished goods are shipped by sea, and it is only when things fall behind schedule that air shipping is used as a way to get goods into the right place in time for release day.

The big corp I work for has dedicated logistic dudes who fly with crates full of wafers around the world. While 30 years lifecycle FPGAs from Xilinx feel well in the container in open sea, project specific parts manufactured for specific client’s specific product with lifecycle of 2 years go by plane. Saving 1000$ and risking loosing business is not worth it.

One anecdote does not make a pattern. Just because your specific big corp does it does not mean all big corps do, let alone companies in general.

Are you confusing an instance of JIT/lean with possibly broader trends?

iPhones are shipped by air to Louisville, KY to distribute throughout the central USA. It shuts down UPS for a whole week when iPhones launch. All employees can be required to unload and move iPhones, including engineering.

Those are finished goods, not components.

You'd be surprised at what flies in the big cargo airlines (Lufthansa Cargo, CargoLux, Atlas Air, etc) and who their customers are

It's a good question, and a very good thing to think about. It turns out shipping is actually surprisingly low on the list of contributors to carbon emissions. All global shipping together contributes about 1.7% of global emissions. That's in comparison to, say, industrial energy usage (24.2%) or passenger cars (11.9%) or residential buildings (10.9%) or animals raised for food (5.8%). Should carbon emissions of shipping be a factor in decisions like this? Unquestionably, yes. But at worst it's going to be a small tick in the negative column, and could actually come out ahead depending on other factors like local emissions regulations, etc.

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sect...

One unrelated correction - you mentioned passenger cars are responsible for 11.9% of global emissions, but your source says this figure is for the whole road transport. Passenger cars AFAIK account for the third of that.

Yes, good catch. I was getting that mixed up with the US EPA's stats[1]. FWIW they say passenger cars account for 58% of all transportation emissions within the US, more than all trucking, flights, and shipping combined. Again, within the US.

[1] https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-...

Apparently shipping is slightly unusual as it produces a greater than average amount Sulfur Oxide due to bunker fuel's higher sulfur content though it is not considered a greenhouse gas such as in the graph. This is where headlines like "One cargo ship emits as much pollutants as 50 million cars" comes from, though the calculation is debatable.[1]

For comparison gas or diesel is something like 10-15ppm Sulfur in the US now while historically bunker fuel is historically more like 3-5%, though it has been decreasing with regulations. [2]

[1]https://www.cadmatic.com/en/resources/articles/does-one-ship...

[2]https://www.epa.gov/diesel-fuel-standards/diesel-fuel-standa...

Filter is couple square millimeters of thin material. If they are still on water then it’s few big crates of filters for all year’s production.

Fair enough. I wonder if this is a supply-chain security thing or a step towards eventually building the phones in the US.

Probably a mix of both. China is a growing liability, and there is increasing political pressure to both diversify and onshore manufacturing.

The growth in spending on US manufacturing over the last couple of years is kind of impressive.

Chips already travel around the world. Wafers from US or European fabs might go to Singapore or Malaysia for test and packaging, then to China.

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