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Comment by tim333 | Hacker News Reader

While I'm sure China has helped probably a lot comes down to the founder. I've taken an interest since Charlie Munger started praising him

>“This guy,” Munger tells Fortune, “is a combination of Thomas Edison and Jack Welch – something like Edison in solving technical problems, and something like Welch in getting done what he needs to do. I have never seen anything like it.” (2009)

And more recently

>“He can do things you can’t do,” Munger said on a Sunday episode of the podcast Acquired. “He’s a fanatic that knows how to actually make things with his hands. He’s closer to ground zero in other words. The guy at BYD is better at actually making things than Elon is.” (2023)

And Munger wasn't one to praise many people like that. Also Wang is focused on cars rather than faffing with Twitter.

View on HN

Wang Chuanfu, the driving force behind BYD’s rise. https://www.ft.com/content/22527628-733e-4188-9678-ab3210fdb...

Excerpt:

The story of the professor in nonferrous metals research turned hard-headed executive with a fastidious focus on technology, supply chains and cost- cutting has become gospel in Chinese science and business schools.

To his employees, Wang is simply known as “The Chairman”. Both revered and feared, the 57-year-old billionaire’s unassuming demeanour belies a micromanager with a Stakhanovite work ethic.

“The work-life balance concept is just not in his lexicon,”

Experts attribute BYD’s success largely to a ruthless culture of cost-cutting. The entrepreneur had instituted “absolutely aggressive cost control”

BYD has developed its own in-house capabilities. Contracting other companies for hardware or services is a last resort, so much so that an executive once told car reviewers the company made everything on the vehicle “except the tyres and the windscreen”.

By splitting manufacturing into “finer and finer steps”, Weber said, individual workers only carry out very narrow tasks. This means there is greater propensity to replace staff with cheap workers. “They basically treat people like robots,”

> […] belies a micromanager with a Stakhanovite work ethic.

Not a term I am familiar with:

> The Stakhanovites (стаха́новцы) modeled themselves after Alexei Stakhanov, a coal miner, and took pride in their ability to produce more than was required by working harder and more efficiently, thus contributing to the common good and strengthening the socialist state. The movement began in the coal industry but later spread to many other industries in the Soviet Union.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakhanovite_movement

Is it commonly used in the UK?

It looks to me like BYD is to Tesla like what Samsung+Android is to the iPhone?

I mean, the guy behind BYD must be brilliant and I wish the best to him and his endeavor.

But let's not forget that Tesla has been and is still the one pushing the frontier here. And pushing frontiers is a lot more inspiring and moving.

BYD is surfing a wave created by Tesla, and I think Elon still seems to be better at moving waves than BYD's founder? Just like Jobs was for consumer electronics?

Part of pushing the envelope is not making the best product, but making the best product per dollar.

Any idiot can make something amazing if money is of no concern, but you have to be smart to make something both cheap and amazing.

From that perspective, BYD with their far lower cost, yet still decently performing, batteries and motors (and whole cars) is arguably ahead.

> It looks to me like BYD is to Tesla like what Samsung+Android is to the iPhone?

Yeah because Tesla is known for the high quality of their cars /s

Maybe the parallel is more in driving the hype train?

Let's compare our Kool-Aids flavors (I can't stand Musk): what frontiers is Musk pushing at Tesla, other than cartoonish designs and how flawed a product the paying customer is willing to tolerate? (E.g. broken suspension arms, auto-suicide-pilot)?

I think this is giving short shrift to BYD's role in advancing battery technology, which is key to electric vehicles. In that sense, BYD is more innovative than Tesla.

Ultimately, the EV push is to create affordable EVs that are also practical so we can sunset oil sooner. In that sense, BYD is ahead.

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