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Comment by georgeburdell | Hacker News Reader

CLTC range is Chinese funny numbers and will underperform EPA mileage (which already overstate range particularly in cool weather)

Unrelated but I’ve taken a very hard stance personally on buying anything Chinese and have just accepted that it may mean being stuck with inferior technology. Not only are they dumping their high tech goods on the international markets, but I believe money sent over there will come back as bullets for my children or grandchildren.

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Dunno, I was looking for a mini ITX NAS board with ECC and all boards from the US/Taiwan (Supermicro/ASRock) were underwhelming and overpriced, yet CWWK boards had so much tech stuffed inside (4-6x 2.5GBit, 6x SATA, 2xNVMe, ECC on Ryzen 7735HS etc.) that there are simply no functional equivalents anywhere else. I also bought Unitree Go2 robotics dog which does about what the Boston Dynamics one does but 20x cheaper. If somebody is doing a better job, are we supposed to ignore it until it's too late for us to catch up based on some dubious higher moral stance?

Well my children are already destined to be slaves to the system with the current cost of living so personally I would buy a cheap Chinese car. Not that I want to. I think it will be a good thing because then perhaps are home grown car manufacturers will see the writing and start offering affordable to the masses cars. We don’t need a thousand features in a car. Power windows, touch screens, self driving and every other tech that adds to the cost can take a bike. I just want a cheap bare bones electric car and local car manufacturers haven’t figured this out so I will risk Chinese bullets as I already have to choose when it comes to gas or higher quality food choices. Head of lettuce reaching $5 these days.

> We don’t need a thousand features in a car ... touch screens, .. tech that adds to the cost can take a bike. I just want a cheap bare bones electric car

A touch screen plus software _is_ the cheap bare bones option, over having lots of physical dials and switches - The touch screen is commodity tablet hardware.

Even though physical switches have much better usability, which means safety. Source: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/03/carmakers-must-bring-ba...

>We don’t need a thousand features in a car. Power windows, touch screens, self driving and every other tech that adds to the cost can take a bike.

The BYD seagull has all this from what I understand?

[1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izvdO-zdlKg

>I think it will be a good thing because then perhaps are home grown car manufacturers will see the writing and start offering affordable to the masses cars.

With Tesla supposedly canceling Model 2, it seems like the incumbents cannot possibly offer this car at this price because of their cost structure (overhead due to unions, expensive real estate, regulations etc.)

> because of their cost structure (overhead due to unions, expensive real estate, regulations etc.)

I'm sure those are factors, but I wonder, what about having to provide private health insurance to employees? My employer says our costs went up 9% this year. I also wonder how much owners and executives are paid in Chinese car makers vs US. The leader and largest shareholder of Tesla is the richest man in the world (or perhaps was; I'm not sure of the current ranking). I don't know the name of any Chinese automotive leaders (though it's certainly possible that that's just my bias as an American). But I wonder how much of the cost structure is going to shareholders?

Musk is demanding more money from Tesla, saying his "salary" was too low for him to dedicate time to that venture. There is a lawsuit and all.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/31/business/tesla-elon-musk-...

50 billion dollars of money that won't be invested in the company.

Yeah, "unions, real estate, regulation", that's what stopping them.

Depending on how you count Chinese made, I'd think it would in many cases mean being stuck with no technology. What smartphone is made anywhere else? I'm pretty sure all the computers I've bought in the last two decades have been primarily manufactured in China. I'm sure some of the work could be "friend-shored" or whatever, but the whole thing seems like it would take more effort than we've got in us.

I don't think we much care about the future we create for children at this point, particularly if there's money to be made today.

One of the ways I “get around” this rule in areas where China has taken over that industry already is to buy used. Sometimes that used stuff is made in China.

It doesn't feel like a totally satisfying answer, but I tend to agree. Personally I just bought an old Macbook Air and installed Pop!_OS on it and love it. I was thinking more in terms of being green and saving some bucks rather than political reasons, but I suppose it's a factor as well. I also run a business on off-lease servers, so I'm putting my money where my mouth is on that (though again it's more about avoiding the big cloud oligarchs and saving some money there as well).

>> What smartphone is made anywhere else? <<

smartphones are "assembled" and "packaged" in China. Most components, or over 90%, in Apple iPhones are sourced from non-Chinese sources; then imported into China for assembly and packaging; then exported out to the world.

The world's largest smartphone maker, Samsung, pulled out of China and closed the last factory in 2019 -- they are either made in Vietnam, India, or South Korea.

>> Unrelated but I’ve taken a very hard stance personally on buying anything Chinese and have just accepted that it may mean being stuck with inferior technology.<<

LFP is mostly for cheaper, low-range EVs or stationary energy storage systems (ESS). The rest of the world already have access to high-energy/nickel lithium batteries, namely NCM/NCA, for mid/high EVs. LFP is like old spindle drive HDD (LFP) vs SSD (NCM/A).

That being said I'm not opposed to LFP -- it makes sense if you could get a cheap EV or ESS based on LFP.

What did you type this comment on then?

Heh. Gotcha. https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

Not the same at all. He said he doesn't use anything from China.

> Not only are they dumping their high tech goods on the international markets

Are you against capitalism? You think some world government should determine what countries are allowed to sell on the international market?

No, I think national governments should regulate imports to discourage dumping.

So you believe in protectionist socialism, not free-market capitalism.

By your definition, almost nobody with any influence on governmental policy in any country believes in free-market capitalism.

Nah that would be crazy.

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