Hacker News Reader

Comment by Joel_Mckay | Hacker News Reader

1. lack of stable production lines due to real-estate securitization and zoning. i.e. it is a huge liability to install something expensive likely to break if moved, and burning capital in a sucker lease.

2. lack of cheap 3-phase power in said zoning, and aging power infrastructure. EVs will likely make the problem worse.

3. lack of skilled labor due to career churn from outsourcing. i.e. it became a demand-deficient labor-force now reassigned to other careers.

4. Manufacturing domestically is strictly a niche industry, as consumers are cost sensitive, and value blind

If you go to foundry districts in India, one will see many US machines that were sold for scrap still powering emerging economies. The mechanical equity of 60 year old machines are still supporting entire communities.

View on HN

Value blindness is the bane of my existence. Thin walled plastic everywhere. Things are difficult to clean because they are filled with grooves, because you need grooves and bends to make thin walled plastic stiffer. A very good criteria for quality and value is: how easy is it to clean? If it is hard then you probably are dealing with a low value disposable product. Consider porcelain, lasts forever, cleans beautifully and does not stain. Or spoons made with solid stainless steel. Spoons made with thin sheet steel often have bends and corners as to make the thin sheet stiffer. But then dirt accumulates on these corners.

The cost of porcelain is similarly constrained by labor, energy cost, and space.

I learned a lot from a domestic slip-casting company as a kid. It taught me big heavy things are not economical to ship, and thus remain locally competitive in a global market even when competitors are 100% subsidized. Amazon shifted this calculus a bit, but is still constrained by energy/fuel costs.

The power of plastic is automated cycle times under 45 seconds, minimum infrastructure needs, and shipping weight. In a way, Tesla Giga Press technology leverages similar strategies for Aluminum parts.

That press you mentioned in an interesting example of the globalization of machine tools. Commissioned by an American company and made in Italy by a Hong Kong Chinese owned company, which now makes them in China.

There is no longer enough domestic infrastructure to fabricate complex equipment within a competitive budget.

It seems like domestic manufacturers weren’t able to compete on price or quality in the decades preceding the collapse of the industry either.

Hard to say really... if foreign labor is subsidized under communist strategic policy, than it is more of a loss-leader rather than rational competition.

Value blindness is often accepted in consumer markets, but can prove fatal in industrial or aerospace products. Hence the rules silly people try to work around to make more money. =)

>Consider porcelain, lasts forever,

This isn't true. Porcelain is brittle and delicate, and usually shatters when dropped. It's easily broken through normal handling. Just guessing, I imagine most new inexpensive porcelain dishware is purchased to replace broken stuff.

Sure, if you put it in a cabinet and never use it except for once-a-year special occasions, it might last a lifetime, but the stuff you use every day won't.

When my parents moved abroad, I inherited the bone porcelain set they got as a wedding gift (a Swedish Rörstrand set). It was used every day when I was a kid and it's used everyday now 40 years later by my kids. It's been dropped hundreds of times and there are maybe only one or two chips among all the plates and bowls.

Meanwhile all the cheap IKEA dishes I bought as a student always broke within a year of purchase.

Would EVs make the problem worse, or better? I'd expect EVs to make better power infrastructure more common and thus cheaper to find.

Energy Commodity prices are an unavoidable variable cost in most factories.

EVs push their true cost onto the entire grid, and thus every resident/business subsidizes the fleet operation with added service costs due to resource scarcity driven prices.

I do like the idea of EVs in many ways, but only when combined with distributed power generation infrastructure like standalone home solar arrays. EVs suck power in large cities and or locations the require battery temperature management... outside in cold <4'C climates a Tesla Lithium battery heater is like having a fuel tank that will leak out in a few days... thus, it is always leaking energy unless in a heated garage. Not an immediate problem, till you have millions of units commuting in -18'C weather.

Have a wonderful day, and lets admire the sycophantic idealism of EVs together. =)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX4PJDA4MQg

Reply on news.ycombinator.com