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Comment by ivewonyoung | Hacker News Reader

US car makers can be cheaper too if they put workers in slave-like conditions, even aside the Chinese govt subsidies and investment.

One example from Brazil since that's the topic:

> Brazilian prosecutors have filed a lawsuit accusing electric carmaker BYD of human trafficking and keeping its workers in “slavery-like conditions” in its biggest market outside China.

> The investigation found the Chinese workers were brought to Brazil under false pretences and their visas did not match their jobs.

> Prosecutors said the workers were found working in “slavery-live conditions” and with "minimum comfort and hygiene”, calling them victims of international human trafficking

> The workers were forced to sleep on beds that did not have mattresses and as many as 30 people shared a bathroom, MPT alleged.

https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/china/byd-china-ev-sued-b...

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BYD cars are cheaper because China just has the most expertise at building things at scale and because they're making many formerly discrete car parts entire modules, which are cheaper to manufacture.

There's also been plenty of reporting of 'slave like conditions' at Tesla, GM etc.

I mean, both can be true?

Can be, but likely aren't to any greater extent than in the West without substantial evidence. And so perhaps it should not be the first reason listed for why it's cheaper when there are perfectly reasonable explanations outside of the constant 'China bad, evil' orientalist shtick that just shows how scared we in the West are of actual competition, accustomed to exploiting the world for half a millennia.

No, it can't. If PRC makers NEEDED low wages to undercut pricing vs west sure. But PRC EVs selling far above domestic MSRP, more than enough to cover wage differential, i.e. lower wages isn't doing the undercutting, it's enabling more profitable extraction. Reality is western competitors are simply not competitive regardless of wage differential when most structural competitiveness come from vertical integration. It doesn't help west is paying more to build worse. And paying less to build worse also not going to close gap.

Slave-like by American standards maybe, not Chinese. In the US Janesville GM pays assembly workers $28/hr in 2008 before closure, and nowadays anywhere between $20-$35 and they enjoy a strong union and good pension.

A few labor lawsuits show that in China Tesla wage starts at ~$4.5/hr while BYD ~$1.7/hr. Tesla also limits overtime to 36 hrs/mo by China labor law, while gov allows BYD workers to clock 441.5 raw hours in a single month. Pension and union is basically non-existent. And the reason why ppl work at BYD instead of Tesla is by clocking monstrous overtime they actually make more despite lower hourly pay.

There are reasons why Tesla consistently ranks in China 1st/2nd by sales. One of them is Chinese workers are the ones exploited by sweatshops and a government only nominally communist so they are paying the price, while Western customers are enjoying good ol' NIMBYism.

> In the US Janesville GM pays assembly workers $28/hr in 2008 before closure, and nowadays anywhere between $20-$35

> In China Tesla wage starts at ~$4.5/hr while BYD ~$1.7/hr.

You can't compare wages in China vs the US like that. The cost of living is much, much different than in the US. Healthcare, energy costs etc. aren't comparable.

Cheaper but not cheap. US can pay literally 0 and still be substantially more expensive than PRC, labour simply rounding error ($500-$1000) per chassis.

BYD in China shows off their factory towns for how wonderful the workers live. Its a modern day Hershey. It might be more of a Brazil issue than a BYD issue.

Good ol’ propaganda?

why is that your reflex? good ol' propaganda.

There is a lawsuit in China involving BYD, it shows in October of 2020 an assembly line worker clocked 441.5 raw hours, got paid ~$1.96/hr after overtime multiplier. The reality in car manufacturing in China is 12hr shifts, 2 days off a month and $2-3/hr wage, simply sweatshop in the 21st century.

Have you ever seen warehouses in the US or construction projects with only Mexicans. Not so much different to what you describe.

What you linked to is of construction contractors building the plant, not assembly line workers. It's a blurry line and certainly affiliated with BYD, but car assembly itself is moving toward 'dark' factories, populated by robots that are indeed kept in slave-like conditions, unpaid and worked beyond humane shifts.

As a side note, counterintuitively BYD has a lot more workers per car vs a lot of their competitors, but that's because of their extreme vertical integration where most are assembling upstream parts.

BYD pulled off the same thing in EU as well, in Hungary [0].

The dark factory part is simply propaganda, the viral WSJ interview is only about body assembly which is already automated everywhere. The labor intensive part is the general assembly and even they admit this in the video. However here it's like Chinese EV found the silver bullet in car manufacturing.

[0]: https://chinalaborwatch.org/building-byd-szeged-labor-risks-...

BYD is cheaper because BYD engineers are smarter, have higher IQ and able to vertically integrate components to cut overheads.

in the US auto OEMs are mainly putting parts together, made by different suppliers like ZF, Bosch, Lemforder etc etc. Its assembly work and it split across hundreds of legacy car component suppliers

> BYD is cheaper because BYD engineers are smarter, have higher IQ and able to vertically integrate components to cut overheads.

Lol, I wonder why. It really is a mystery. Why did we once rule the world pre-1970's and have been waning and decaying ever since? Gee, maybe these Chinese geniuses can figure out the reason for us.

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