[esics6A]

The problem is Chinese companies are subsidized by their government to manufacture things of little or no intrinsic or critical value. Automated vacuum cleaners and consumer drones are niche electronic novelties. Electric cars using solid state batteries are also novelty that will be obsolete once electric engines that use liquid fuels become mainstream (fuel-cells).

The purpose of subsiding what are zombie companies is to maximize employment to ensure internal stability. The wins these companies show are propaganda wins only and don’t make the country more competitive. Foreign manufacturing is also migrating out of China at an alarming rate as shown by falling exports and GDP growth.

None of the development in the Chinese technology sector is sustainable. These companies would never survive on their own without subsidies and are dependent on them. It’s a cascading failure waiting to happen in the Chinese economy and will likely be a global shock. At least the Americans may appear to take longer to develop winning companies but once they do they tend to be sustainable and long lasting as organic enterprises.

Edit: The American free market is working as intended because it rightly values robotic vacuums as useless devices.

[brcmthrowaway]

> Electric cars using solid state batteries are also novelty that will be obsolete once electric engines that use liquid fuels become mainstream (fuel-cells).

This seems like a big statement, can other experts comment?

[hmottestad]

Current battery tech has a slow and steady progression of improvement. There is bound to be a market disruptor at some point in the future, but it’s far from a guarantee that it’s going to be hydrogen.

I believe the biggest hurdle to any changes to current battery tech is that it costs so much to develop an entirely new process and build factories. Most innovation is in the form of small adjustments. For hydrogen to overcome this hurdle it would have to either be extremely cheap or have some unique property. For cars I don’t see hydrogen having that much of an advantage, but maybe electric planes would be feasibly powered by hydrogen due to the much improved weight to energy ratio.

[throwaway2037]

Yeah, I agree. The OP's statement is insane.

> electric engines that use liquid fuels become mainstream (fuel-cells)

That is surely hydrogen. Do they understand the conditions that are required to stored hydrogen as liquid, let alone natural gas?

[russli1993]

you have so much incorrect views of Chinese companies, the technologies these companies have, what is actually happening on the ground in China. You also vastly underestimate the real complexity of making today's products, even as mundane as a hair dryer or a toy. Chinese manufacturing makes making them look easy, people think all you need is bunch of cheap labor and you are set. No it's not. Also, for white label products, examples like hair dryer, washing machines, air conditions, its the Chinese companies who design, build and test, the entire lifecycle of the product, importers buy them and slap on their own brand.

Think what goes into a hair dryer? Exterior design, looks good and functional. How you make the plastic cover, do the plastic injection molding? How you design all the internal parts, fan, motor housing, heating wire, power circuits, micro-controllers etc, and make sure everything fits. Some companies even do individual components themselves, like the brushless motor, or there is a Chinese supplier that makes them, which provides much faster time to response. Then do the testing for each component, electric, heat, water, moisture testing. Then design a mass manufacturing system with automation and human labor that achieves really high yield and low wasted materials. This is the hardest part, its easy to make a hair dryer by hand taking 100 human hours and make sure it works. It's much harder to make 1M hair dryers per month, that is going to be used in all sorts of environments and with all kind of abuse, make sure they work well for a number of years so customers don't return them, or you go bankrupt from recalls and warranty, and make sure you only have to throw out the absolute smallest number of manufacturing defects, and really control your cost structure so you still make a profit when importers are squeezing your price. Then the supply chain and logistics, shipping from suppliers and shipping to customers. Then create a number of products for different markets. China can manufacture for cheap, but people don't realize manufacture for cheap and at massive quantities is a technology itself. It's also management, business process, even company and worker culture. China doesn't have the cheapest labor cost. It's the combination of everything that produces a physical product with the level of quality, fit and finish at the price point.