New Energy Vehicles (NEVs) in China

[tphuang]

Unless someone actually does a study, of course not.

But we have the following data points:
1. Given that BYD are building out completely new factories - it would be reasonable to assume these are more automated than older legacy auto factories.
2. At the same time, battery production has to be completely automated for stringent quality control
3. An electric car has 2000 fewer parts than an ICE vehicle - which almost certainly requires less labour
4. Tesla, NIO and at least 5 other Chinese automakers are going with gigacastings which will further simplify and reduce component numbers, and therefore jobs. BYD will almost certainly follow, if not already.
5. It would be weird for any manufacturing to become more labour-intensive, given shortages of manual labour in China and the ongoing improvements in robots, vision, and machine-learning. Smart factories are now a thing.

Because of all these reasons, I'm confident in saying that BYD will reduce the overall number of automotive manufacturing jobs.
Once BYD becomes a major car exporter, we may see an increase in the net jobs created by BYD, but we're not there yet.

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If we look to VW, they estimate "labour requirements are 70 percent higher for the production of a conventional powertrain than for the production of a powertrain for an electric vehicle."

With technological advancements, you generally need less labour to produce the same output, but the idea is that new demand and jobs are created elsewhere.

We don't need any study. Byd has given us their employment numbers. They employment a whole bunch of people for a company that is currently on a 2 million car a year run rate. They probably employ more people than Toyota at this point. Even if we say only 1/3 of the 500k employees are strictly doing the traditional legacy automakers work, that is still representing fewer employees per car than legacy automakers. A lot of ice car manufacturing lines are highly automated. I don't really care what vw says. They haven't shown the ability to ramp up ev production. Only byd and Tesla have. In the case of byd, they are clearly utilizing a lot of man power in lower cost Chinese cities to ramp up their production.

Anyways, some stuff on other automaker. Chery is exporting a lot. They have now hit 50k a month. An all time high for Chinese brand. They are also in talk to open up a plant in Russia. They have already taken over the Kazakhstan market. Their first cars are arriving in Australia. They are bringing cars to Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt and everywhere.

I think this is part of the byd/ev affect. Chery and geely have been pushed to sell abroad because they increasingly cannot compete at home. Whereas byd is exporting to a higher end consumer group, chery is able to increase it's market share in the budget focused crowd.

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[56860]

Ahh yes... I did some window shopping there myself.
Problem is, my current car still won't die yet

Trade it in for a BYD. Join the BYD Club. I am driving an Atto 3 atm.

 

[AndrewS]

We don't need any study. Byd has given us their employment numbers. They employment a whole bunch of people for a company that is currently on a 2 million car a year run rate. They probably employ more people than Toyota at this point. Even if we say only 1/3 of the 500k employees are strictly doing the traditional legacy automakers work, that is still representing fewer employees per car than legacy automakers. A lot of ice car manufacturing lines are highly automated. I don't really care what vw says. They haven't shown the ability to ramp up ev production. Only byd and Tesla have. In the case of byd, they are clearly utilizing a lot of man power in lower cost Chinese cities to ramp up their production.

A number of points

1. You can't just look at the absolute number of BYD employees and conclude more jobs will be created in the auto industry overall.

2. The absolute number of employees is not a relevant comparison to Toyota. Toyota is not vertically integrated and already spun out their suppliers.

3. Also, you can't make an assumption that it's 1/3 of the BYD employees

3. You would expect newer EV production lines to be more automated. You could argue that in the short term, BYD might be throwing workers into factories to ramp up, fair enough. But that only gets you so far. The baseline BYD factory should have a lot of robots and be on par with legacy production lines.

4. It's not just VW. Other legacy automakers are coming up with projections that they will have to reduce the number of workers required when they switch to electric vehicle production.

 

[tphuang]

A number of points

1. You can't just look at the absolute number of BYD employees and conclude more jobs will be created in the auto industry overall.

2. The absolute number of employees is not a relevant comparison to Toyota. Toyota is not vertically integrated and already spun out their suppliers.

3. Also, you can't make an assumption that it's 1/3 of the BYD employees

3. You would expect newer EV production lines to be more automated. You could argue that in the short term, BYD might be throwing workers into factories to ramp up, fair enough. But that only gets you so far. The baseline BYD factory should have a lot of robots and be on par with legacy production lines.

4. It's not just VW. Other legacy automakers are coming up with projections that they will have to reduce the number of workers required when they switch to electric vehicle production.

If anything, we have seen legacy automakers completely unable to ramp up production and making a bunch of projections that are just fantasies. Only BYD has been able to ramp up production to this degree. Have you see NIO and Xpeng been able to ramp up production? I don't think so. Producing large number of EVs is really hard.

Since we are talking about vertical integration, here are things to think about. CATL had 83.6k employees at end of 2021. It would be reasonable to believe that BYD would need about the same number of employees right now in its battery division since it's production by end of this year will likely be about the same as CATL production at start of 2022. We know that EVs need a lot more chips than ICE cars. Now, BYD produces its own chip, its own electric motor and it's own dual motor. It's reasonable to assume that most other automakers would have a good number of employees in charge of integration batteries/chips into their cars and developing/manufacturing different kind of motors. As an example, SMIC employed 17k employees at end of 2020. It would surprise me if BYD's chip making division employed more people than that. Let's say that BYD's chip making division and electric motor division employed 30k more than what you would expect out of an automaker of similar size. Let's say their construction company employs 20k people for the various projects they have on going. Their largest rival in commercial truck/buses is Yutong and they employ 17k people. Yutong sells more truck/buses than BYD. I'm not sure how many people their construction company can employ, but 10 to 15k would sound like a lot.

All of which would put 175k as the very high end of their non passenger vehicle business. Which would put their PV division at over 300k employees. Keep in mind they do not product all their own subsystems. They do buy a lot from domestic firms. There are pictures of empty warehouses from BYD taking deliveries from suppliers as soon as they are produced. BYD really hires a lot of people. I don't know how else to put it.

I think the big news from today is just how much Geely has seen their production slow down due to the shift to EVs

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They are looking to deliver 10k a month through zeekr. This is a company that apparent has enough production capacity for 2 million cars a year. And, they are having trouble delivering 10k EVs a month with their premium brand. This is the brand that will carry them through EV revolution. This just shows how hard it is to ramp up EV production.

More on Chery building car plant in Indonesia. 200k is a lot.

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So, now we have Chery and Wuling at Indonesia. We have BYD and GWM at Thailand. China is really building local factories in ASEAN countries. This is what we want to see. This is how China can beat Japanese automakers here.

 

[henrik]

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Why is kazahkstan sanctioning russian car parts? kazahkstan should be under the protection of Russia.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

If anything, we have seen legacy automakers completely unable to ramp up production and making a bunch of projections that are just fantasies. Only BYD has been able to ramp up production to this degree. Have you see NIO and Xpeng been able to ramp up production? I don't think so. Producing large number of EVs is really hard.

Since we are talking about vertical integration, here are things to think about. CATL had 83.6k employees at end of 2021. It would be reasonable to believe that BYD would need about the same number of employees right now in its battery division since it's production by end of this year will likely be about the same as CATL production at start of 2022. We know that EVs need a lot more chips than ICE cars. Now, BYD produces its own chip, its own electric motor and it's own dual motor. It's reasonable to assume that most other automakers would have a good number of employees in charge of integration batteries/chips into their cars and developing/manufacturing different kind of motors. As an example, SMIC employed 17k employees at end of 2020. It would surprise me if BYD's chip making division employed more people than that. Let's say that BYD's chip making division and electric motor division employed 30k more than what you would expect out of an automaker of similar size. Let's say their construction company employs 20k people for the various projects they have on going. Their largest rival in commercial truck/buses is Yutong and they employ 17k people. Yutong sells more truck/buses than BYD. I'm not sure how many people their construction company can employ, but 10 to 15k would sound like a lot.

All of which would put 175k as the very high end of their non passenger vehicle business. Which would put their PV division at over 300k employees. Keep in mind they do not product all their own subsystems. They do buy a lot from domestic firms. There are pictures of empty warehouses from BYD taking deliveries from suppliers as soon as they are produced. BYD really hires a lot of people. I don't know how else to put it.

I think the big news from today is just how much Geely has seen their production slow down due to the shift to EVs

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They are looking to deliver 10k a month through zeekr. This is a company that apparent has enough production capacity for 2 million cars a year. And, they are having trouble delivering 10k EVs a month with their premium brand. This is the brand that will carry them through EV revolution. This just shows how hard it is to ramp up EV production.

More on Chery building car plant in Indonesia. 200k is a lot.

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So, now we have Chery and Wuling at Indonesia. We have BYD and GWM at Thailand. China is really building local factories in ASEAN countries. This is what we want to see. This is how China can beat Japanese automakers here.

BYD hires people to build cars because they don't have the Tesla obsession with needless automation and doesn't have think they know better than companies with accumulated centuries of experience.

Despite the automation hype, Tesla has about the same number of people per car sold.

Most automakers including BYD has a variety of vehicle types and models that aren't conductive to full automated assembly. Compare how many models Tesla has vs BYD or any other automaker. You automate parts that make sense like stamped parts, cell manufacturing, etc and don't automate the parts that don't make sense like final assembly.

 

[xjiet]

a typical electric vehicle has about 2000 fewer parts than an ICE vehicle. All these extra parts would have required workers to produce and handle.

It is a good thing to liberate mankind from repetitive work!

 

[PopularScience]

A number of points

1. You can't just look at the absolute number of BYD employees and conclude more jobs will be created in the auto industry overall.

2. The absolute number of employees is not a relevant comparison to Toyota. Toyota is not vertically integrated and already spun out their suppliers.

3. Also, you can't make an assumption that it's 1/3 of the BYD employees

3. You would expect newer EV production lines to be more automated. You could argue that in the short term, BYD might be throwing workers into factories to ramp up, fair enough. But that only gets you so far. The baseline BYD factory should have a lot of robots and be on par with legacy production lines.

4. It's not just VW. Other legacy automakers are coming up with projections that they will have to reduce the number of workers required when they switch to electric vehicle production.

EV produce more jobs in other areas, like semiconductor, LCD, battery, rare earth, electric motor, software, autonomous driving etc.

 

[AndrewS]

EV produce more jobs in other areas, like semiconductor, LCD, battery, rare earth, electric motor, software, autonomous driving etc.

Yes. But these are all areas which are high very capital intensive and don't employ many people

 

[BlackWindMnt]

Why is kazahkstan sanctioning russian car parts? kazahkstan should be under the protection of Russia.

Kazakh customers also face little choice these days. Popular Japanese and European brands are simply not available. Many models were manufactured in Russia, where factories have been forced to suspend production due to international sanctions over Moscow’s war in Ukraine. That has caused an acute shortage of cars and spare parts in Kazakhstan.

Toyota Center Jetysu, an Almaty dealer of one of the most popular brands in Kazakhstan, told Eurasianet that it had suspended sales indefinitely due to the factory shutdown in St. Petersburg.

In addition, Russian authorities have banned the export of many types of spare parts, causing prices to soar.

Russia is still rebalancing their economy and industrial supply chains away from western supplies. It will take time before it will be optimized agian.