Why Silicon Valley Won't Be the Green Car Detroit 329
thecarchik writes "NPR boldly pronounced, 'The new automobile of the 21st century is likely to benefit from the culture of Silicon Valley, where people are used to taking a chip, a cell or an idea and working on it until it becomes something big.' We've thought about it for a year, and discussed it with many people. And we don't believe it. Silicon Valley is the wrong place to build an auto industry, for three main reasons."
silicon valley doesn't build most of its silicon (Score:2, Insightful)
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why wont you go away if you don't like it here
and is there a way to block all your nyms ?
California Taxes (Score:5, Interesting)
That's reason number one. That's the last place I'd want to build an industry, not just because of me but also my workers would have to deal with the heavy tax burden.
Better someplace that has few taxes & doesn't steal (much) money from the workers' paychecks. Like one of the Carolinas.
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>>>Feedback on this comment system?
Yeah it sucks. And it's slow (CPU intensive). And I can't get back to the classic (plain text) index even though I've un-checked and checked it multiple times.
Getting back the classic index. (Score:2)
Go to Preferences, then click on "Layout" under "Dynamic Index" and then select "Use Classic Index"
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BZZT! Still not giving me the classic index!
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Exit and restart your browser.
No, really. I know it sounds like typical brain-dead "please reboot your computer" tech support script-mongering, but at least for me (on Firefox 3.6.11), that made the difference. Set the UI, as mentioned above. Then exit the browser and restart it.
Don't know why, but that worked for me. YMMV.
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>>>click on "Layout" under "Dynamic Index" and then select "Use Classic Index"
Yeah that's what I meant when I said, "can't get back to the classic (plain text) index even though I've un-checked and checked it multiple times."
Re:California Taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
I would also choose to build cars somewhere else for the following reasons, even not bothering with taxes:
1: Heavy industry is not popular in CA. I'd encounter NIMBY syndrome everywhere I wanted to place a heavy duty factory.
2: Detroit has lots of fresh water. Most of California does not. This is a make or break, because if push came to shove, the spigots would be turned off on the factory's water supply so the golf course down the street can water their lawns.
3: Energy problems. California has brownouts aplenty. I'd either have to have large batteries to make up for the poor power grid there, or move to a place that has more reliable power.
4: Traffic. I would not be able to move cars out to the rest of the nation and the world as readily as if the plant was located in a less populated region.
Where would I put a factory? Michigan and Texas both come to mind. Detroit, Abilene, or San Antonio would be ideal spots. From there, I can get vehicles onto ships, I can get supplies from both coasts easily. Texas also has the advantage of being "open for business" all year around with few days of snow or bad weather.
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Your points aren't very great.
First, heavy industries are generally heavy polluters. The characteristics of California make it easy for air pollution to hang around rather than disperse. Northern California is still dealing with all the mercury that was dumped all around during the gold rush. Maybe other states like pollution, that's fine by me.
Second, yes, Ca doesn't have as much water as some states. But the biggest chunk of water usage is for farmers.
Third, PG&E sucks. But the energy problems you tal
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Highway traffic is roughly as relevant to this scenario as the price as tomatoes. Big industry doesn't use trucks for long distance movement - it uses trains. And California is very well connected. Less populous regions... aren't.
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It would be "the last place" to build an industry because of the "high tax burden" when its not in the top 10 of US states by tax burden, measured either by (tax $)/population or by (tax $)/($ personal income)?
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>>>Feedback on this comment system?
Yeah it sucks. And it's slow (CPU intensive). And I can't get back to the classic (plain text) index even though I've un-checked and checked it multiple times.
... and the feedback email link doesn't work. I got rid of the awful disasterous mess by unchecking "Enable Dynamic Discussions" and "Enable Dynamic Discussion Keybindings".
I don't like the new comment system, and if it becomes permanent I'll stop reading the site. That means loss of advertising eyeballs
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TThat's reason number one. That's the last place I'd want to build an industry, not just because of me but also my workers would have to deal with the heavy tax burden. Better someplace that has few taxes & doesn't steal (much) money from the workers' paychecks.
Yes, the crushing tax burden on the being in the second quintile of per capita taxes. According to the very conservative newspaper The OC Register (http://www.ocregister.com/articles/tax-270147-pay-increases.html?pic=19). California's total tax burden is 12th in total revenues collected per capita. Calculated as a percentage of income (California ranks 7th in income) it is even lower.
This is not an unreasonable tax burden for a state requiring the infrastructure and education to support a high-tech economy.
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From your use page: Help & preferences -> Discussions -> Vieving -> Slashdot Classic Discussion System.
Took me a while to figure it out too. Kinda panicked when I thought that I'd be stuck with the new system.
Canada! (Score:5, Funny)
Come build your car manufacturing plants in Canada, eh? Our workers don't ask for $100 per hour salaries and we got all four seasons* to test your technologies too!
* warning: the summer-to-winter ratio imay not be uniform.
Re:Canada! (Score:4, Funny)
... and we got all four seasons* to test your technologies too!
Yep. All four of 'em.
1. Almost Winter
2. Winter
3. Still Winter
4. Construction
(how's your Almost Winter goin', eh?)
Are they kidding? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are they kidding? Silicon Valley already doesn't do a lot of it's hardcore manufacturing. Neither does Detroit anymore.
It's a globalized world out there now. There's no good reason that the Valley can't be the R&D center for even conventional cars. Nevermind bleeding edge EV cars. They just might not build them in California.
An electric car would be no different from an iPod in this respect.
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I know, I kind of looked at the headline and went...
Why would it anyone think that?
I should submit an article on why Canada won't be exporting snow.
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Actually they should, when alaska is [slashdot.org], canada should too.
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Speaking of Canada: Why isn't there a Phoenix dealership in Texas yet? This is pickup truck country. Our governor should be smiling next to the relevant provincial governor and sending a bunch of those bad boys down here.
Put charging stations next to all of those West Texas windmills...
News of Detroit's death greatly exaggerated (Score:5, Interesting)
Are they kidding? Silicon Valley already doesn't do a lot of it's hardcore manufacturing. Neither does Detroit anymore.
Detroit doesn't do manufacturing? That would be news to those of us who live in Detroit. Despite all its problems, Detroit still is the beating heart of manufacturing in the US. EVERY automobile company has a presence in Detroit. Every major auto supplier has a presence in Detroit, many headquartered here. There is still heaping gobs of manufacturing jobs throughout Michigan even despite the recent problems. Major defense contractors like General Dynamics as well as lots of biomedical engineering goes on in Detroit. It's also one of the top 5 finance hubs in the US.
Silicon Valley won't be the Detroit of green cars because Detroit will be almost certainly be the Detroit of green cars. Little known fact: Detroit metro has the FOURTH highest [altiusdirectory.com] amount of high tech employment in the US. Detroit already has huge expertise in building cars, existing infrastructure, tons of engineering talent, idle manufacturing capacity and a work force in need of employment. Michigan is investing huge into battery manufacturing. Silicon Valley will get involved to be sure - especially in the electronics that are going to be an ever more important part of the vehicles. Not to say things are roses in Michigan; they aren't but anyone who thinks Michigan is out of the manufacturing business doesn't understand manufacturing.
There's no good reason that the Valley can't be the R&D center for even conventional cars.
Sure there is. The engineering talent and the companies that need it already live elsewhere. Moving to Silicon Valley would require uprooting a lot of existing investments, people to relocate to a place with no particular advantages in technologies specific to automobiles besides electronics and software. There is auto R&D that occurs in California already but Silicon Valley isn't remotely the only place with engineering talent in the US. Could it happen? Sure. Likely? Very very doubtful.
An electric car would be no different from an iPod in this respect.
Right, because building iPods makes Apple/HP/etc perfectly suited to get into the auto manufacturing business. No difference whatsoever... [/sarcasm]
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> Every major auto supplier has a presence in Detroit, many headquartered here
The operative word here is HEADQUARTERS. It's like how everyone has offices in Walmart's home city despite the fact that all of the factories are actually in CHINA.
The home office doesn't have to be where the stuff is actually made.
Acting like it does is really ignorant on NPRs part.
Detroit globalized like everyone else.
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I partially agree. The silicon valley was good at making tech, but it's definitely not an industry town.
Detroit is still heavily populated by good hard working people, that will work long hard hours for good pay. Unfortunately, the unions made a mess of things. It was advantageous for workers, but not good for the company. Workers received exceedingly high wages, and great benefits. This, along with the corporate greed raised the prices of the product. It became more cost
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You're overstating it. The base salary + benefits made a single employee cost $135,200/yr. That's not working for peanuts. How many of those out unemployed autoworkers would now be pay working for $35k to $65k, like the re
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Here's a reference. http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2008/11/should-we-really-bail-out-7320-per-hour.html [blogspot.com]. I know it's not as good as an official reference, but it is one. I can't find the link I used initially. 73.20 * 2080 = $151.840.
Of course, that's not reflected in the employee's check. The benefits packages were huge (negotiated by the union), and there were pesky things like union dues. It may not matter to the guy working the line, but it's the figure that the auto ma
They could say exactly the same thing about energy (Score:4, Interesting)
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the technical domains (bioengineering, mechanical engineering, materials science) are only superficially relevant to Silicon Valley's prime skill set (microlithography, electrical engineering)
Materials Science only superficially relevant to microlithography?
I would point out that none of your S.V. Skill Sets were native to the Valley, but were imported, and were importable because of the presence of Stanford, which is rather more than just a school of microlithography and another of microelectronics engineering.
OTOH, your other points look good, alas.
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Silicon Valley is pretty close to one of the nation's more significant biotech centers (South San Francisco.) Northern California, generally, is a pretty big area for bioengineering.
This article doesn't make a great argument. (Score:5, Insightful)
Although it makes some concessions to the idea, the article ultimately struggles around the idea that where things are prototyped/engineered isn't necessarily where they will be built.
And I agree, Silicon Valley is a terrible place to build a manufacturing plant. Cost of living is too expensive and you can't reasonably expect to pay factory workers wages that will allow them to compete for housing with programmers and engineers.
However, the article makes an awful case that engineering around green cars can't/won't happen in Silicon Valley. They point out that Tesla has to work to attract the kind of specialized engineers they need to move out there. But you know what? The point is, you can convince them to move out there. It might cost you, but you can do it if it's important enough. Good luck convincing the best and the brightest that they want to live in Detroit instead, despite a much cheaper cost of living.
On par for the linked site (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot has posted several articles from greencarreports.com (all submitted by thecarchik), many of which have been pretty poor, including the one about cambered tires improving efficiency [slashdot.org] while completely neglecting the fact that it ruins handling, a study showing that hyrid cars don't save enough gas to cover extra cost [slashdot.org] by conveniently only looking at the first 5 year of the cars use.
I've added them to my ignored links list.
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They point out that Tesla has to work to attract the kind of specialized engineers they need to move out there.
And even that is probably a bit fluffed up in terms of being a metric. Tesla works hard to attract the best and the brightest because they want the absolute cream of the crop for their engineers. SpaceX is just as picky with it's engineers. These companies don't shop worldwide because there are no engineers in California. They shop worldwide because they want the smartest sons of bitches money can buy working for them
If quantity of engineers (non software/electrical) is a problem for any start ups in Ca
Michigan is 4th in high tech employment (Score:2)
Good luck convincing the best and the brightest that they want to live in Detroit instead, despite a much cheaper cost of living.
To use your own logic, "you can convince them to move out there. It might cost you, but you can do it if it's important enough."
Detroit has a FAR worse reputation than it deserves. Michigan is actually an amazing place to live and much of the manufacturing doesn't actually take place in Detroit itself. The summers are beautiful and the winters have lots of activities for those not afraid to step outside, you are never more than about 80 miles from the coast of one of the Great Lakes, cost of living is rea
NSS tag? (Score:2)
Where's the No Shit, Sherlock Tag?
Err, So Cal? (Score:2)
the three reasons (Score:4, Informative)
From the article:
Long cycles, faraway profits
Wrong kind of engineers
Painful place to build things
Customisation (Score:2, Interesting)
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Have you actually ever ordered a new car? You might try it, because the auto companies were offering shedloads of options and high customization long before Micheal Dell's parents were a gleam in his grandparent's eyes.
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That would kill the franchise car dealer system, so none of the big automotive players will jump on board this concept. It would take a start-up that doesn't have any entrenched interests in their supply and/or sales chains to make something like this a reality. And considering the costs involved in designing a plant that can handle these kinds of orders, I just don't see a start-up having the necessary cash on hand to pull it off.
In other words, ain't gonna happen.
Central Oklahoma (Score:3, Funny)
NPR wrong? (Score:2)
Imported engineers (Score:5, Interesting)
TFA is saying that one of the reasons the valley won't manufacture cars is because they'll have to import engineers from elsewhere since the ones already in the place are only qualified in microelectronics and aren't qualified in the heavy duty engineering needed for manufacturing.
Silicon Valley's already full of imported engineers who were brought in to work as coders. I'm one of them. I don't see why they couldn't import the necessary skills. The valley is a very attractive proposition to someone living in India, or in England as was the case for me.
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Or, maybe, Detroit. The lie that America doesn't have qualified engineers is corporate propaganda.
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It is one thing to bring in enough engineers to do design work, or the modest scale production that Tesla currently does.
It is another thing to bring in the 100's of engineers needed to operate a manufacturing plant of the scale to build even 50,000-100,000 cars per year. The skill set of engineers who have been writing code for many years doesn't translate to production and manufacturing engineering in heavy industry.
The greatest concentrations of those types of engineers is in communities that already h
Apparently it will by Lynchburg, VA (Score:2, Informative)
The 100 MPG X-Prize winner is in Lynchburg, VA. So no, not Silicon Valley.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/09/16/1811257/Meet-the-Virginia-Built-110MPG-X-Prize-Car [slashdot.org]
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2010/09/ultra-light-cars-reap-rewards-of-x-prize.html [pbs.org]
The NUMMI plant (Score:5, Interesting)
Tesla has the advantage of taking over the NUMMI plant in Fremont, CA, a big, successful auto plant shut down for the 2008 recession, when Toyota, for the first time, had to close plants. They're only using a fraction of the plant, but they own all the buildings (although not all the land; they didn't buy all the parking lots). There are plenty of laid-off auto workers living nearby, so a workforce is available.
The cost differential with China has narrowed. It turns out that once wages in China reach a quarter of the US level, China manufacturing stops being competitive. The transport costs, the delays, and the quality problems make outsourcing manufacturing less attractive. With wages rising in the coastal provinces in China, (and wages dropping in the US) that wage level has been reached in some industries.
Also, with all the foreclosures, bay area house prices have dropped. Maybe by a factor of 2.
Operating in Detroit has its own problems. The weather is harsh. Crime is high. Most of the people with competence and ambition moved out when the jobs did.
Don't worry about the rare earth supply problem. Mountain Pass, California [molycorp.com] is already coming back on line.
Manufacturing in Michigan (Score:4, Interesting)
Operating in Detroit has its own problems. The weather is harsh. Crime is high. Most of the people with competence and ambition moved out when the jobs did.
Bullshit. The weather is fine unless you are a huge sissy and in case you didn't know, manufacturing occurs indoors. The workforce and engineering talent ALREADY lives here. Crime is not particularly high in most of Michigan. Since you are obviously ignorant about how things work in Detroit, most of the manufacturing does not take place in high crime areas. Very few companies actually make anything in Detroit proper - everyone moved out to the suburbs LONG ago. Oakland County (the one immediately to the north of Detroit proper) is one of the wealthiest counties in the entire country and one of only 10 or so with a AAA credit rating.
The dumbest comment though is the last one you made. No one with any competence in Detroit? Spoken like an ignorant jackass who doesn't actually know anything about Detroit or what goes on there. Michigan has the 4th highest amount of high tech employment of any major metro area in the US. The place is absolutely crawling with engineering talent. Might not be as glamorous as microchips and software but make no mistake that there are a LOT of very smart people in Michigan.
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The Bay Area is still hugely expensive to live in, by most measures. Not just housing but many other things are expensive and it is in a high tax state/region. So wages tend to be higher here, too. It is not a low cost place to operate a business. Many local high-tech firms find the advantages of being here outweigh the costs, but these companies also typically have large offshore development centers, so a lot of their labor is non-local.
Not so easy. (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the big advantages Silicon Valley has enjoyed is it's proximity to Asia. And likely it's one of the reasons why Silicon Valley is where it is. They enjoy easier access to the high technology coming out of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan and the manufacturing resources of China.
The automotive industry is an entirely different beast. The technology isn't nearly as concentrated as it might be with computers or consumer electronics. A company could draw on manufacturing, expertise and technology from Europe, Asia and within the United States. So why even bother putting up with the high taxes and regulations present in California? The company could be based anywhere.
And building a car, especially a green car, is a far more complex undertaking than a lot of people seem to realize. I expect we're going to see a lot of investors burned in ventures that end up not working out. Even Tesla, which has gotten far further than most is struggled. Too many start ups have impractical pie-in-the-sky ambitions. Unrealistically lightweight vehicles with amazing fuel economy that manage, by magic, to meet all crash-worthiness requirements. And they simply don't have the resources to build aerodynamic bodies cheaply and efficiently. I expect that in the end it's going to be the major automakers who will bring practical green cars to the market.
The big limiting factor is the battery. If someone manages to produce batteries that store far more energy and can be charged quickly it would revolutionize the automotive industry. We wouldn't need hundreds of pounds worth of batteries or hybrid drivetrains and we'd still get a practical 300+ mile range out of these cars.
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One of the big advantages Silicon Valley has enjoyed is it's proximity to Asia. And likely it's one of the reasons why Silicon Valley is where it is.
I've never heard that theory before.
Usually it's attributed to the proximity of Berkeley and Stanford and/or year-round moderate weather conditions that avoid both snow and "you really need air conditioning" heat.
Only one of the reasons makes sense (Score:4, Interesting)
The "It takes $1 billion and 5 years to launch a new vehicle" is simply bullshit. It make take that long if you do it the way Detroit does it, but history has shown that Detroit is doing it wrong! Modern businesses are no longer the huge vertically integrated monopolies of the early industrial age; it is now possible to buy everything from out of house. "Wrong kind of engineers" is also bullshit -- create a demand for automotive engineers and Stanford and Berkly will train them! Granted, there is a 4-year lag, but the reason there is a Silicon Valley in the first place is because the world-class universities in the area created a pool of world-class engineers. Again, having engineers that are trained to do things "the GM way" is a disadvantage, not an advantage.
What about the valley's aerospace industry? (Score:5, Insightful)
These days, it takes $1 billion or more to design, engineer, test, certify, and launch a brand-new vehicle. And that takes roughly five years.
How long do you think it takes to make a missile or satellite ? It's something silicon valley has been doing for year. If you want a more mainstream example, how long do you think it takes to make a cell phone from scratch? It's not just a bunch of desks and a few smart coders. It takes industrial design to go through iterations of the device, radio designers to simulate many iterations, and finally it has to be tested by government(s) and by carriers before the phone is finally able to ship. 2 years for this is considered "speed of light", if you have to redesign late in the process it can stretch out further.
The Kindle took 4 years to develop in secret before it was released, and it's not a very complicated product. There are plenty of businesses in the valley that know that hardware is a long term investment, and that you have to put up a whole lot of capital to make it happen.
Nice article, not mirrored in reality (Score:5, Interesting)
Nice polemic, and echoed widely. On the other hand, California leads the entire US by "value added by manufacturing" and on its own dwarfs the entirety of the Southern states the authors hold up as an example. For example, according to the US Census Bureau, California created $254bln in added manufacturing value with 1.3 million workers in 2008, South Carolina: $37bln with 230000 workers. If you crunch the numbers, you'll also see that California produces more value per worker than most other states. And until the meltdown last year, one of the primary car factories in the US was Nuumi in Fremont, CA, actually the Toyota plant Tesla bought.
Yes, once prices come down and everyone can do it, it'll probably electric car manufacturing will probably move to other states and California will get started on the next thing. But to get this off the ground initially, Silicon Valley is a great spot, because all the expertise you need to debug the process is within a two hour drive.
And by the way, Porsche, Mercedes, Audi, and BMW main factories are in Germany's most expensive areas, very few are in the more depressed parts (although Wolfsburg is really depressing).
Wrong kind of programmers, too. (Score:5, Insightful)
The article says:
Wrong kind of engineers ...
Silicon Valley may have proficient coders oozing out of every condo complex, but it lacks--and isn't likely to develop--large numbers of engineers with the right mix of automotive mechatronics and high-voltage systems skills.
But it misses a point: Silicon Valley has the wrong kind of PROGRAMMERS, too. In particular, the valley's levels of software reliability and bug density are far too poor.
I started my programming career in Southeastern Michigan, and spent 15 of the first 20 years of it in the auto industry, so I know whereof I speak. ANY bit of software written for the auto industry is almost certainly life-critical. Some examples, from my own experience (mainly keeping the nightmare scenarios from happening):
- A bug in the idle speed control results in a line of cars that tends to stall after a car length or two when accelerating from a stop sign.
- A bug in the airbag testing software fires a proof-sample airbag while the worker is leaning over it on the test fixture (rather than after he's out of the chamber, the doors are closed, and the alarm has sounded for the required time).
- A bug in the plant energy management system blacks out all the lights in the factory while the workers are interacting with the still-operating machinery.
- A bug in the alarm system doesn't signal when the "flame curtain" over one end of the annealing oven fails. With no warning the plant soon fills (starting near the ceiling) with hot, carbon-monixide laden, "reducing atmosphere" gas, poisoning hundreds of workers before reaching lower-explosive-limit at an ignition source and blowing acres of roof into the next county.
And so on.
When I moved to Silicon valley I was ASTOUNDED at the low level of software reliability here. Design-for-reliability and even debugging subordinated to "feature velocity". Product shipped with hundreds, or thousands, of bugs. Business models that MONETIZED bugs - by selling contracts to fix them (creating the incentive to ship them for fixing later). And so on. (And open source isn't a cure for this: While it doesn't ship until the original programmer or team is happy with it, it mostly gets its reliability by accelerating the fixes, not by annealing the code into crystalline perfection BEFORE it first ships.)
Ship a bug in a car's software and you incur the cost of a RECALL.
At the first place I worked here in the valley one of my colleagues said I was the only guy he'd trust to program his pacemaker. Another said "["Rod"] takes three times as long to write code - but his stuff usually works the first time." (Which is not true: When you do it right - which involves getting the bugs out right away - you can code and debug blazingly fast. I would only deliver when something was finished to my satisfaction - after hundreds of debugging iterations. But my delivery of a completed project would be compared to single iterations of the others' debugging.)
Thus I gravitated (back) to "the hard side of the force" - moving into chip design. (It's of comparable complexity to a large application these days. And it's about the only function in the valley where Detroit-level reliability is valued: Eliminating a silicon spin is about equivalent to eliminating a recall in cost to the company, but it shows up in time-to-market savings.)
So while there are some other programmers like me available here, an auto company attempting to staff-up in Silicon Valley won't be looking for the sort of programmer that constitutes the bulk of the Valley's programming culture. (They'll do well to hire from "back home" in the rust belt or people transplanted from there, hardware designers, or programmers of medical, telecom, or MIL products.) Worse, the middle-managers here who administer the programmers are steeped in - actually the creators of - this software-unreliability culture. If the new auto company's personnel execs don't figure this out in time you can imagine the debacle when the product hits market - or the delays and cost during the delicate venture-funded stage as they try to retrofit quality into their firmware - or rip it out and replace it.
Aircraft are harder than cars (Score:4, Informative)
East Bay:
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory - Livermore, CA
Aero Precision Industries - Livermore, CA
Peregrine Falcon Corporation - Pleasanton, CA
Alameda Aerospace - Alameda, CA
Erg Materials & Aerospace Corporation - Berkeley, CA
Ocellus Inc - Livermore, CA
Inspace Systems - Oakland, CA
Braxton Technologies - Pleasanton, CA
General Dynamics Corporation - San Leandro, CA
Pennisula:
L 3 Communications - San Carlos, CA
Peninsula Avionics, LLC - Mountain View, CA
Northrop Grumman - Oakland & San Francisco, CA
Ideal Aerosmith, Inc - Menlo Park, CA
South Bay:
Space Systems/Loral - Palo Alta, CA
Honeywell International - Fremont, CA
Santa Cruz:
Lockheed Martin Space Systems - Boulder Creek, CA
Only one real reason (Score:2, Insightful)
Too many liberals. And I am not even trolling...
Re:Only one real reason (Score:5, Interesting)
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Is it true that in Orange County you either live next to a celebrity or on a beach?
Re:Only one real reason (Score:4, Funny)
No, all the celebrities live on the beach. So it's both or neither. Also, they don't exactly live there. It's their vacation home.
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California uses less energy per person because of the weather not because of the lack of manufacturing.
manufacturing is never going to come back to California not because of taxes, not because of environmental laws, but because the cost of living is so high. and it is high because it is a desirable place to live.
Re:Only one real reason (Score:5, Interesting)
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Have you visited or seen pictures [bouncingredball.com] of the inside of a factory? If we were to measure energy consumption in BTU/ft2, how many square feet of residential buildings are equal to one square foot of factories? And how do factories compare with offices? California is of course not yet completely devoid of private industry, but if the stat you give is correct, that 75% of the state's energy goes to companies (of course completely impossible given that the state's largest employer is, well, the state, and their o
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It's the delta, not the heat pump, that makes A/C generally cheaper to run than electric heat. Cooling a CA house from 90 down to 70 is a lot easier than heating an upstate NY house from -15 to 60.
Re:Only one real reason (Score:4, Informative)
You're just proving your ignorance. Look up SEER or COP (coefficient of performance). A heatpump can commonly move 3X as much heat as energy is put into it. Eg. for every 1KW of electricity, it can output 3KW equivalent of heat. It gets better if you tie geothermal into that.
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You don't know basic physics. Note that my post got meeded up by several people, while you did not. Do what I said the first time, and LOOK UP EER, SEER, or COP. If you do so, instead of remaining willfully ignorant, you'll see I'm 100% correct.
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A heat pump cannot approach 100% efficiency. Indeed, a heat pump does work, which makes it subject to the laws of thermodynamics, whereas a resistive heater does no work at all. It merely increases the average energy in a region.
On the contrary. A Heat Pump can be, according to its definition, MORE than 100% efficient. Where efficiency is defined as (heat pumped)/(energy spent). So you can pump 500W of heat with 100W of electricity (non real values)
So you can have more heating for the same electricity then with an electrical heater.
Look up the tech data for an air conditioning unit.
Re:Ignorant Comment (Score:4, Informative)
Huh? Leads the world in manufacture of what? Go talk to the few Bay Area machine shops still left standing and ask them about manufacturing of high tech equipment. Go talk to a chip maker like Parallax and ask them their opinion on setting up fab in California. Wasn't there just an article on /. about how movies are being made anywhere except California? Heck, they're moving completely out of the U.S. altogether. You really think New Zealand is home to so many huge-budget films just because Peter Jackson was born there? You really think a movie exec signing a $100 million check cares where some dude was born? There are very few companies actually coding software here in the U.S., even California. My landlord got let go from his 20+ years at the IBM Almaden research center to get replaced by Indians, in India.
I am doing things for California. I own a small business and I'm not giving up on it. I help out when I can with candidates I feel are genuine, like John Dennis [johndennis2010.com] up in San Francisco. I am hoping to be working with several volunteer groups on real reforms for the state's utterly failed legislature. But I have to admit, the state is only worth so much money to me. If things keep going the way they are going, I will move elsewhere, probably Austin.
It is my opinion that your ignorance and holding on to victories of the past and refusing to face the brutal facts of reality are more damaging to this state than almost anything else. We are in crisis, and the worst is yet to come.
Re:Only one real reason (Score:4, Funny)
Too many liberals. And I am not even trolling...
Totally. If there is one thing about liberals, they are anti-progress.
Re:Only one real reason (Score:4, Insightful)
Too many liberals. And I am not even trolling...
Well, it can't be in a conservative state because they'll only build internal combustion engine powered cars that go VROOOOOM! Electric cars are just too gay. So, it's going to have to be a moderate state.
BTW, it's a scientific fact that men who drive minivans or electric cars spontaneously grow vaginas.
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Re:Only one real reason (Score:5, Informative)
yes
Designed in California. Made in [not California] (Score:5, Insightful)
Regarding the electric cars companies currently in California. Maybe some cars will be built in California while the company is still in a start up and "prototyping" mode (this can be years after starting to sell to early adopters). However when the company matures and the company perspective evolves from development to manufacturing the factories will move out of state. Especially if viable competitors appear.
Silicon Valley may be a hub for design but other parts of the country have far more expertise in nuts-and-bolts manufacturing. The components of a car may be incredibly hi tech but auto manufacturing will largely remain bolting and welding components together.
Re:Designed in California. Made in [not California (Score:4, Insightful)
But I doubt that it will be Detroit. Texas and other states without the UAW controlling the governments will get the majority of new factories.
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Any state that has a law that requires me to join a Union if I want a certain job is controlled by the union.
Re:Designed in California. Made in [not California (Score:5, Insightful)
"Silicon Valley may be a hub for design but other parts of the country have far more expertise in nuts-and-bolts manufacturing."
Lower wages, low energy costs, low cost of living, and no unions make South Carolina competitive. BMW didn't locate here by mistake, nor did Boeing.
Price yourself out of the market and the market will adapt.
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The article mentions England/UK twice:
"Executives confirmed that the company recruits literally all over the world for engineers with the right mix of experience, including from England’s ample supply of Formula 1 race-car engineers."
"The company developed its groundbreaking Roadster smartly, by adapting and reusing large portions of an existing car—the Lotus Elise sports car—and outsourcing much of that work to Lotus itself, along with the manufacturing (in the U.K.)."
Perhaps the "green c
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Too many liberals. And I am not even trolling...
I think you are, because I personally claim what's wrong with California is not the number of liberals, but the number of dumb and crazy people of any political leaning. We might have more dumb liberals, but I maintain that's because we have more liberals period. The conservatives who decided it should be all but impossible to raise taxes ever, that was also pretty short sighted.
Anyway, liberals can make cars in theory, just as conservatives can, in theory, be funny comedians.
Re:Only one real reason (Score:4, Interesting)
The conservatives who decided it should be all but impossible to raise taxes ever, that was also pretty short sighted.
So you're saying the highest taxes in the nation just aren't high enough? What are you smoking? I lived in Texas, and it had roads and schools and hospitals and no income tax. I lived in Florida, and it had roads and schools ans hospitals and no income tax. Now I'm in California, and its roads, schools, and hospitals are just the same, but it somehow a 9% income tax isn't enough, and the state is bankrupt? What a buch of losers, whatever their political stripe.
Trapped by narrow ideology and thinking. (Score:3, Interesting)
Obama did save the US auto-industry, despite republican efforts to kill it, whether he gets any credit for it or not. However, Americans and in particular the auto makers in Detroit will need to make the most of their last chance to survive. This has less to do with politics than with a a willingness and wisdom to adopt a progressive mindset that isn't afraid to change with the times. This piece was all fluff, with no real substantiation or analysis of any of the claims that "the more things change the m
Re:Trapped by narrow ideology and thinking. (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama saved the unions at GM and Chrysler. He saved the names GM and Chrysler. He destroyed the bondholders, who by law own the company's assets when it goes bankrupt. He destroyed and continues to destroy the principle of rule by law. He preserved the principle of legally protected union thuggery.
Had GM and Chrysler gone bankrupt, the assets, if they were capable of productive use (which is saying if they were capable of doing more good than harm) would have been sold to organizations capable of running them at a profit. Instead they continue to bleed the economy, disguising losses with money from the government.
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(Juan Williams fired for fox appearance).
How about we unpack that story a little further to something like:
"Juan Williams fired for saying that when he sees Muslims getting on a plane with him he's afraid they're going to blow it up."
Re:Only one real reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Its not as if he said we should be afraid when Muslims get on a plane we us, he said he is. Its a statement that is not against Muslims or anyone.
I'm not sure how you're able to reconcile those two statements as rationally consistent.
If he'd said, "I'm not saying how anyone else should feel, but when I see black people I'm afraid they're going to mug me.", that's not a statement against black people? No one should feel offended by that?
How about, "I'm not saying how you should feel, but I get scared that gypsies will try to steal my babies?"
Or, "When I see rednecks, I'm afraid I might see them making out with their sister-mom, but I don't act on that fear?"
Or even, "When I see Asian people, I'm afraid they're better at math and karate than I am?"
Sorry, you can't say something that's completely bigoted or racist but expect people to not be taken aback when you stress that it's just your own feeling.
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Yes, I'd prefer to live in a world where I wasn't afraid to publicly state my own beliefs over one where I never had to hear anything offensive. But then, I like freedom. Fewer on /. seem to as time goes on.
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Sure, and it has nothing to do with the $1.8 million dollars that Soros just gave to them. No way there'd be strings attached. Nothing to do with the million he just gave Media Matters, whose mission it is to destroy Fox by taking quotes painfully out of context. Juan has been appearing on The Factor for a long time now. If NPR didn't like it, they wouldn't have sat on it for so long. His dialog on the show hasn't changed so far as I can tell. He's honest, he speaks from the heart. I don't agree with
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If NPR didn't like it, they wouldn't have sat on it for so long.
They didn't. Hence why they apparently repeatedly talked to him about how he appears on Fox News. Mind you, not that he does, just what he says.
He's honest, he speaks from the heart.
So is Sarah Palin and Alvin Greene. What's your point?
The only reason he'd bring it up is because he recognizes that such an emotional response is wrong, but being honest, he admits to feeling that way. He's not saying O'Reilly's audience should be afraid. He's not saying that anyone should be excluded from air travel. All he did was state his own emotional state. NPR, a network that even has show called "All Things Considered" refuses to tolerate a man's irrational fear, even as he's using it to promote dialog on a touchy subject? It's absurd. We'll never get past issues like this if we refuse to discuss them.
The problem is that he didn't expand on that point. He left it as is and never went into why that particular feeling is wrong: because the statistics are against it. The way he worded it, the way O'Reilly left it up there, it seemed like a completely normal attitude. Coming from someone who is employed as a news
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If you don't realize NPR is left biased I suggest you shake your head vigorously until that pea you call brain drops into its hole and then maybe you can start thinking again. Btw I doubt there is a clear cut policy that makes what Williams said a terminable offense. He was considered not liberal enough or a faux liberal as some of his NPR colleagues called him for appearing frequently on Fox News and I suspect this was just an excuse to get rid of him
Re:Only one real reason (Score:4, Informative)
Btw I doubt there is a clear cut policy that makes what Williams said a terminable offense.
Enjoy:
http://www.npr.org/about/aboutnpr/ethics/ethics_code.html [npr.org]
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2. If your part isn't at the assembly plant when it is needed and GM has to shut down the line, your company gets charged about $2000 per minute (might be more, now). With "Just in Time" inventory practices, no supplier would be willing to risk a long transport time.
3. Logistics (related to 2) When I worked for an auto supplier, orders were finalized no more than 3 weeks out. When I worked for the paper products company, product from China was shipped 3-6 mon
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1. Bulk. A car is big, shipping is expensive. JimFive
Not only is it big, it's mostly air. Shipping too much air is what makes the shipping too expensive.
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Actually, you should read up some because there is a car manufacturing facility here call NUMMI. Your mileage may vary:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors#United_States [wikipedia.org]
Toyota built cars there until recently. Ask yourself this; where are the big three now? I used to drive an American car too, now I can afford a proper German one. Your mileage may vary. I'll take Silicon Valley over Detroit any day. I already did. You're joking though, right? Detroit knows how to build cheap, shitty cars, except
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So... you used to drive [cheap] American cars, now you drive a [non-cheap] German car. You then appear to claim that cheap priced American cars are cheap quality, and non-cheap quality American cars are not cheap priced. And yet, you only switched to a German car when you could afford it. In other words, your anecdotal comparison is between Cheap Priced/Cheaply Made American Cars and Expensive German Car.
It's not like all German cars are well-made, either.
And I'm not at all saying you need to drive Ameri
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Van Hool bus
Van Hool are a coachbuilder. They don't make the chassis. The Van Hool-bodied Volvo B10Ms were excellent, though. I wonder where M8 SKY and 12 EWO are now?
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Oh, wait...