Posted on 04/30/2010 2:43:45 PM PDT by La Enchiladita
State and local officials announced Friday that Chinese hybrid electric automaker BYD Co. will open its U.S. headquarters in downtown Los Angeles.
China’s fourth-largest automaker expects to create at least 150 jobs here by 2011 as it rolls out its fleet of vehicles to California markets first before expanding throughout the country.
“By bringing global alternative energy companies to Los Angeles, we are securing our future and building the foundation for an emerging industry that will attract good paying, green collar jobs for generations of Angelenos,” said Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa during a City Hall press conference that included Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Villaraigosa’s new jobs czar, Austin Beutner, who negotiated the deal.
BYD plans to move into 1800 South Figueroa in the Downtown Business Improvement District during the fourth quarter. In addition to corporate headquarters, the building will house the company’s research & development arm, which will develop versions of their popular vehicles now selling in China for the U.S. consumer market.
“Installing a U.S. headquarters in Los Angeles well prepares us for distribution of our product throughout the United States and sets the stage for release our all-electric crossover vehicle, the e6,” said Chairman Wang Chuan-fu in a statement.
(Excerpt) Read more at labusinessjournal.com ...
The penny drops.
On the day the US Gulf spill is racheted up, we have this.
Nothing to deal with....they are bedfellows!
“Chinese Automaker to Roll Into L.A.”
Ahhhhhhhhh....Chinese Spring Roll....ummmmmmmmmmm.
The Chinese will become a free capitalist society yet and the United States will become a turd world, communist hellhole unfit for human habitation unless we stop this nonsense in November.
...Chinese hybrid electric automaker BYD Co. will open its U.S. headquarters in downtown Los Angeles. China's fourth-largest automaker expects to create at least 150 jobs here by 2011That'll be great, in a country of 300 million. Thanks La Enchiladita.
Exactly right, and our “greenie” Gov is thrilled about it.
“....we are securing our future and building the foundation for an emerging industry that will attract good paying, green collar jobs for generations of Angelenos,” said Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa...”
This guy is political “science” degree stupid.
Which is why he’s a dim-bulb-crat.
Knowing the Chinese chances are they have already secured half the state from the useful idiots.
Mainly because our country does not learn from the mistakes of others.
March 11, 2010, 8:30 p.m.
“California delegation in China to lobby for BYD car plant”
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/california-group-in-china-to-lobby-for-byd-plant-2010-03-11
“Warren Buffett takes charge
Warren Buffett hasn’t just seen the car of the future, he’s sitting in the driver’s seat. Why he’s banking on an obscure Chinese electric car company and a CEO who - no joke - drinks his own battery fluid.”
April 13, 2009
http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/13/technology/gunther_electric.fortune/
From the link just above: “He started BYD with a modest goal: to edge in on the Japanese-dominated battery business. “Importing batteries from Japan was very expensive,” Wang says. “There were import duties, and delivery times were long.” He studied Sony and Sanyo patents and took apart batteries to understand how they were made, a “process that involved much trial and error,” he says. (Sony and Sanyo later sued BYD, unsuccessfully, for infringing on their patents.)
BYD’s breakthrough came when Wang decided to substitute migrant workers for machines. In place of the robotic arms used on Japanese assembly lines, which cost $100,000 or more apiece, BYD actually cut costs by hiring hundreds, then thousands, of people.
“When I first visited the BYD factory, I was shocked,” says Daniel Kim, a Merrill Lynch technology analyst based in Hong Kong, who has been to the fully automated production lines in Japan and Korea. “It’s a completely different business model.” To control quality, BYD broke every job down into basic tasks and applied strict testing protocols. By 2002, BYD had become one of the top four manufacturers worldwide - and the largest Chinese manufacturer - in each of the three rechargeable battery technologies (Li-Ion, NiCad, and NiMH), according to a Harvard Business School case study of the company. And Wang stresses that BYD, unlike Sony and Sanyo, has never faced a recall of its batteries.
Deploying the armies of laborers at BYD is an officer corps of managers and engineers who invent and design the products. Today the company employs about 10,000 engineers who have graduated from the company’s training programs - some 40% of those who enter either drop out or are dismissed - and another 7,000 new college graduates are being trained. Wang says the engineers come from China’s best schools. “They are the top of the top,” he says. “They are very hard-working, and they can compete with anyone.” BYD can afford to hire lots of them because their salaries are only about $600 to $700 a month; they also get subsidized housing in company-owned apartment complexes and low-cost meals in BYD canteens. “They’re basically breathing, eating, thinking, and working at the company 24/7,” says a U.S. executive who has studied BYD.
Wang typically works until 11 p.m. or midnight, five or six days a week. “In China, people of my generation put work first and life second,” says the CEO, whose wife takes responsibility for raising their two children.
This “human resource advantage” is “the most important part” of BYD’s strategy, Wang says. His engineers investigate a wide array of technologies, from automobile air-conditioning systems that can run on batteries to the design of solar-powered streetlights. Unlike most automakers, BYD manufactures nearly all its cars by itself - not just the engines and body but air conditioning, lamps, seatbelts, airbags, and electronics. “It is difficult for others to compete,” Wang says. “If we put our staff in Japan or the U.S., we could not afford to do anything like this.”
Wang himself grew up in extreme poverty. [snip]
As for accumulating wealth? “I’m not interested in it,” he claims. He certainly doesn’t live a very lavish lifestyle. He was paid about $265,000 in 2008, and he lives in a BYD-owned apartment complex with other engineers. His only indulgences are a Mercedes and a Lexus, and they have a practical purpose: He takes their engines apart to see how they work. On a trip to the U.S., he once tried to disassemble the seat of a Toyota owned by Fred Ni, an executive who was driving him around. Shortly after BYD went public, Wang did something extraordinary: He took approximately 15% of his holdings in BYD and distributed the shares to about 20 other executives and engineers at the company. He still owns roughly 28% of the shares, worth about $1 billion.”
Thanks but no thanks..
I forsee a new law.. You must buy a car from an Government approved company, I think the list is going to be GM, BYD, or Chrysler..
I’m boycotting the city of LA. I live in the county but seeing that the santuary city is boycotting AZ, they won’t get a dime of mine. That goes for all the outsourced jobs in major league baseball. How many american kids see there dreams smashed so MLB can import some player.
UAW?
Chinese running shoe.
bump
Those are beer cans on wheels. You’d have to be insane to drive or ride in one!!!
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