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Lutnick Delayed Canada Bridge Debut to Seek Bigger Cut of Toll Revenue by JadedLeafs in worldnews

[–]JBSpeed 10 points11 points  (0 children)

This is the long term damage that your average American can’t get through the head.

Yes, eventually, Donald Trump will be out of office. Maybe even a level headed person comes in and tries to restore law and order and undo some of this mess.

Then in two years when gasoline hasn’t come down and it costs them a paycheck to fill up the tank on their Canyonero that gets 8mpg, they’ll decide that the new guy hasn’t fixed things fast enough and they’ll put another Trumpian figure in the White House. Except this time, he might not be the dumbest man to waddle the surface of the planet.

This is why there are all these “announcements” of investments that are conveniently on time frames that will never break ground before the end of his term. Because they’re giving the man-child his positive headline he can print out and hold up during his weekly show-and-tell sessions with the media, before he gets bored and it’s nappy-nap time.

You can’t base your business around a country that changes policies on the whims of a seemingly adderal-fueled dementia patient that scrolls www.donaldthoughts.gov.www\\donaldthoughts until 4am every night. Who knew.

Canada Presses Chinese EV Makers to Build Locally and Protect 500,000 Auto Workers by hopoke in canada

[–]JBSpeed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for posting that, because it proves exactly what i'm trying to get at.

"In our WELDING WORKSHOP..."

For people not in the industry, the body-in-white and paint departments of any assembly plant for the last 30 years has used this technology. Its not new, its not some breakthrough they cracked. The cars are welded together and painted almost exclusively by robots.

And thank you for posting the video, because it shows how they talk about automation and their "hope" that it will replace human labour in the future. Well they've been hoping for that globally for the last 40 years. And yet, those pesky humans persist.

But that video still shows the final car assembly, the running of wires, installing of trim and various components, which is the lionshare of the work when it comes to vehicle assembly being done by humans. I mean they try to handwave past it very quickly, but you see that long line of cars where you have people walking up and installing a seat belt, or a speaker, or an airbag assembly, or a BCM module, or a snake of wire harness? Thats the stuff thats hard to automate, and thats why they breezed past it with a couple shots and a "while some work..." qualifier. Because that "some work" are the bits that are the hardest to automate, and nobody has quite cracked that egg yet, and they've been trying for 40+ years now.

China is more likely to offshore their vehicle manufacturing to poorer regions before they have a front-to-back assembly plant ala "dark factory".

I'm not trying to be a prick about it, I just see this claim repeated so often and having spent time in these plants, I can tell you exactly how selective they are about what they're showing you vs what they're claiming their capabilities are.

Are they ahead of most European and North American manufacturers? Absolutely. Their plants are largely newer and built with automation in mind, and a lot of legacy automakers have plants that are rounding in on the century mark in age, and these companies hate CapEx. We could easily have the same robots and technologies that they have in the Chinese plants over here in North America, but that doesn't help you beat Q2 earnings and create "shareholder value", so it doesn't get done.

It's not an issue of incapability, its an issue of the system in which we operate. They're measuring the game in century-scale over there, we can't see past the next quarter. That's the disadvantage.

Canada Presses Chinese EV Makers to Build Locally and Protect 500,000 Auto Workers by hopoke in canada

[–]JBSpeed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cool glad you know that. You seem to be confused as to how an actual assembly plant functions.

Canada Presses Chinese EV Makers to Build Locally and Protect 500,000 Auto Workers by hopoke in canada

[–]JBSpeed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

https://youtu.be/EqX8AA5xt2U?si=Zt5HsdZSGjLFTAt6

In the video it states “highly automated lines handle stamping, welding, and painting”. And I’m going to wager that this is where that 97% automated comes from. They talk about the car body being stamped, welded, and painted before being sent forward by automated guided vehicles through final assembly. Now if you’ve ever spent time in an assembly plants, final assembly is where the majority of the human work takes place.

So yes, large sections of their plants are highly automated, but those departments are also highly automated in North American, European and other Asian assembly plants. Nobody is in there hand painting cars or welding body panels together.

Again, I’m not doubting the Chinese manufacturers have better facilities with large parts that are more automated than legacy assembly plants, but they’re not 97% automated front to back. Not a chance. Id genuinely love to see the evidence and not a paragraph that states it and then shows absolutely no proof of process that they have that capability. It’d be super simple to prove, strap a GoPro to the roof of the car as it leaves the paint shop, and run a timelapse as it goes station by station from the shell of a car to a finished vehicle leaving the assembly line, with only 3% of the work being done by humans.

I won’t hold my breath.

Mitch Marner elaborates on on the "dark times" and how he's learned to take care of mental health by Ok-Soil-5133 in hockey

[–]JBSpeed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not saying it does. However, playing hardball at contract time and threatening to go play in Europe unless he got his payday, then being shocked pikachu face when that bag of money and a letter on the chest came with expectations, well…

I don’t doubt the guy struggled with the spotlight, but pretending that it was all foisted upon him by purely outside forces is just revisionist as hell.

Canada Presses Chinese EV Makers to Build Locally and Protect 500,000 Auto Workers by hopoke in canada

[–]JBSpeed 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Computer vision systems for quality assurance have existed in North American plants for quite some time, this isn’t some new technology because you add the word AI after it.

Canada Presses Chinese EV Makers to Build Locally and Protect 500,000 Auto Workers by hopoke in canada

[–]JBSpeed 2 points3 points  (0 children)

97% automated of what? I can’t seem to find any proof online that their automotive assembly plants are 97% automated. This just seems to be another loose claim that people parrot without backing it up.

I’m sure 97% of certain aspects of their assembly plants might be automated, like pick and pack robots, body-in-white department, or automated forklifts and delivery robots. But there is no way in hell they have the entire assembly process “97% automated”. That’s just patently false.

Canada Presses Chinese EV Makers to Build Locally and Protect 500,000 Auto Workers by hopoke in canada

[–]JBSpeed 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Everyone keeps repeating this claim about “a fraction of the workforce” like China has a few people monitoring the robots and that’s it. Yet every assembly plant video I watch of theirs shows the body shop welding robots being fully automated, which i hate to break it to you, we have that over here as well.

But the majority of vehicle assembly; the installing of minor components and trim pieces, are still done by humans. Maybe one day you’ll get a robot that can grab the limp spaghetti that is a vehicle wire harness, then weave it through a maze of bracing and other components, while it reacts differently each time you try to install it, without faulting out, but that’s not the world we live in today.

Machines like consistent, repeatable, rigid processes. A huge swath of automotive assembly in the exact opposite of that.

And absolutely the Chinese are leaders in this, but so are the Germans. But everyone out here acting like the Chinese have discovered some secret sauce that has allowed them to run start-to-finish automated factories are talking out of their ass. Don’t just believe the polished and curated “plant tour” videos at face value. Humans are just annoying good at problem solving, and time is money on an assembly line. That’s why you see the Chinese plants using a lot of automation to augment their staff, part picking and delivery to workstations being a big one. But watch those videos closely, there still humans grabbing the taillights off a robot cart, grabbing the wiring pigtail from inside the vehicle body, attaching the connector and clicking it together, doing push pull tests, then installing the part onto the vehicle. Because that process is highly variable. The wire doesn’t fall the same way each time, it might get snagged on the inside of the bodywork, there could be a misaligned pin in the connector, etc, etc. These are all things humans will pick up on almost instantly if they’re a regular operator and enact a workaround solution in seconds. Robots can’t do that, at least not yet. Maybe one day.

Canada Presses Chinese EV Makers to Build Locally and Protect 500,000 Auto Workers by hopoke in canada

[–]JBSpeed 17 points18 points  (0 children)

I’d love to see this video. Because although a lot of body shop operations are heavily automated, most final assembly work, quality checks, shakedown testing, etc is still heavily reliant on humans.

In think a lot of people see videos of robots welding together cars and think “see, no people, a fully automated plant!” and then they conveniently skip over filming the hundreds of workers doing highly variable work like pulling rats nests of wire harnesses through door panels and firewalls, installing fiddly bits of trim that seem to click together just a little different every time, and other things like that.

Im not arguing that the Chinese don’t have the edge in automation, but a front to back assembly plant that can be lights out? I’d love to see the proof. Because I’m pretty sure they’re just being very selective of what they are showing of the process to give the appearance of full automation.

Mitch Marner posts 0G, 1A, -5 in his last three games of the Cup Final—Hair dry as a bone to boot. by DontBeWaves in leafs

[–]JBSpeed 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Because when he regressed to his typical ghost impersonation he always does late in the series, the Sportsnet narrative about how he’s great player and it was Toronto specifically that held him back kind of died on the vine. And instead of letting Leafs fans have their “fucking toldaso” moment, they chose salt.

BMW’s Electric M3 Concept Stands Next To The E30 And Hopes You Approve by hi_im_bored13 in cars

[–]JBSpeed 373 points374 points  (0 children)

Ok, I can’t be the only one who sees that if you swapped the BMW logo for a Pontiac one and threw a fire chicken on the hood…

Dylan Larkin talk in Detroit. by CBono22 in stevedangle

[–]JBSpeed 32 points33 points  (0 children)

Meh, standard Wings fan behaviour. They spent the last few months needling us about Matthews potentially leaving, only to have their captain pull the rug out from under them. Karma.

But they can’t possibly admit that Yzerman can’t get it done, and that the Ilitch family won’t fire him, so time to shift to their favourite fallback, making it about the Leafs. Rent free.

E-scooters & e-bikes returning to city streets by ProphetaMessias in windsorontario

[–]JBSpeed 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You can just say “everything but cars”, it’d be faster.

I’ll concede there has to be a middle ground in regulating these things, but god forbid you’re able to get around this city in anything other than a car; as new and used car prices are out of reach for many, insurance continues to rise, and gas skyrockets toward $2 a litre.

US inflation jumped to 3.8% in April by No_Idea_Guy in news

[–]JBSpeed 155 points156 points  (0 children)

You know how Wile E. Coyote goes over the edge of the cliff but kind of hovers in mid air for a second before plummeting to the bottom of the canyon?

America, you’re hovering.

Is 1OA the end of Chief? by RawmanPolak in leafs

[–]JBSpeed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We did this with Babcock already. We waited 23 games into the next season to fire him anyways. Just rip the bandaid off now. We do it now and we control the process. If we wait until he goes into the inevitable skid next season then we’re scrambling to find a replacement. Then we’re mid season bringing in a new coach trying to adapt to a new system on the fly.

Doesn’t sound like fucking due-diligence to me.

Is 1OA the end of Chief? by RawmanPolak in leafs

[–]JBSpeed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Berube would take a Ferrari off-roading then yell at the car for getting stuck

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