Chinese self driving is already mogging Tesla for a few reasons. The Chinese cars have lidar and other sensors while Teslas are reliant only on cameras. China has a more aggressive driving culture so Chinese self driving is more prepared to handle edge cases like being suddenly cut off vs American self driving which can barely handle it.
I recently drove a Tesla with full self driving enabled. It required me to keep my eyes on the road and always have one hand on the wheel. I complied and then halfway through the drive I had a sneezing fit. The Tesla self driving fucking stopped working, gave me a notification that I lost self driving privileges for this trip, and started slowing the car down in the middle of the highway where everyone was going 75. If I had gotten 4 more situations where the car felt I wasn't paying attention, I would be locked out of self driving for a week. Imagine losing access to a feature that cost you 8k because the self driving janny didn't like that you looked away from the road. Meanwhile Chinese self driving cars let you have your hands off the wheel, look around the cabin, and they notify you if they can't handle a situation.
I like Tesla cars, the self driving is shit. Chinese EVs mog Tesla both in quality and in self driving.
I watched the video. Pretty interesting, seems like regulations are pretty lax so that they can iterate fast. I like that they use lidar and radar, and there seems to be a ton of competition. Really curious how their software development for ADS actually works, but I assume that's a safely guarded secret.
As a sidebar, because of this I started looking into China's plans for Nuclear power plants because I thought they were turning on a massive amount that would essentially add an absurd amount of capacity and allow them to divest of needing to buy coal and such from Australia. I figured this would give the Chinese a HUGE advantage. As we know, input costs from the basics such as electricity and gas influence everything downstream. If they have cheap electricity, they have cheaper manufacturing, they can "fill" up their electric vehicles for cheaper to move goods, etc. Basically, good long term planning by a centralized government that could rival how the West was handling things. My general view of China is extremely negative over the medium to long term so I thought this might counteract that.
I was wrong. It's fucking nothing.
en.wikipedia.org
The
People's Republic of China ranks third in the world both in total nuclear power capacity installed and electricity generated, accounting for around one tenth of global nuclear power generated. As of February 2023, China has 55 plants with 57GW in operation, 22 under construction with 24 GW and more than 70 planned with 88GW. About 5% of electricity in the country is due to nuclear energy.
[7] These plants generated 417 TWh of electricity in 2022
[8] This is versus the September 2022 numbers of 53 nuclear reactors, with a total capacity of 55.6
gigawatt (GW).
[9] In 2019, nuclear power had contributed 4.9% of the total Chinese electricity production, with 348.1
TWh.
[2]
So they have 57GW now, which is about 5% of what they use. If their electricity usage stays static (doubtful) then they have 24GW coming up (so raising Nuclear to ~7%), and 88GW more planned (maybe 14% from Nuclear). This is fucking catastrophic. This means they will either leave their lower classes where they're at, or their middle class is going to start to decline if the lower classes try to move up the same way the existing middle class did. Or that they need more coal, which is just going to poison their population.
This graph is fucking HORRIBLE. I shit on our politicians all the time but holy fuck, at least we're diversified. I don't even like "green" energy, but at least it doesn't mean we're beholden to a single fucking rock.
China:
Here's the US:
If I were a US long term planner, I would create the government like we have now, and do everything I could to pull Australia back into our sphere of influence. Australia is 40% of China's coal imports. That type of leverage is even stronger than the US tariffs.
China is so fucking fucked. Between China's failed central planning, India's failure to industrialize, and Pakistan's just absolute failure as a nation in general, one of these niggers is going to start a nuclear war.
