Western Executives Shaken After Visiting China

mspohr shares a report from Futurism: Western automotive and green energy executives who visit China are returning humbled -- and even terrified. As The Telegraph reports, the executives are warning that the country's heavily automated manufacturing industry could quickly leave Western nations behind, especially when it comes to electric vehicles. 'We are in a global competition with China, and it's not just EVs,' Ford CEO Jim Farley told The Verge last month. 'And if we lose this, we do not have a future at Ford.' Some companies are giving up on new initiatives altogether, with the founder of mining company Fortescue, Andrew Forrest, claiming that his recent trip to China led to him abandoning attempts to produce EV powertrains in-house. 'There are no people -- everything is robotic,' he told The Telegraph.

Other executives recalled touring 'dark factories' that don't even need to keep the lights on, as most work is being done around the clock by robots. 'You get this sense of a change, where China's competitiveness has gone from being about government subsidies and low wages to a tremendous number of highly skilled, educated engineers who are innovating like mad,' British energy supplier Octopus CEO Greg Jackson told the newspaper. According to recent figures by the International Federation of Robotics, China has deployed orders of magnitude more industrial robots than Germany, the US, and the UK.

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