U.S. journalists were allowed to visit a "dark factory", and were speechless at the scene, exclaiming that China is indeed leading!
Recently, a reporter from The Wall Street Journal was shocked by the highly automated production scene when visiting a Chinese electric vehicle "dark factory". This factory demonstrates 44 advanced manufacturing technologies in the industry, the world's largest 5G car factory network, and a production efficiency of one car per 60 seconds.
In the welding workshop, more than 800 flexible robots form an "army of no workers", with the movement paths of robotic arms precisely planned by digital models. The welding accuracy reaches ±0.05 millimeters, equivalent to 1/14 of a human hair, yet it maintains millimeter precision during high-speed operations. These robots work continuously for 7×24 hours, producing a body frame every 90 seconds. The automation rate is as high as 100%, with the welding defect rate controlled below 0.001%, meaning only one defective weld spot would appear for every 100,000 vehicles produced.
The AI visual inspection system is truly "sharp-eyed". Surface defects as narrow as 0.2 millimeters on the car body are captured by high-definition cameras. The system processes 2,000 inspection points per second, with identification accuracy 10 times higher than manual quality inspection. The U.S. journalist was speechless at this scene, but this is a real occurrence.
This factory's same production line can simultaneously accommodate the mixed production of four vehicle models, switching models in just 8 minutes - which is 1/105 the speed of traditional factories. This flexible production capability allows the factory to respond flexibly to market changes like a Transformer.
The Wall Street Journal, as a barometer of global business opinion, usually focuses on forces that may rewrite industry rules. This time, it reluctantly turned its attention to the Chinese electric vehicle industry. Previously, the mainstream U.S. media believed that the competitiveness of Chinese electric vehicles came from subsidies and low labor costs. But obviously, this time they saw the technological content.
In the past five years, the newspaper's reports on Asian manufacturing have focused on only 3% on car factories, and the main subjects have been well-established companies such as Toyota and Hyundai with decades of technical accumulation. The reason why Chinese smart factories could break through its topic threshold is that they broke the Western stereotype of "Chinese factories".
Original: www.toutiao.com/article/1841031839397895/
Statement: This article represents the views of the author.