Remarkable footage from a Chinese BYD factory: vehicles are manufactured entirely by robots. No longer by factory workers. In 20 years, the factory worker has disappeared from the Chinese car factory. What’s next?
Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky became famous around 2005 with his photo reportage of Chinese factories with seemingly endless rows of uniformed workers who make products in a disciplined manner. These images revealed the secret of the rise of Chinese industry: unlimited availability of cheap labor.
His latest photos of the BYD car factory – car factory no. 1 in Changzhou near Shanghai – are just as iconic, but for a different reason. They stand out because of an opposite phenomenon: the absence of people.
The gigantic factory produces a thousand vehicles a day, exclusively with robots. Burtynsky published his photos this week on CNN. Twenty years after the first reportage, he discovers the new secret of the rise of Chinese car manufacturers. No human assembly errors, no illnesses, no strikes, no breaks: this factory runs 24/7. The only staff there monitors the process and occasionally does maintenance on robots.
You know it’s coming. But it’s still shocking. “We see where the world is moving,” he comments. “The replacement of labor by robots. I think this is a trend that will be adopted worldwide.”
The BYD factory is what he calls a “dark factory.” The lights can be turned off. Robots don’t need lighting. And they work cheaper. The cheapest BYD costs $10,000 on the domestic market. The cheapest Tesla costs $38,000. BYD wins in the competition. It seems like a matter of time before the truck factories will have to believe it too. After electrification comes robotization. (July 1, 2025)
