Eric Zuesse
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
22 September 2026, posted by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
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https://ghostarchive.org/archive/6uuCM
“US battery startup that chose China over Kentucky opens first factory as Trump, Xi meet”
T. 22 September 2026, CHANGZHOU, China, Sept 22 (Reuters) – A US battery startup that scrapped plans to make Kentucky the site of its first factory has instead built it in China. … EnerVenue starts mass production at its manufacturing facility in the eastern Chinese city of Changzhou on Thursday.
Chief Executive Henning Rath told Reuters … “The secret sauce is this industrial cluster,” citing the density of hydraulics, pneumatics and automation specialists, along with engineers able to iterate quickly on what he called a “first-of-its-kind” line.
Without building in China, Rath said, it would be “very difficult with the capital available” to prove the manufacturing process at a commercial scale.
EnerVenue’s choice exposes how Trump’s offer of lower taxes, easier permitting and other incentives may not be enough to overcome the advantages offered by places like China. …
Graduate engineers earn about 12,000 yuan ($1,792) a month, well below US salaries, he added.
Rath declined to disclose the cost of the Changzhou facility, which is around 95% automated and will employ about 400 workers by the end of the year, but gave a $20 million to $50 million range. Government support was limited to permitting, certification and site selection, he said. …
He stressed that China is the “factory of factories” and “an important stepping stone” towards global production.
Asked whether EnerVenue would open a US plant, Rath said, “We want to play in the North American market. It depends a little bit now on legislation and regulation.”
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgBm8PdtpGo
China’s “XPENG ROBOTICS: ONE STEP AT A TIME”
9 September 2026 video of the robots
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https://www.yahoo.com/transportation/articles/xpengs-iron-humanoid-robot-walked-120000048.html
“PENG’s Iron Humanoid Robot Walked Out Immediately After Being Assembled”
22 September 2026, Engadget
XPENG’s latest factory arrival made its own exit. The Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer says its Iron humanoid robot walked autonomously off its newly operational production line after its assembly was complete, paving the way for mass production later this year. Chairman and CEO He Xiaopeng even bestowed a staff badge on it. Onboarding paperwork apparently is already sorted too.
In a September 7 announcement, XPENG claimed that over 80 percent of the line’s core processes are automated. It’s adapting quality systems from its car business and applying them to make robots consistently as production increases. “Today’s step is small, but XPENG is building the production lines for an entirely new product category,” He said.
The walk is an attractive way for XPENG to mark that progress, but it doesn’t tell us much about whether Iron can make it through a working day. XPENG did not reveal the line’s current output or how much testing was done before the walk, and mass production is still a year-end goal.
Iron’s first jobs will be in XPENG stores and campuses
Your first encounter with Iron could be during a showroom visit. XPENG has previously mentioned reception and guided tour responsibilities, along with sales assistance. It plans to deploy robots in its own stores and campuses first, with deliveries in China and overseas markets planned for 2027. The announcement did not specify US availability or a price.
XPENG’s latest announcement states that Iron has 76 degrees of freedom across its body and 21 in each hand, describing the number of independent ways it can move. That articulation supports walking and moving objects around in a space designed for humans.
The three Turing AI chips provide up to 2,250 trillion operations per second. XPENG says this lets Iron run its AI model onboard and perform complex tasks without a remote operator. While processing information locally can help to cut down on delays, a large computing number doesn’t tell us how well Iron would handle a shopper going off-script.
XPENG also states that the outer structure was designed to be flexible with safety in mind. That’s important for a robot designed to interact with customers, but the announcement doesn’t provide an independent safety evaluation. These are planned jobs, with everyday performance still to be established.
Tesla has company in the humanoid robot race
Cheng Xin/Getty Images
The Tesla parallel is easy to spot. Both carmakers are eager to apply their AI and manufacturing skills to robots. Tesla announced that it would convert Model S and X production lines for Optimus, and its second-quarter filing included preparations for large-scale robot production. It’s too early to declare a winner, though.
Others have already built humanoids in meaningful quantities. In April, Figure reported that it had produced over 350 Figure 03 robots and demonstrated a production cycle of one robot per hour. Those robots were allocated to uses including internal development and data collection, so the total shouldn’t be read as customer deliveries.
A more realistic comparison is what robots have achieved once they have left the factory. BMW says Figure’s earlier Figure 02 robot inserted sheet-metal parts for welding at its Spartanburg plant. That was a specific, repetitive assignment, rather than building cars from scratch. Across ten months, it supported production of more than 30,000 BMW X3s.
THE MOST POPULAR READER-COMMENT:
H
Three decades ago, we made the decision to shift toward a service economy that favored banking, insurance, media, and communication – a model that has worked exceptionally well for a small segment of our population. Meanwhile, China chose to build an industrial economy centered around efficient supply chains, vertical clusters, and skilled engineering. Today, it is virtually impossible to bring manufacturing back to the United States, regardless of how high tariffs might go.
THE SECOND-MOST POPULAR READER-COMMENT:
vic
Let me get this straight. A battery company is building batteries in China. Could it be that the company wants to be in a place where they’re in demand rather than oil. … The world wants renewable energy which is more efficient and battery is the way to go.
THE THIRD-MOST POPULAR READER-COMMENT:
baccara
In less than three decades, the U.S. empire has not only fallen from grace but has also squandered its chance to remain competitive.
One industry after another has fallen behind China. The next wave is coming for shipbuilding, automobiles, pharm, robotics, AI, chips and eventually even the defense industry. We all know that the US was knockout cold 10 seconds into round 1 of the AI race. Banning or restriction to delay the inevitable is absolutely not a solution; it is merely postponement disguised as strategy.
That’s why accusations, narrative framing, and political incitement are, without doubt, becoming the cornerstones of U.S. foreign policy.
Currently, the main political policy strategy seems to be men tall mass turd bation, with only the hardcore and brainwashed still parroting the idea that China knows only how to lie, copy, and steal, while chanting with pitchforks and torches.
The continued overuse of the dollar-printing machine to leech off the world, coupled with sanctions imposed to preserve the U.S. empire’s claim to a fabricated moral high ground, has become a central pillar of its financial strategy.
Now, with the national debt stubbornly staying above $40 trillion, using the war machine against weaker nations to keep the dollar afloat has become the only solution: when you can’t pay, you rob.
The deeper problem, however, is the U.S. has inherited the Western hyena-clan rob culture and feel-good education system. The US society that becomes complacent about its own superiority, mistakes ideological confidence for competence, and rewards comfortable narratives over rigorous education and self-criticism will eventually struggle to maintain its lead.
Empires rarely decline because they suddenly become incapable. They decline when they become incapable of recognizing the reasons why they are declining—and when preserving the myth of superiority becomes more important than rebuilding the foundations of it.
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MY COMMENT:
The U.S. empire is doomed because its billionaires control it. That is the libertarian/neoliberal way, and it’s the long-term kiss of death for any society. It’s normal for any empire to end this way.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
