A Great Success Story (Li Ka-shing)

Mr. Li Ka-shing is the Chairman of Cheung Kong (Holdings) Limitedand Hutchison Whampoa Limited. Cheung Kong (Holdings) Limited is the flagship of the Cheung Kong Group, which has business operations in 54 countries around the world and employs more than about 240,000 staff. In Hong Kong alone, the Cheung Kong Group includes nine listed companies with a combined market capitalization of approximately HK$650 billion / US$83.3 billion (28 Feb 2010). Hutchison Whampoa Limited is a Fortune Global 500 company.

After his birth in 1928 in Chiu Chow, a coastal city in the southeastern part of China, Mr. Li and his family fled to Hong Kong to avoid the perils of war when he was 12. Shortly thereafter, his father suffered from tuberculosis and passed away in Hong Kong. Shouldering the responsibility of the family, Mr. Li left school before age 15 and found a job in a plastics trading company, where he labored 16 hours a day.

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Personal Experience (to BYD's Headquarters)

Batteries Are Included in KB Home and BYD's Solar House

The home of the future – with solar-electric modules on the roof and a lithium-ion battery in the garage – may have a welcome mat out sooner than expected.

The California-based builder KB Home and China's BYD Co., which makes plug-in cars, batteries and solar equipment, have partnered to build modestly priced homes in Lancaster, Calif., that will go a step further than other new solar housing developments by including battery storage of the solar electricity.

Off-grid solar owners for many years have used battery banks to store their generated electricity for later use, but the plan for the KB Home development – smack in the middle of a grid-tied suburban subdivision – could help alter the trajectory for adoption of both solar electricity and plug-in vehicles.

"The energy produced by the solar panels during the peak time is stored in the battery system and can be used later at night for the home," said Bill Wang, business development director for BYD America Corp., at a press conference to announce the partnership in Lancaster, a city about 70 miles north of Los Angeles.

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Each home will have solar panels, batteries, LED lights, and other energy-related materials made by BYD Corp., a mainland Chinese company with divisions that make batteries and automobiles.

Storing electricity generated by the solar panels enables homeowners to cut their energy costs and not rely on utility companies, especially during peak times.

“This is the way we can change the world,” said Stella Li, CEO of BYD Electronics, and senior vice president with BYD Corp.

The city played matchmaker to bring KB Homes and BYD together and it took only 45 days for the two companies to work out their arrangement.

That the deal was completed in such a short period of time did not surprise Parris who in his first term has done much to change the culture at City Hall. He treats his position as that of a chief executive: giving everyone a chance to speak, making and decision and doing it.

“I think it will surprise a lot of other people because we’ve gotten to the point where government is seen as an obstacle,” Parris said.

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BYD's Future Village

Other Related News

BYD to launch hybrid cars for mass market on Monday
Chinese car and battery maker BYD Co, backed by U.S. billionaire investor Warren Buffett, said it will start sales of plug-in hybrid cars with solar panels to the public in Shenzhen on Monday.


The company said it will go ahead with the plan to sell the car to mass consumers as planned, despite rumours that it might postpone the date while waiting for the government to announce new consumer subsidies for new energy cars.


"There had been some rumours that we might delay," BYD spokesman Paul Lin told Reuters in a telephone interview on Sunday. "This will be an upgraded version of the F3DM that we have sold to government and corporate clients."


BYD's new F3DM is a low emission version with a solar panel on the top of the car, allowing it to run on gasoline, electricity and solar energy.


The solar panel can collect energy for the car in daytime although it is not designed to power the car alone, Lin said.

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Chinese car and battery maker BYD Co (1211.HK: Quote, Profile, Research) will buy a plant from a major Japanese metal die manufacturer to enhance its competitive edge in auto production, Japan's Nikkei business daily reported on Saturday.  BYD will take over Ogihara Corp's factory in Tatebayashi, Gunma Prefecture, about 70 km (43 miles) north of Tokyo, on April 1, to manufacture high-precision metal dies for use at its Chinese factories, Nikkei said.  One of Ogihara's four domestic die production bases, the Tatebayashi plant makes dies for hoods and other auto body parts, accounting for some 20 percent of its production capacity at home. Ogihara supplies dies to Japanese and foreign automakers, including General Motors Co [GM.UL]. Its earnings have been sliding due to the yen's rise and weak domestic demand, Nikkei said.

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China Drawing High-Tech Research From U.S.

For years, many of China’s best and brightest left for the United States, where high-tech industry was more cutting-edge. But Mark R. Pinto is moving in the opposite direction.

Mr. Pinto is the first chief technology officer of a major American tech company to move to China. The company, Applied Materials, is one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent firms. It supplied equipment used to perfect the first computer chips. Today, it is the world’s biggest supplier of the equipment used to make semiconductors, solar panels and flat-panel displays.

In addition to moving Mr. Pinto and his family to Beijing in January, Applied Materials, whose headquarters are in Santa Clara, Calif., has just built its newest and largest research labs here. Last week, it even held its annual shareholders’ meeting in Xian.

Not just drawn by China’s markets, Western companies are also attracted to China’s huge reservoirs of cheap, highly skilled engineers — and the subsidies offered by many Chinese cities and regions, particularly for green energy companies.

Now, Mr. Pinto said, researchers from the United States and Europe have to be ready to move to China if they want to do cutting-edge work on solar manufacturing because the new Applied Materials complex here is the only research center that can fit an entire solar panel assembly line.

Xian — a city about 600 miles southwest of Beijing known for the discovery nearby of 2,200-year-old terra cotta warriors — has 47 universities and other institutions of higher learning, churning out engineers with master’s degrees who can be hired for $730 a month.

President Obama has often spoken about creating clean-energy jobs in the United States. But China has shown the political will to do so, said Mr. Pinto, 49, who is also Applied Materials’ executive vice president for solar systems and flat-panel displays.

With China’s economy gaining strength, Mr. Pinto and his wife, then living in Santa Clara, began insisting in 2005 that their sons study Chinese once a week.

Now 10 and 11, the boys are improving their Chinese and mastering the art of eating with chopsticks.

When Xei Lina, a 26-year-old Applied Materials engineer here, was asked recently whether China would play a big role in clean energy in the future, she was surprised by the question.

“Most of the graduate students in China are chasing this area,” she said. “Of course, China will lead everything.”

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Similar to BYD's competitive advantage?

Deploying the armies of laborers at BYD is an officer corps of managers and engineers who invent and design the products. Today the company employs about 10,000 engineers who have graduated from the company's training programs - some 40% of those who enter either drop out or are dismissed - and another 7,000 new college graduates are being trained. Wang says the engineers come from China's best schools. "They are the top of the top," he says. "They are very hard-working, and they can compete with anyone." BYD can afford to hire lots of them because their salaries are only about $600 to $700 a month; they also get subsidized housing in company-owned apartment complexes and low-cost meals in BYD canteens. "They're basically breathing, eating, thinking, and working at the company 24/7," says a U.S. executive who has studied BYD.

Wang typically works until 11 p.m. or midnight, five or six days a week. "In China, people of my generation put work first and life second," says the CEO, whose wife takes responsibility for raising their two children.

This "human resource advantage" is "the most important part" of BYD's strategy, Wang says. His engineers investigate a wide array of technologies, from automobile air-conditioning systems that can run on batteries to the design of solar-powered streetlights. Unlike most automakers, BYD manufactures nearly all its cars by itself - not just the engines and body but air conditioning, lamps, seatbelts, airbags, and electronics. "It is difficult for others to compete," Wang says. "If we put our staff in Japan or the U.S., we could not afford to do anything like this."

Taken from

Charlie Munger: "BYD is ideally located to make an enormous contribution to human civilization. They are very hardworking and very brainy. 17000 engineering graduates, and more coming every year and selected from the very top of the class from a population of 1.3 billion or so , think of how brainy the chinese engineers are that we are now competing with. It's their day, they are having their day and I welcome it. "

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BYD's Electric Bus : K9

BYD Successfully Acquired Hunan Midea Coach (July 24, 2009)

On July 24, 2009, Shenzhen BYD Auto Company Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of BYD Company Limited, signed the Equity Transfer Agreement as transferee with Foshan Weishang to acquire the entire equity interests of Hunan Midea Coach.

Hunan Midea Coach, with its headquarters located in Hunan Environmental Protection Industrial Park, used to be a company engaged in the development, manufacture and sale of buses and coaches. After this acquisition, Shenzhen BYD Auto Company Limited will hold all the shares of Hunan Midea Coach and BYD Company Limited will be granted the permission by the government to manufacture buses and coaches.

BYD envisions entering into the new energy bus field through this acquisition and plans to produce new energy buses in 2010. Furthermore, BYD will manufacture passenger vehicle in Hunan and plans to produce car models C3, C6, F2 and so on.

This acquisition contributes to BYD’s new energy bus manufacturing and marketing and further enhances its automobile production capacity.

Pioneering Fund Stages Second Act

The founder of Renaissance Technologies LLC, one of the most successful hedge-fund companies ever, is trying to pull off a feat few other investment impresarios have managed: passing the torch.

James Simons, the secretive mathematician and Cold War code breaker who founded the firm in 1982, stepped down as chief executive in January. A pioneer in utilizing powerful computers to comb markets for trading opportunities, Mr. Simons has long received credit for the firm's hefty returns.

Now Peter Brown and Bob Mercer, two lieutenants of Mr. Simons all but unknown to the investing world, must steer the firm through challenging waters. The firm's main funds open to outside investors have posted mediocre results, and Messrs. Brown and Mercer, who are co-CEOs, say they are mulling whether to shut them down.

Mr. Simons made his reputation on his signature fund, called Medallion, which has posted average returns of about 45% a year, after fees, since its inception in 1988. Since 1995, it has had only one money-losing quarter, slipping 0.5% in the first quarter of 1999, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Medallion's returns have outpaced those of Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has gained roughly 20% a year since Mr. Buffett took over in 1965.

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The Other Side of BYD (Tablets & Netbooks)

Look Out, Greentech World: China’s BYD is Coming

When Micheal Austin worked at Motorola, he was responsible for buying lithium-ion batteries for Motorola's mobile phones. His suppliers were the usual Japanese suspects and they were being, let's say, less than fair on price. That is, until China's BYD emerged as a supplier and shattered the Japanese battery cartel. BYD went on to become Motorola's primary battery supplier and eventually became the private-label supplier of many of Motorola's entire phones, not just the battery. Today, Austin is the VP of BYD America.

So who is BYD?

They might be the quietest 160,000-employee electronics contract manufacturing, OEM, and private labeling powerhouse you've never heard of. And they're coming to an automobile dealership, solar roof, and utility-scale battery application near you. Soon.

And if you're an auto maker, or an EV builder or a solar panel manufacturer -- it might be time to be a little scared.

Notable about BYD is their commitment to vertical integration. Austin said that he toured the mile-long auto production facility in Shenzen, China and that BYD is manufacturing everything in the car except for the tires and windshield glass. That means BYD airbags, BYD seatbelts, BYD batteries, BYD transmissions, etc.

This same vertical integration is seen in BYD's solar panel manufacturing process -- BYD owns the mines for the feedstock, and builds everything from feedstock through ingot to cells to panels. This also applies to their battery build, as well.

And if that wasn't enough of a commitment to going big in greentech, BYD is also building utility-scale battery based grid storage from their LiFe batteries. They are deploying 4-megawatt energy storage batteries for ancillary services and energy arbitrage. Austin said the battery cost was in the $500-per-kilowatt range, which is within striking distance of many expert's competitive target of $250 per kilowatt.

A slide from a recent BYD presentation follows that illustrates the vertical integration this company brings to bear.

More on BYD:
From Solar to Storage, BYD Dreams of Power

BYD Press Conference at 2010 Detroit Auto Show

Ask Warren Buffett 2010

Ask Warren Buffett - Complete CNBC Squawk Box Transcript - 2010-03-01