Chinese Government to Build 215-MPH Bullet Trains in California

The BART Union will not like this...

It is absolutely crazy that we have to lease technology from China on this front. Half of NASA is in California. Do we really believe that we can't figure out how to build one of these bad boys? If we are talking parts, that is one thing, but the "technology" to build one implies the understanding of high-speed rail. How hard can it be? (I understand that I know nothing on the subject, but c'mon!)

PopSci Staff- Please read the sources you cite more carefully!

The factory in Fremont that may be used by GE "NUMMI" is currently owned by Toyota and old GM, inc as in the pre bankrupt General Motors! (Not GE)

The Times Article has it written correctly.

Ok, so we could have made TONS OF JOBS in AMERICA with this project, and we outsourced it to China. As usual. I know I know, they have the technology yadda yadda yadda. But this is America. Our entire mentality is bent on doing something better than everyone else. I think we could have managed.

Thanks for nothing, Obama. :\

Additionally- given that Siemens build these sorts of 200MPH trains and already has a factory in Sacraments - this must be about money. The state of California would rather help GE start from scratch rather than buy from Siemens?

@xrachelbagelx How is Obama tied to the actions of a Republican governor acting on his own?

@ToomeyND Investing the money in R&D is probably greater than leasing the essential parts. If GE holds true to their word about the percent of P&L being done in the US then GE essentially will not need much.

SJak,

I would agree with you, but this seems like a prime time for some "'cross the aisle" action. A state wants to build hsr. Obama wants hsr. He has/had a great opportunity to jump in and make this a flagship effort for hsr. Especially with California hurting for cash as much as it is, this would have been about 5 birds with one stone.

Granted, I don't think xrachelbagelx is coming from an unbiased position. :)

"what that 19th Century partnership did for the Transcontinental Railroad" referring to Chinese relationships and the US railroads.....I'm pretty sure poor Chinese immigrants did not have a loving partnership it was borderline slave labor.....what idiot writes the introductions to these articles?

@ToomeyND In a smaller country and/or a vastly overpopulated one, this would be great, but I still think that at the moment these are sort of unneeded. If we were moving large amounts of freight at speeds in excess of 200 miles an hour then I'd get behind this 100%. It'd reduce our oil use, there would be less traffic on the road, and in addition the cost of repair on those same roads would be down exponentially. Moving people on a train at those speeds in the US wouldn't do anything so remarkable beside hurt the airlines further. You could argue that the pollution caused by planes would be down, most certainly, but by how much? Security would be exactly same on a train as it would on a plane. It may not be now, but it most certainly would be if this was scaled up to be country wide. Under no circumstances would the government just let you walk on all willy-nilly.

@ToomeyND, forget NASA, California is supposed to be the tech center of the planet, and we have to go to China for "technical know how".

@Fritschya, how was is slave labor? They got paid and were allowed to quit. If they had better opportunities elsewhere, they were free to leave.

SJak,

All good points. I would argue that an initial investment has to be made in the US in order to get the ball rolling to the point where it will be used to move freight as well. Wouldn't you agree? This would have been that first step. Instead, a continued leasing of Chinese intel seems to be the way in which we are moving forward.

I'm an American born citizen, a product of Brooklyn and Queens, but I am really tired of this thing that all other Americans seem to have: a friggin superiority complex. Our technological prowess is not unrecognized and we're probably #1 in a lot of things but innovation is not an exclusively American concept.

If we're so great, we should've had Bullet/Maglev trains while the Chinese were still riding bikes and would you look at that, the reality is pretty much the opposite. Hubris is expensive and naive. It is the source of fatal mistakes that could be avoided if we just show up and shut up. PopSci has so many interesting articles on all this new tech in the States and where is it now? They've either been too costly or they've been dropped before a prototype was even made. Chances are some very talented individuals in other countries will come up with ways to do what the US couldn't and do it even better.

This kind of attitude is exactly the reason why American politics is a joke right now.

We can leapfrog Chinese train technology by developing teleportation systems that transfer objects from one location to another using a hyperspace co-dimension. Because the speed of light in hyperspace is only one meter per second, compared to 299792458 meters/second in this dimension, the power of gravitational waves can be increased enormously because the power of the wave is proportional to the inverse of the fifth power of the speed of light. This space-time curvature envelops the object and transmits it through hyperspace. Because the wave is pulsed, it eventually leaves the object behind in which case the object returns to this dimension at the required destination. With this technology we could teleport nuclear waste into the sun, teleport astronauts and equipment to the Moon or Mars, or teleport goods around the globe. It is time to think outside the mental block.

This could be because we have more gangsters in California than engineers. But I could be wrong. :p

Poopshoop,

I'm not saying that other countries can't do great things. I'm saying that it might be economically more expensive keep jobs in the states, but in the long term, that means the money is staying in the states. China is obviously top notch in terms of hsr. That doesn't mean that we can't figure out how to do it ourselves (although arguably not as well). My argument is that we have a lot of talented people that just got told that their $3b/year (NASA) program is about to be canned, maybe we could have tried to put them to work. Word on the street is they are a pretty smart bunch.

Importing I.P. is 10x more costly in the long run than importing oil, and i'm pretty sure we are working to avoid that.

That's right, let's not invest in American technology but let's sell some more of our country to China. Before we know it we'll be the American Republic of China.

I find the Chinese/Railroad partnership line a bit... misguided.

Also, if China is the closest thing to a mass producer of these things, then that means parts will be cheaper (the 20% they make).

And all the whining about "outsourcing blah blah" is misplaced. Read the article, it clearly states 80% of the manufacturing will be done here. Were leasing information and maybe tooling. 80% of the jobs will be here. Go to another country and see how great an efficient public transit system is. What's held us back in the US is the sheer distance how we are spread out. High Speed Rail helps negate that.

In other words, More, Cheaper, Faster please... (regardless of what country we get it from)

Based on all the other JUNK I have see China export to the US I doubt I be wanting to go 2 mph let alone 215 mph.

There is even less in terms of humanitarian viewpoint and global ecology with products from China.

i usually think that we have large corporations go overseas because they just don't wanna get sued for some illegal activities.. but then again theirs much speculations on US economies, we just put the blame on the government and say China is stealing the jobs.

@poopshoop
It's important to feel your group is exceptional. Countries who excel at something, teenagers and the specialness of their particular time, states - is wisconsin cheese really better than california cheese? I don't know their both good. But we need that, german engineering, swiss watches, french cuisine, everyone needs to feel they are the best at something. Americans are proud of their country too despite the constant assault on that pride in academia, media and politics.

We are the best, and we're proud of it, whether that's true in every case or not isn't as important as the pride in something larger than ourselves that is still ourselves. It's the same reason people become so invested in their favorite sports team, they feel the teams victories and losses are their own. If you see someone else with the same team shirt you feel a connection and comradery with them.

The U.S. is unique in that we have large numbers of people of all shapes, sizes, colors, religions from every corner of the globe, pride in being members of something larger that is special holds us together. Which unfortunately is one of the main reasons for the assault on that pride. If pride of country holds us together, fostering a dislike of country, focusing only on the negatives will tear us apart, that functions the same as the resentment politics that is so common.

The human history is a cycle, with ups and downs. The bullet train deal is certainly a good Study Case for the Engineering, as well as for the Business.
The deal is not only involved with technologies and money, but politics, foreign policy, cultural difference and the stupid arrogance and maybe the short sight of the Westerners.

Actually, roll back to the past history, China was always the major economic, military power, more advanced than her counterparts. Now, she is growing back to her original status.

The Americans should learn to be humble, otherwise, at the progress of the human history cycle, they will be sorry.

America: Has-Been Nation.
No longer capable of Internationally competing on just about any topic or field of science, has to rely on 2nd World (China) and 3rd World (India) Nations to provide it with its technology needs.

The US Car industry did itself in by on the one hand its complacency and on the other the the ferrocious greed of its own management and shareholders.

The Energy-Industry collapsed on its own venality and voracity (Need I mention ENRON?).

Already the US telecomms are off-shoring the maintenance and development of their broadband connectivity.

Soon no part of the US infrastructure will be in US hands and we will become serf to the whim of those who outcompeted us.

Medical science lags behind Europe and Asia.
Information technology is lost, except for Microsoft but it is fighting a losing battle.
American schools are vastly inferior to both Europe and Asia and their results are measurable in the success of the laughable and utterly ridiculous Tea-Party movement that is led by a Luddite former Governor who couldn't even finish her first term without disgracefully quitting halfway.

Heck! The Romans lasted a lot longer than the US.

America, a has-been nation and pathetic indeed.

Where are the American Jobs in this agreement, and where is the US government. They should be protecting American JOBS. We are just asking for another Chinese Drywall mess up or better still maybe they can put some more lead in this product like the childrens toys we stupidly bought from the Chinese. I am sure that there are North American manufactures that can do a better job on this project. Start protecting our American and send these other countries packing.

I can't help but register myself into this account to make this comment. I am an electrical engineer graduated and worked in the industry where no senior engineers I can learn from. This is what is going to happen to our country. At some point, we will finally realize contracting the jobs to other countries is not the solution but jeopardize the next generation. The knowledge of advanced technology will not stay in U.S. It is time the America should do what other countries have been doing. We are going to compete, we are going to find out how it works and we are going to make it better. Why? Why? Why?

I think that the Chinese have put a lot of work into making an excellent system, and I fully support bringing Chinese gumption to California. They could teach us a lot about building public infrastructure fast. I think it would be shockingly wasteful for us to spend a decade reinventing the wheel so that we can put a "Made in USA" sticker on it. What we need to do is to roll out good high speed rail, do it fast, and for a price where tickets are actually affordable and the system has a chance of eventually paying for itself.

That's the only way the rail network will expand, and that should be the ultimate goal.

okay, saveamerica, If you ask why America is failing, then I have an answer: It is about MONEY and with that I mean: Capitalist and unfettered Profit.
If the question is about $9/hr without bennies and basically human needed $20/hr with Bennies, then US companies will choose the construct where they F**k the US employee by kicking him/her to the curb and rape the guy/gal in India/China/Malaysia/Indonesia for the short-term instead of building a basis here in America.
Simple as that.

okay, saveamerica, If you ask why America is failing, then I have an answer: It is about MONEY and with that I mean: Capitalist and unfettered Profit.
If the question is about $9/hr without bennies and basically human needed $20/hr with Bennies, then US companies will choose the construct where they F**k the US employee by kicking him/her to the curb and rape the guy/gal in India/China/Malaysia/Indonesia for the short-term instead of building a basis here in America.
Simple as that.

Look, the time has come for America to do what is right for the people. No matter what the cost, use USA engineering and USA labor to build this train. Doing anything else during this recession is grounds for treason.

just think of all the American job this will create. All those security guards needed to line miles and miles of tracks to keep the sleeper cells away.

If American government really wanted American rail industry to flourish, then it could do so - very easily.

Instead of giving tax money - grant a 100% tax exemption to any American business, laborer or investor, that builds, installs, operates or maintains an electric powered high speed rail system that makes a profit, hauling passengers or cargo.

Investors seeking tax exempt profits will pour capital into it. Laborers will flock to it. Businesses will boom because it will be eminently cost effective, absent the dead weight of bureaucratic overhead, red tape and taxation.

But it will not come to pass, because no government willingly gives up power, nor tax revenues, no matter what happens to the nation or its people.