Too early of a morning after so much Karaoke and fun… We had to get up in time to roll onto the bus at 7:00am. The engineers at Delphi’s new R&D facility in Shanghai have allowed us to come and receive a tour. Fortunately, we were all able to catch up on sleep over the 1.5-hour bus ride out west and we discovered real red bull at the supermarket next to Liu Bai. (It’s real red bull because it comes in a tall can and says “extra” instead of being short/gold and saying like “nutrition vitamin supplement drink”…)
This is “out in the middle of nowhere,” as in the buildings are only 15-20 stories tall despite being a full 2.5 hours from the center of the city. The campus itself is very nice, and after going through the gate, we emerged in a modern reception building with an Indy car planted in the middle. After an hour of speaking, two cans of red bull, and two cups of coffee, our liaison from Delphi in Indiana had effectively taught us about the radios and electronic integration they work on at this facility as well as the effort it has taken to find the amazing local talent that is currently beginning to fill the leadership roles in Shanghai. Within the next year or two, the plant will most likely be fully capable of running off local engineers and the American Expats that remain can go back home.
The tour was fairly in depth. We learned about some amazing testing they do. These include an anechoic chamber that rests entirely on springs for vibration testing, a “light room” that tests how black each black is, makes sure all the LEDs are nearly the exact same color, and verifies that the silver chrome line around the radio in your CTS-V reflects light the same way in the morning as it does in the afternoon and evening. My favorite room, though, is the listening room. Only three people are qualified enough to qualitatively listen to music in this room. Before speakers make it to Delphi’s car systems, they start in home audio. There is an overstuffed leather loveseat surrounded by at least a dozen hi-fi speakers and a few foam absorbing squares and wooden baffles. I was surprised there wasn’t a hookah or something in the corner. Either way, it looks like the best job in the world.
They also introduced us to their vehicle sensing systems that actually use a huge database of images to sense how quickly a car is approaching. It’s quite an impressive work of software engineering to process that much data as quickly as a car might rear-end you. The traditional approach involves motion sensors and radar, but isn’t as accurate and can’t distinguish between a car/truck/runner/raging bull. All told, I learned a lot about research, testing, car technology, and moving a business to a completely foreign country!
The night was also great, but doesn’t involve nearly as many details. It was John’s last night in Shanghai before he spends three weeks in Malaysia, so we went to the boxing cat. I learned a lot of useful Chinese from a bar tender that has learned English almost exclusively from his profession. We had some delicious local microbrews, and then went back to the school. After an hour nap… I ended up back at the Boxing Cat with a new group of friends. We played pool and foosball, socialized with other English-speaking people and I pulled off my most amazing feat yet! A friend really needed a red bull but I could not for the life of me communicate with this new bartender who didn’t know a lick of English. After a few frustrating minutes and no Red Bull on display to point at I miraculously whipped out a pen and wrote the Chinese Characters for red bull from memory! It was awesome and a great way to end the night.
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