Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis
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Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis
#2[deleted]
Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis
#3So what is the learning here, why did it fail? From the timeline it looks like it spread out too much and didn‘t create a great product first.
Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis
#4The promise that needed 1 billion in subsidies to build a new plant? As soon as the government got involved it was clear they couldn't be profitable on their own.
Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis
#5So what is the learning here, why did it fail? From the timeline it looks like it spread out too much and didn‘t create a great product first.
It says in the article, they expanded too fast and i agree. Your other point also seems to hold.
Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis
#6So what is the learning here, why did it fail? From the timeline it looks like it spread out too much and didn‘t create a great product first.
I think i read that they could not deliver the quality and quantity expected for automobile production. Bad product, overextension and I won’t be surprised if some graft will show up once they start digging. Norway has another such venture where the executive suite pays themselves handily and delivered nothing.
Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis
#7Seems like Northvolt never really had a product. Can someone please explain why people invest billions in companies that have not sorted out how to build what they want to sell?
Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis
#8So what is the learning here, why did it fail? From the timeline it looks like it spread out too much and didn‘t create a great product first.
Nothing to learn here, they were just scamming various governments.
That's why they promised to expand to so many places, each government subsidized them separately.
Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis
#9Incredibly embarrassing for Europe and Sweden. Even with billions of investments from the big car companies, investors and many millions in subsidies, they simply couldn’t make it work at all. Instead of buying the California startup just to shut it down, should’ve invested most of their money there instead. They are leaving an enormous eyesore in the northern Sweden landscape with thoudands of people unemployed, many of which may be deported now, with very little to show for it other than many scandals (including paying millions of dollars in bonus to their incompetent executives even as they file for bankruptcy)!
Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis
#10Seems like Northvolt never really had a product. Can someone please explain why people invest billions in companies that have not sorted out how to build what they want to sell?
Battery cell production alone is massively expensive. The expenses in setting up a production line is counted in the billions.
So the only way to start fresh here is to raise billions in capital. Unless you're Volkswagen or something, when you could invest billions in an enterprise like this one.