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Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

reuters.com

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Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#21

Post by panta »

em500 wrote: post #19
leviliebvin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pfft. Sure blame the Chinese equipment and not the corrupt and incompetent European management. The Chinese manage to produce batteries just fine.

Main equipment manufacture was Wuxi Lead, where naturally everyone speaks almost exclusively Chinese and all docs are in Chinese. Not a problem of course when most customers are also Chinese, much more so when they're European.

If you are spending billions, surely you can bring in some people that speak both Chinese and the local language. Heck, there are even real-time translation services now. No, the problem is not technical, it's that it was a scam from the get go.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#23

Post by rob74 »

em500 wrote: post #15
myspy wrote: post #3

So 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.

Comments from insiders in Swedish[1] and Dutch[2]. Some snippets: ... In the end, they are just in a situation that is almost impossible to save. You have a factory full of machines that are substandard in quality, reliability and documentation. A huge 100% in-house tech stack that largely consists of Go pieces on Lambdas writing to DynamoDB. ... ... A gigantic factory full of mediocre Chinese equipment, what can you…

> A huge 100% in-house tech stack that largely consists of Go pieces on Lambdas writing to DynamoDB

Oh, well, that explains everything! Great insight... /s

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#24

Post by magicalhippo »

em500 wrote: post #19
leviliebvin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pfft. Sure blame the Chinese equipment and not the corrupt and incompetent European management. The Chinese manage to produce batteries just fine.

Main equipment manufacture was Wuxi Lead, where naturally everyone speaks almost exclusively Chinese and all docs are in Chinese. Not a problem of course when most customers are also Chinese, much more so when they're European.

He also mentioned they didn't specify certain details when ordering, leaving the Chinese to make choices, and that caused issues they had trouble with once delivered.

This might be a culture thing. At least next door here in Norway, a decent supplier will definitely ask when needed, offer suggestions and even resist if you try to order something stupid.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#26

Post by johanneskanybal »

myspy wrote: post #3

So 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.

You can’t outsource something for decades then think throwing money at something will be enough to pick it up yourself on a tight timeline.

Nor be surprised if your interests don’t align with a chineese actor you’re trying to replace.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#27

Post by Cumpiler69 »

benchmarkist wrote: post #12
brabel wrote: post #9

Incredibly 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, man…

Profits and subsidies are privatized, losses are socialized. That's how the system is designed to work.

This. The system works just as intended. If the state is throwing free money around why wouldn't you pick it up and pocket it? Your job isn't to create jobs or return on investment, it's to funnel that free state money in the pockets of shareholders.

For those looking for another similar example of European subsidized tech failure check the ST-Ericsson story.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#28

Post by rob74 »

leviliebvin wrote: post #18
buckle8017 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Expanding to multiple EU states is a requirement to satisfy the various governments if you are getting public EU funding. See Airbus for an example.

The difference is that Airbus didn't as much build new factories (and certainly not several at the same time) as it is a consortium (and later a unified company) of formerly independent European aerospace companies. E. g. their current German plants, Hamburg (commercial aircraft) and Donauwörth (helicopters) used to belong to MBB (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt-B%C3%B6lkow-Bloh...) and then DASA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DASA). That's a consolidation similar to what happened in the US, albeit maybe with more "state interference".

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#29

Post by vardump »

toenail wrote: post #17
riffraff wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla got a ton of government subsidies, but is successful, there is no causal relation between the two things.

Tesla is still getting tons of subsidies, directly and indirectly. We'll see if they are successful once that stops.

So does the whole car industry. Directly or indirectly.

The industry as a whole is nowhere near paying for its true health and environmental damage.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#30

Post by clarionbell »

Europe is entering a crisis of unprecedented proportions. This isn't just an isolated incident, one bad company, this is a trend. It used to be that subsidies managed to balance out the over-regulation, high labor costs and powerful pressure groups Europe was known for. Now it's no longer the case.

There used to be a technological edge European countries (especially in the west) could rely on, which made them more suitable for some business. But now it's gone, almost everywhere. Exception is couple of important, but niche industries, which are seen as being of strategic interest (Airbus, ASML, Arianne). But they too feel the pinch now, as the supply chains get more fragile, new talent leaves, or doesn't even show up, and foreign powers prop up their own alternatives.

Add incapable, or shortsighted, political leadership, aging population, hostile, or at least unfriendly, neighbors and rising political extremism, and you get a particularly deadly mix.

Unfortunately, the top institutions have shown almost zero acceptance of the fact. In that sort of situation the only "hope" is that the collapse will be relatively quick, allowing for some rebuilding to start before the next decade ends. If we are lucky.

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