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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

#41

Post by ExoticPearTree »

clarionbell wrote: post #30

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 su…

Sadly but true. The latest issue is that the EC would rather see the auto industry fail than to change its climate objectives. It looks like it gotten so bad that Germany started speaking up against emissions goals and most likely would try to block any measures.

I don't think Arianne is successful as it relies on traditional technology to launch things into space and they can't be competitive with SpaceX.

The EU is the laughing stock of the world: AI regulation is in force, but no single AI company in Europe :)) - just to name one example.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#42

Post by piva00 »

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…

Northvolt's leadership seem extremely incompetent, reading the news here in Sweden the CEO has been lambasted by former employees on how bad he was for executing the plan.

But this happens all the time in the USA, it's quite funny to read comments on HN about how Europe is losing to USA's "innovation" but when one company does follow the USA model (huge injection of capital, unreliable/inexperienced leadership, failure to execute/pivot) then it's an apocalyptic sign. It's risky, and in this case it failed spectacularly.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#43

Post by ExoticPearTree »

viraptor wrote: post #31
em500 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The tech stack was a weird quote. This is significant: > In theory it's microservices, but the reality is that there are so many circular dependencies that it works like a monolith But lambda/go/dynamodb does not force this situation.

True, but it doesn't mean you can code it to be in this situation.

If all your life you coded monoliths, you can code monoliths using Lambda functions too, there's nothing magic that will stop you from doing it.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#44

Post by csomar »

throwaway4711 wrote: post #34

NV bought manufacturing equipment for $2B from China, now left in the lurch during bring-up, supplier dragging their heels, sending 3rd rate support engineers. Of course, China doesn't want to support a competitor in Europe... Classic rogue state hybrid warfare, just as cut cables in baltic, also by Chinese. Plausible deniability all the way. https://www.newsweek.com/baltic-cable-sabotage-nato-1988689

So you made a bunch of claims and then linked an unrelated article?

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#46

Post by jansan »

ane wrote: post #10
st-keller wrote: post #7

Seems 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.

Volkswagen has their own plans with its subsidary PowerCo, and since EV adoption is slower than expected, they may (partly) drop Northvolt in favor of PowerCo. Interestingly they canceled their plan for a second battery plant in Germany due to high energy costs.

Regarding Germany: I still do not understand how you want to electrify everything, reduce CO2 emissions, and then shut down fully working nuclear power plants in the middle of an energy supply crisis. This is completely beyond me. I know there are people defending this decision, but I can only attribute this to malice or idiocy.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#47

Post by jddj »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #41
clarionbell wrote: post #30

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 su…

Sadly but true. The latest issue is that the EC would rather see the auto industry fail than to change its climate objectives. It looks like it gotten so bad that Germany started speaking up against emissions goals and most likely would try to block any measures. I don't think Arianne is successful as it relies on traditional technology to launch things into space and they can't be competitive with SpaceX. The EU is…

Mistral is french

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#48

Post by blitzar »

st-keller wrote: post #7

Seems 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?

Grifters and con artists are skilled in the ways of grifting and cons.

Note "Britishvolt" suffered the same fate 12-18 months earlier and the story reads pretty much the same.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#49

Post by ExoticPearTree »

magicalhippo wrote: post #24
em500 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Having a supplier/disti work with you to get the best deal doesn't happen very often. Mostly due to the fact that they could leave money on the table. If you order something with the wrong configuration they can always sell you another thing with the right configuration...

There is also a possibility of cultural differences and who knows what the Chinese thought the Europeans wanted when they did not send complete specs for the equipment. In some countries it is not customary to challenge the client - but I do not know if it applies to China as well.

I've seen how they build stuff in China, and most likely Nothvolt thought it could do some things on their own without understanding what those things would entail. Maybe if they would have asked the supplier to come in and setup the factory and also run the first batches of finished batteries the situation would have been different.

Somehow I think now they're trying to find a scapegoat for the whole debacle and blame on the usual suspects.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#50

Post by oezi »

jansan wrote: post #46
ane wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Volkswagen has their own plans with its subsidary PowerCo, and since EV adoption is slower than expected, they may (partly) drop Northvolt in favor of PowerCo. Interestingly they canceled their plan for a second battery plant in Germany due to high energy costs. Regarding Germany: I still do not understand how you want to electrify everything, reduce CO2 emissions, and then shut down fully working nuclear power plant…

> I still do not understand...

Renewables? + some batteries + gas peaker as winter backup

The nuclear plants weren't fully working anymore but taken into planned shutdown 10 years after the decision was made to shut them down. That people think Nuclear is a power technology where you can just nilly-willy decide to continue running is the real idiocy.

Energy prices are now lower than before the run-up to the Russian war of aggression.

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