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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

#51

Post by blitzar »

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…

> shut down fully working nuclear power plants in the middle of an energy supply crisis

Yes it is a stupid decision, but your timeline is out a little - 2011 is when they decided to shut down the power plants, the energy crisis was 2022. The amount of work that doesnt get done when you are 2/3/4 years from end of life makes reversing the decision on the day of shutdown not as easy on the ground as it is from an armchair.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#52

Post by jansan »

blitzar wrote: post #48
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.

The name "Britishvolt" alone should be sufficient to raise all red flags.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#53

Post by TeMPOraL »

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 know there are people defending this decision, but I can only attribute this to malice or idiocy.

Import energy from abroad, you get to claim that you're all so Clean and Ecological[0], while all you've done is shift the dirty coal plants to some other countries that don't care and will happily take all the blame in the global statistics, as long as you keep paying them.

See also: manufacturing, another case where western nations outsource the dirty and energy-intensive parts, import finished products, and get lauded for "reducing" their footprints.

Accounting trickery, is all.

--

[0] - A claim that's belied by opposition to nuclear energy alone.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#54

Post by blitzar »

piva00 wrote: post #42
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, failu…

If they had pivoted to Blockchain in 2017 and then to foundational LLM models in 2022 they would have been fine - its typical European lack of exceptionalism (/s?)

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#55

Post by mdorazio »

ngrilly wrote: post #33
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…

As far as I know, no executives received “millions of dollars in bonuses”. What is your source? And in Sweden and Europe, people are usually not paid in dollars :)

The first Google result for “Northvolt bonuses”: https://swedenherald.com/article/northvolt-wants-to-pay-out-...

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#56

Post by oezi »

baxtr wrote: post #38
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…

If Europe as major part of the West continues to fail this is going to happen - Russian influence will rise and dominate at least major parts of Eastern Europe - China will expand its footprint in Africa and increase its ambition in Asia - US and Japan will become more isolated than ever

Nothing is going to stop China's rise but China's own failings (mostly demographically).

Russia can't even beat a country one third its own size despite petrol dollars and legacy military stock.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#57

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#58

Post by clarionbell »

baxtr wrote: post #38
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…

If Europe as major part of the West continues to fail this is going to happen - Russian influence will rise and dominate at least major parts of Eastern Europe - China will expand its footprint in Africa and increase its ambition in Asia - US and Japan will become more isolated than ever

Yes. That is very much given. In fact some of it has already happened.

Europe has effectively ceded it's position in Africa to others some time ago.

Aid based approach has led to little tangible benefit for locals, and even less for Europeans. Furthermore, conditions the recipient needed to fulfill were, and still are, often hard to accept for cultural and historical reasons. Add to it the lack of actual power projection and all you have is contempt.

It's pretty visible during any UN vote.

Simply put, investment beats aid, every single time.

The silver lining is that Russia is having it's own issues, not entirely different but similarly horrible. Namely demographic crisis, exacerbated by war and poor public health. There is also demographic crisis in China, however their government has been wise enough to not go to all out war.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#59

Post by ngrilly »

mdorazio wrote: post #55
ngrilly wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, no executives received “millions of dollars in bonuses”. What is your source? And in Sweden and Europe, people are usually not paid in dollars :)

The first Google result for “Northvolt bonuses”: https://swedenherald.com/article/northvolt-wants-to-pay-out-...

And? It is targeting 230 employees, and explicitly excluding top management. Employees at Northvolt are often paid slightly below market, because they also warrants. But considering those warrants are probably not worth much anymore, the bonus may be necessary to retain necessary talents.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#60

Post by baxtr »

oezi wrote: post #56
baxtr wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Europe as major part of the West continues to fail this is going to happen - Russian influence will rise and dominate at least major parts of Eastern Europe - China will expand its footprint in Africa and increase its ambition in Asia - US and Japan will become more isolated than ever

Nothing is going to stop China's rise but China's own failings (mostly demographically). Russia can't even beat a country one third its own size despite petrol dollars and legacy military stock.

I agree. But Russia is being backed by its Asian allies. They will grind forward albeit slowly.
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