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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

#91

Post by Cumpiler69 »

huijzer wrote: post #62
Cumpiler69 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a bit of a black and white way of putting it. Yes, much state money is wasted, but not all. Some of the money went to Swedish construction workers for example.

>Some of the money went to Swedish construction workers for example

Ah, the myth of trickle down economics.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#92

Post by Cumpiler69 »

Timwi wrote: post #66
jansan wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 attribute it to idiocy, but not on the part of Germany today. Sibling comments have already pointed out that a shutdown of nuclear was already decided in 2011 and that you can't just reverse that decision on a whim. I want to add that the shutdown is a culmination of over 60 years of lobbying, first by the Green Party when they were still single-issue radicals in parliament, then by environmental groups like Greenp…

>you can't just reverse that decision on a whim.

You definitely can when your own existence/security is under threat.

In such cases, you can override people's idealist wishes since keeping borders defended and citizens safe, fed and warm in trouble times is more important to maintaining a stable economy and society long term, than rolling with the idealist fantasies of not using nuclear energy that people wished for when times were good.

But 30 years of not taking military/defense and energy self sufficiency seriously, is costing the EU taxpayer greatly now. It's a tragedy of the commons.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#93

Post by Cumpiler69 »

wkat4242 wrote: post #90
ExoticPearTree wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Those climate objectives are necessary. Soon we will be spending a lot more on disaster mitigation than we would have on some EV subsidies. If anything the transition is not fast enough. I'm living very close to Valencia with its recent flooding disaster, that it didn't happen here was just a matter of chance. That week alone has cost the country more than 10 billion in damage payments and the actual damage is a lot…

>Those climate objectives are necessary.

They're worthless if the rest of the world is not on board with you.

If you're the only one on board, all you're doing is making your domestic industry uncompetitive and your working class citizens poorer via high energy prices, while the largest polluting nations are destroying the planet further while also getting richer thanks to not giving a crap about the environment and eating away your share of world GDP.

What EU is doing is like trying to loose weight by cutting your own legs off calling it a good policy.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#94

Post by pas »

Cumpiler69 wrote: post #91
huijzer wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit of a black and white way of putting it. Yes, much state money is wasted, but not all. Some of the money went to Swedish construction workers for example.

>Some of the money went to Swedish construction workers for example Ah, the myth of trickle down economics.

fiscal multiplier != trickle down

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#95

Post by pas »

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…

Because a startup scene needs a fucking scene. Having exactly one darling company in each sector is recipe for the classic yet seemingly every time unavoidable "too precious to fail" failure mode.

It's the same thing that always happens in Europe when we're trying to mimic something from the other side of the pond, we do it too late, too small, too fancy.

Here's a nice, detailed, insightful essay (?) on the Canadian tech scene, but of course blindly replacing Toronto with Berlin (or at least the CN tower with the Fernsehturm) and the results are the same.

https://alexdanco.com/2021/01/11/why-the-canadian-tech-scene...

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#96

Post by KomoD »

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-...

"wants to", meaning they haven't

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#97

Post by Cumpiler69 »

xorcist wrote: post #75
benchmarkist wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

People keep repeating this as if it was true. The Chinese and American battery manufacturers have received enormous subsidies. This factory is mostly financed on the private market, and some bonds from the EU investment bank, but comparably less. That hasn't helped. Subsidized competitors are hard to compete against. The German factory have indeed received some government subsidies. But that is not the factory with p…

>The Chinese and American battery manufacturers have received enormous subsidies.

Nobody said subsidies are THE problem. The problem is the taxpayer being burdened with the losses while footing the bill for those subsidies, when they should be seeing a return on their investment, while the only ones who saw that were the fat cats.

I'm sick and tied of the race to the bottom without any accountability of "hey look, China is giving billions of state subsidies, so that means we should too".

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#98

Post by wkat4242 »

Cumpiler69 wrote: post #93
wkat4242 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those climate objectives are necessary. Soon we will be spending a lot more on disaster mitigation than we would have on some EV subsidies. If anything the transition is not fast enough. I'm living very close to Valencia with its recent flooding disaster, that it didn't happen here was just a matter of chance. That week alone has cost the country more than 10 billion in damage payments and the actual damage is a lot…

>Those climate objectives are necessary. They're worthless if the rest of the world is not on board with you. If you're the only one on board, all you're doing is making your domestic industry uncompetitive and your working class citizens poorer via high energy prices, while the largest polluting nations are destroying the planet further while also getting richer thanks to not giving a crap about the environment and…

> They're worthless if the rest of the world is not on board with you.

Not really. The EU is one of the biggest contributors to climate change. Our change will help. And the rest will have to follow eventually because they are also affected. And they will be in a bigger hurry and it will cost more.

> If you're the only one on board, all you're doing is making your domestic industry uncompetitive and your working class citizens poorer via high energy prices, while the largest polluting nations are destroying the planet further while also getting richer thanks to not giving a crap about the environment and eating away your share of world GDP.

Also, it's not a race we have to win. Life is not about becoming the richest.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#99

Post by Cumpiler69 »

wkat4242 wrote: post #98
Cumpiler69 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Those climate objectives are necessary. They're worthless if the rest of the world is not on board with you. If you're the only one on board, all you're doing is making your domestic industry uncompetitive and your working class citizens poorer via high energy prices, while the largest polluting nations are destroying the planet further while also getting richer thanks to not giving a crap about the environment and…

> They're worthless if the rest of the world is not on board with you. Not really. The EU is one of the biggest contributors to climate change. Our change will help. And the rest will have to follow eventually because they are also affected. And they will be in a bigger hurry and it will cost more. > If you're the only one on board, all you're doing is making your domestic industry uncompetitive and your working clas…

>Also, it's not a race we have to win. Life is not about becoming the richest.

It is, if you want to maintain the generous welfare and high standard of living the EU is used to. Where do you think that money comes from, the sky? It comes from having a world dominant economy. Without that, there's no more money for good wages, pensions and welfare and the people won't be happy with that.

Otherwise, the EU citizens will either have to be contempt to being poorer, OR, more likely, they'll vote another Austrian painter to power to upset the apple cart.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#100

Post by ngrilly »

abc123abc123 wrote: post #82
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 :)

Since northvolt is private, there is a lot less insight into what goes on there. However, I'm fairly sure that the CEO did sell some of his shares during one or more financing rounds, in order to create a little nest egg for himself. On top of that I'd imagine that during the 8 years or so, he probably took out at least 200k EUR in salary, if not more, per year. So a few millions of dollars probably went to the CEO.

Correct, but none of this is a “bonus”, as claimed in the parent comment.
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