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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

#101

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

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…

> The latest issue is that the EC would rather see the auto industry fail than to change its climate objectives.

I don't think climate objectives are the problem. The auto industry wants to see them reduced because they want to keep pumping out diesel engine cars, i.e., making us buy obsolete technology while tariffs prevent us from buying cheaper and better foreign EVs. Do you really think that's the path to keeping our auto industry in the long term?

If climate objectives were more ambitious and weren't being pushed forward all the time due to industry lobbying, we would probably see more innovation in Europe.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#102

Post by wkat4242 »

Cumpiler69 wrote: post #99
wkat4242 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wil…

We don't need to get even richer is what I mean. It's fine.

I even moved to a lower wage country within the EU (about half as much as I would be able to make at home) to get a better quality of life. There's enough flex, we are still one of the richest regions in the world.

Also, a lot of costs scale with income anyway.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#103

Post by Cumpiler69 »

wkat4242 wrote: post #102
Cumpiler69 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 wil…

We don't need to get even richer is what I mean. It's fine. I even moved to a lower wage country within the EU (about half as much as I would be able to make at home) to get a better quality of life. There's enough flex, we are still one of the richest regions in the world. Also, a lot of costs scale with income anyway.

Sounds interesting. Which country did you move to?

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#104

Post by larme »

abc123abc123 wrote: post #83
rich_sasha wrote: post #71

I'm curious how China makes it work. No doubt they also have dedicated, smart and educated people - I guess no massive shortage of that in Europe either. Central government is often considered to be somewhat corrupt and incompetent, so in any case not hugely better than in Europe. I'm sure there's more know-how, but that came from somewhere too. What is the difference then? Willingness to work for lower wages? Greate…

Yep. Europe is socialist, which makes it extremelt difficult to start successful tech-companies. Europes unicorns is far fewer than what are created in the US and China. As long as europe continues to heavily regulate and tax its citizens in the best socialist tradition, it will continue its decline, to become a tourist playground in a generation or two, for the rest of the world. I always advice young entrepreneurs…

entrepreneurs suck anyway.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#105

Post by wkat4242 »

Cumpiler69 wrote: post #103
wkat4242 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need to get even richer is what I mean. It's fine. I even moved to a lower wage country within the EU (about half as much as I would be able to make at home) to get a better quality of life. There's enough flex, we are still one of the richest regions in the world. Also, a lot of costs scale with income anyway.

Sounds interesting. Which country did you move to?

I'm in Spain now.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#106

Post by Cumpiler69 »

nope1000 wrote: post #65
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…

Flux (the image generator of xAI) is by Black Forest Labs - a german AI company for example.

Nice. How much money is it making?

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#107

Post by Cumpiler69 »

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

>Russian influence will rise and dominate at least major parts of Eastern Europe

Definitely not, given how russophobic Eastern Europe is. They had enough of Russia to last them several lifetimes of misery.

On the other hand, Western Europe, especially "neutral" Austria is a lot more pro-Russian than the East.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#108

Post by yread »

There is also this Czech failed battery startup "HE3DA". It went from revolutionary to evolutionary to "well, there is at least one parameter (robustness) that's better than lithium batteries" to "hmm the measurements don't quite match the specs". There were individual investors, big show for opening a factory (with capacity of 1.4GWH we were told; actual batteries sold in 2024: single digit MWhs). Now they fired almost everyone and can't pay their bills

https://www.e15.cz/byznys/prumysl-a-energetika/pravda-o-bate...

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#109

Post by baxtr »

Cumpiler69 wrote: post #107
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

>Russian influence will rise and dominate at least major parts of Eastern Europe Definitely not, given how russophobic Eastern Europe is. They had enough of Russia to last them several lifetimes of misery. On the other hand, Western Europe, especially "neutral" Austria is a lot more pro-Russian than the East.

Being russophobic doesn’t mean you’re safe. See Ukraine.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#110

Post by panta »

ngrilly wrote: post #39
panta wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The goal of a scam is to make the scammer richer. Who gets richer in this case? No one. So that’s not a scam. I’m disappointed seeing that kind of accusations stated without evidences on HN, a forum about entrepreneurship and tech, where we used to celebrate success as much as learn from failure.

The money from investors went somewhere, there are people that got richer...
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