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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

#111

Post by sandos »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #63
oezi wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Russia does not need to win to still wreak havoc. Their hybrid warfare has created massive social rifts and political instability across all major Western Democracies. Unfortunately you do not need a lot of money to do evil, when the devil's whispers are enough to turn citizens of a nation against each other.

"Their hybrid warfare has created massive social rifts" - Really? Do tell. I haven't noticed anything like that. Nor political instability.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#113

Post by tim333 »

leviliebvin wrote: post #89
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…

We have an epidemic of bad leadership. It's everywhere. Governments, research institutions, private and public companies. I don't know the cause of it, but from what I observe from my workplace it's because the heavily bureaucratic processes of both public and private entities requires a certain personality that is basically a politician above all else. And the whole promotion process is a one way valve. Once you go…

One the advantages of capitalist competition is companies run by bad managers go bust and the resources can be redeployed. You get rid of that and have promotion based on office politics and you get a lot of problems.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#114

Post by tim333 »

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…

China had a big push to promote engineering a few decades ago. A recent quote "China is the world's top producer of engineering graduates, producing around 1.4–1.5 million graduates annually, which is about one-third of the world's total." They also took over as the world's workshop making a lot of our stuff.

There was a lot of competition making things like batteries and if you look at the CEOs of the biggest battery producers there, CATL and BYD they are both very technical and near genius level. Making good batteries is probably quite hard.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#115

Post by tim333 »

riffraff wrote: post #14
toenail wrote: post #4

The promise that needed 1 billion in subsidies to build a new plant? As soon as the government got involved it was clear they couldn't be profitable on their own.

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

Tesla I think proved it was competent at making stuff before getting much subsidy. Northvolt seems to have got it up from without much battery making.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#116

Post by rich_sasha »

tim333 wrote: post #114
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…

China had a big push to promote engineering a few decades ago. A recent quote "China is the world's top producer of engineering graduates, producing around 1.4–1.5 million graduates annually, which is about one-third of the world's total." They also took over as the world's workshop making a lot of our stuff. There was a lot of competition making things like batteries and if you look at the CEOs of the biggest batter…

That's a very good point.

Germany was always brilliant at mechanical engineering, their universities are decent in general, but very good at all forms of mechanical/chemical engineering.

US is mad keen on software and entrepreneurship and its top universities churn out software startup founders like nowhere else. It's just a pity software ain't what it was 10 years ago.

Perhaps the deep cadres of really well educated engineers, and thus available work force, is the determining factor here.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#117

Post by Cumpiler69 »

baxtr wrote: post #109
Cumpiler69 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Russia can't go past Ukraine

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#118

Post by ngrilly »

panta wrote: post #110
ngrilly wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Most of the money went into the pocket of extraordinary dedicated employees who were paid market salaries (actually often slightly below market), and suppliers as well.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#119

Post by brabel »

ngrilly wrote: post #100
abc123abc123 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The bonus I mentioned was all over the news in Sweden last night. No, it was not paid yet, but looks like there's little chance that will be stopped.

Edit: example news from a few hours ago: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/vasterbotten/northvoltarbe...

It's unclear if the employees receiving that are actually top management, but honestly, I would be surprised if they're not, as they are the ones who always get this sort of bonuses.

EDIT 2: you don't need to speak Swedish to understand what North Volt itself wrote is about a bonus program, so yes, it most definitely is a bonus: "bonusprogrammet är avgörande för att upprätthålla arbetsmoral, motivation och lojalitet"

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#120

Post by ngrilly »

brabel wrote: post #119
ngrilly wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The bonus I mentioned was all over the news in Sweden last night. No, it was not paid yet, but looks like there's little chance that will be stopped. Edit: example news from a few hours ago: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/vasterbotten/northvoltarbe... It's unclear if the employees receiving that are actually top management, but honestly, I would be surprised if they're not, as they are the ones who always get this…

I live in Sweden. Can you share a link? I bet that what you have in mind is the bonus that could be paid to about 230 employees, explicitly excluding the top management, in order to retain them. Or perhaps the news that the former CEO has sold some shares during a founding round, which is a relatively standard practice and not a “bonus”, and a way to keep the CEO salary reasonably low.

Edit (following your edit): You wrote earlier: “including paying millions of dollars in bonus to their incompetent executives”. The link you shared directly contradicts this since it mentions the equivalent of 6M USD distributed to about 230 employees. Another article mentions very explicitly that top management is excluded. According to these articles, it is simply impossible to conclude that top executives will receive “millions of dollars”. You’re just contributing to rumors that are not based on facts.

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