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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

#121

Post by ExoticPearTree »

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…

They can prepare better for natural disasters. And while climate change is an issue, we have the technology to fight it and not bankrupting entire industries to achieve some far fetched green goals.

You might not like cars, but a lot of other people do.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#122

Post by wkat4242 »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #121
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…

They can prepare better for natural disasters. And while climate change is an issue, we have the technology to fight it and not bankrupting entire industries to achieve some far fetched green goals. You might not like cars, but a lot of other people do.

These goals aren't far-fetched though. We're really far behind the curve as humanity. We need to do this sooner rather than later.

Don't forget there is a huge latency in CO2 emissions and their effect. The CO2 we're saving now will only take effect in 20 year's time. The next 20 years of increasingly worst disasters are already locked in. In 20 years doing what we should do now will feel easy.

I know the US will probably pull out of the climate accords again now that trump will be president but that's no reason for the rest of the world to do nothing. Even China is making lots of headway.

But it also means we can't really keep living as we are. People really need to switch to EVs if they want to have a car. Also sooner rather than later. But here in the cities in Europe we're seeing less people owning cars and more and more excellent public transport. Which is even better, you can use it after drinking, you don't have to pick it up from the place you left it off, you can read a book while using it, there's no maintenance or insurance. It helps climate and it's an easier mode to travel.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#123

Post by dzhiurgis »

rich_sasha wrote: post #116
tim333 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sounds like a good balance - Europe does science, US entrepreneurs, China manufacturing.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#124

Post by pas »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #13
myspy wrote: post #3

So what is the learning here, why did it fail? From the timeline it looks like it spread out too much and didn‘t create a great product first.

This is somewhat true, but I don’t think it is necessarily fair to them. Their strategy was to try to do everything themselves (except raw material mining). By having vertical integration across the battery space, they would be able to hopefully compete on price with the battery giants in China like CATL, while still working out of Europe, which is a lot more expensive in terms of labor costs, and regulation, and eve…

Doing anything in the EU is hard, and since CABM is not even live yet it was unnecessarily extra-hard.

And then it seems they were completely incompetent. (Custom middling quality machines ordered from Asia, they then weren't able to scale up the process and/or quality.)

Of course, if it had worked it would have made a lot of money to a lot of people.

https://taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu/carbon-border-adjustme...

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#125

Post by ExoticPearTree »

wkat4242 wrote: post #88
ExoticPearTree wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America innovates, Europe regulates and China copies. It was a parallel that in the EU we have regulations for things that there are no successful companies in the field and even if some companies will do AI in Europe, they will not be able to compete globally because they are chained by regulations. And with regulations that do not into account the economic realities, like the slow killing of the auto industry with…

As an EU citizen I really applaud the AI regulation. And I work on implementing AI too. If we look at how the big social media experiment panned out, polarising society through engagement-driven algorithms, it was important to prevent this happening with AI. The same with adtech which caused too much surveillance. Because it's much harder to put the genie back in the bottle when companies are already heavily relying…

I'm also an EU citizen and I very much like to see SkyNet happen.

Joke aside, these regulations, however "common sense" they look like, it will make the EU lag behind every other country when the genie comes out of the bottle. So instead of being at the forefront of AI, or close, the EU will be in the last place.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#126

Post by ExoticPearTree »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #101
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…

> 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…

If diesel is bad, why not just say "make gas powered cars and hybrids only, no more diesel for consumer cars under 3.5T or 7T"? Seems easier than the current agenda.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#127

Post by ExoticPearTree »

wkat4242 wrote: post #122
ExoticPearTree wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can prepare better for natural disasters. And while climate change is an issue, we have the technology to fight it and not bankrupting entire industries to achieve some far fetched green goals. You might not like cars, but a lot of other people do.

These goals aren't far-fetched though. We're really far behind the curve as humanity. We need to do this sooner rather than later. Don't forget there is a huge latency in CO2 emissions and their effect. The CO2 we're saving now will only take effect in 20 year's time. The next 20 years of increasingly worst disasters are already locked in. In 20 years doing what we should do now will feel easy. I know the US will pro…

You do know how much CO2 is expended to make batteries, no? The fact that is not done in Europe doesn't make it less bad. Those mining machines don't run on water, you know, they run on tons and tons of diesel.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#128

Post by brabel »

ngrilly wrote: post #120
brabel wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In my view, you're the one spreading lies here. I haven't seen anywhere that top management is excluded. Please link to sources if you have reliable ones. About the bonus being spread over 230 employees: no one can know how much will go to each employee. From my experience with shenanigans like this, usually two guys will each get 40% of the whole bonus, and the other 228 will get the remaining 20%. Do you have actual data on that or you're just interpreting this in the most charitable possible way you can???

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#129

Post by ngrilly »

brabel wrote: post #128
ngrilly wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In my view, you're the one spreading lies here. I haven't seen anywhere that top management is excluded. Please link to sources if you have reliable ones. About the bonus being spread over 230 employees: no one can know how much will go to each employee. From my experience with shenanigans like this, usually two guys will each get 40% of the whole bonus, and the other 228 will get the remaining 20%. Do you have actua…

I'm only repeating what I read on SVT website (Swedish national public television): https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/northvolt-vill-betala-ut-.... All your points are addressed in the article.

Re: Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis

#130

Post by dukeyukey »

leviliebvin wrote: post #18
buckle8017 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing to learn here, they were just scamming various governments. That's why they promised to expand to so many places, each government subsidized them separately.

Expanding to multiple EU states is a requirement to satisfy the various governments if you are getting public EU funding. See Airbus for an example.

And also kinda required from an economies-of-scale point of view. The US is spoilt by havbing a massive, culturally-and-language homogenous country. Despite their wealth, If you want to hit those scales in Europe you need many countries on your customer list. And since each country (usually) has it's own language, laws, norms, sometimes currency, it gets way complicated, way fast.
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