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Tesla’s European gigafactory will be built in Berlin

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Re: Tesla’s European gigafactory will be built in Berlin

#131
post #59
post #52

I'm curious about how the massive left/anti-fa movement in Berlin will react to this one. They kept out Google after massive protests. Not sure this is the same thing though. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/24/google-ab... p.s. I'm based in Berlin. Have no horse in the race except that the Google office would have been right down the street of where I work.

Tesla isn't particularly political and there's no Fascist angle?

It's not really about that, so much as wanting to avoid what happened to the Bay Area. Massive gentrification, something Berlin has already struggled with for about 10 years (almost its defining issue in modern times IMO), is a serious problem if the rest of the city is rather poor, which Berlin actually was in the 2000s compared to the rest of the country ("poor but sexy", as it was sold).

Re: Tesla’s European gigafactory will be built in Berlin

#132
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are high-price, low-volume goods, and Tesla loves automating their factories. If you're making a car you don't want low regulation, you want highly qualified labor, and stable and predictable regulation.

I know that's how Elon Musk sells his factories. But in reality, people are moving around boxes with their bare hands and getting their fingers crushed. https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/1... > Lane Dillon, an engineering student, lost the tip of his finger in a workplace accident at the Tesla Gigafactory that was never reported to OSHA.

From the article you linked, a man had his fingertip severed when a shelf he was helping install was lowered too soon.

I cut the tip of my finger off with a chefs knife last year, luckily just took off about 1-2mm. The man in the story looks to have lost a bit more than that - but still has a fingernail on his right index finger. I’m not sure where the official line is drawn between cut and amputation when talking about fingertips. Once you’re cutting through fingernail though I would say it’s around there.

The fork lifts are automated. The wages are an average of 4x minimum wage, they hire at-risk college dropouts and train then to become techs while paying their tuition at community college, and they even housed a homeless employee at a local hotel while he worked there. All from the same article.

Property assessments are up 80% but TFA claims there’s no new tax revenue to cover the cost of services which a factory that large requires.

It’s a typical hit-job piece against an incredible factory which employs 7,000 in an extremely safe environment which is unfortunately not a utopia, but involves on average 1 emergency call per day for anything from fighting, DUI, chest pains, pregnancy related, and yes, occasionally workplace injury.

Re: Tesla’s European gigafactory will be built in Berlin

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the market size in Israel is not as big in other countries Why, comma, you say that as if building a car outside of Germany and selling it inside of Germany would face some sort of unfair obstacles, rather than being a straightforward and painless process as it ought.

I think the main issues are shipping costs, supply chain, and skills base. So you’d have to argue for Israel on those three points. I don’t think the domestic market size is primary. They built a factory in Nevada.

Nevada is in a pretty stable free trade deal with the other United States.

Re: Tesla’s European gigafactory will be built in Berlin

#134

Why should a GIGA factory be located near the airport and in a city ? A factory meant to mass produce something should be somewhere the land is cheap should not it be ?

Airports are normally located where land is cheap (example - "Denver" air port)

Re: Tesla’s European gigafactory will be built in Berlin

#135
post #52

I'm curious about how the massive left/anti-fa movement in Berlin will react to this one. They kept out Google after massive protests. Not sure this is the same thing though. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/24/google-ab... p.s. I'm based in Berlin. Have no horse in the race except that the Google office would have been right down the street of where I work.

Google has offices in Berlin, just not in Kreuzberg.

Re: Tesla’s European gigafactory will be built in Berlin

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I just don't understand why Tesla is slow in expanding to other countries Tesla is expanding as fast as they can. After huge struggles they finally got their Fremont plant working right. Then they immediately set to work building a plant in China, and got done remarkably fast. Now they are going to build a plant in Europe. Probably next will come India, and then maybe Latin America or the Middle East, and there I su…

Israel is not a good location for a Middle East factory. Most countries in the region will not trade with it, and even those that will, like Jordan and Egypt, do not have free trade or good transportation links with the country.

You know, that's a good point. Maybe I'm wrong.

Re: Tesla’s European gigafactory will be built in Berlin

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your post at all. "so that no one would stifle the company's path towards autonomous EV's." Who is "stifling"? And many companies work on autonomous cars. "This will produce pressure on Europe to ease for instance the AI regulations" What AI regulations in Europe? And what is Europe? The EU? "and basically removed Customs tax" This is not how custom taxes work. The EU is one of the biggest free tra…

EU regulations prohibit the turning angle of the wheel unlike the U.S. You simply can’t navigate on autopilot in the same way. Also the EU makes money from the auto companies in their jurisdiction and they don’t want a U.S auto company competing with them. Now that Tesla opens a factory in Germany “massages” things. The customs tax is in regards to countries/jurisdictions other than the ones with the Tesla factories.…

> EU regulations prohibit the turning angle of the wheel unlike the U.S. You simply can’t navigate on autopilot in the same way.

You seem to be overstating the issue, Tesla has already adapted their software to the new rules, and they seem to be related to EU safety standards:

https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/17/tesla-updates-autopilot-...

Re: Tesla’s European gigafactory will be built in Berlin

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I’ve looked into the news reports on Tesla worker safety, it always is just a handful of scattered reports, largely unadjudicated. Do you have any reason to think there’s a pattern there? Or are you just using that language for effect?

Tesla fails to report OSHA violations, or even workplace injuries (such as Dillon's missing finger). As such, their statistics are fully bunk. We're blind to the issue, outside of scattered reports. Tesla needs to fix their reporting problem before we can even have hope at measuring the incidence rate at their factory.

Unless you have numbers about their numbers it’s just anecdotal and will come across as FUD, so you know.

Re: Tesla’s European gigafactory will be built in Berlin

#140

Good strategy from Treelon overall. You'll have Tesla producing cars and employing thousands of workers in the U.S, China & Germany so that no one would stifle the company's path towards autonomous EV's. This will produce pressure on Europe to ease for instance the AI regulations and basically removed Customs tax from many other countries because Tesla can send the cars from three different locations. I just don't un…

Israel is probably just too small of a market at the moment. In most European countries there still isn't a official Tesla store or service center.

I live in the Baltic's and a friend of a freind has a Model X which was involved in a minor accident (other drivers fault) last year. To get it repaired without affecting the warranty it had to be sent to Tesla, which meant it had to be taken to Finland (700km) or Germany (1000km).

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