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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

#191

Post by jillesvangurp »

iagooar wrote: post #168

It is great news for Berlin (and Brandenburg) as it will bring (big) money and attract talent. It might even attract people from Poland which is only an hour drive away and has a large pool of very talented and experienced engineers. So far besides maybe Siemens there wasn't too much industry here, which is more present in the south of the country. Being outside of the city center it won't contribute too much to gent…

I think it makes sense from that angle but also from the angle that Germany is rich grounds for poaching people that are currently working for one of the other big car manufacturers. E.g. VW just opened a huge plant for producing their EVs in Zwickau which would about 300km away.

Brandenburg as a state is an interesting. Crucially, it's not the state of Berlin (Berlin is s city state within the German federation). That means access to lots of grants/subsidies and also that they are somewhat shielded from the chaotic governance in Berlin.

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

#192

Post by rusticpenn »

pilsetnieks wrote: post #74
wirrbel wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wolfsburg ist 200km away from Berlin. Cologne has Ford, Hesse has Opel and continental, although the center of gravity is in the south, it's not like the industry doesn't have a certain spread throughout the country.

In America, 200 years are a long time; in Europe 200 km is a long distance.

1 hour by train, 2 hours by car...

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

#193

Post by krzyk »

fyfy18 wrote: post #140
propercoil wrote: post #24

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…

There are some costs to expand in European countries. EU passed a law (GVO) in 2004 saying something like that: one can repair a car in any mechanic shop and still don't loose warranty.

Shop has to: - have access to service manuals using Pass Thru - this is requirement on the car producer. - document all repairs - do the repairs in a way the producer documented them

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

#194

Post by atq2119 »

chii wrote: post #177
InternetOfStuff wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> False comparison. Google users are voluntary. Not entirely. I can choose not to use Gmail or similar services. I can opt out of Google ads+tracking only because I'm technically adept enough. I can't (realistically) opt out of reCaptcha.

You can opt out of recaptcha by just boycotting the website which uses it. But of course by "opt out" you mean to remain a user of a service but not the parts you don't like. Whether you are entitled to do this or not is still up for debate.

This is totally disingenuous, especially in a thread comparing to Tesla.

With Tesla, I'm directly buying their product or not, and they do have competitors that I could choose from (not particularly great ones yet, I'll admit, but they do exist today and they're going to get there eventually).

With Google's ad tech and captcha, my data is being siphoned off to them by third parties. I'm looking at totally unrelated service X, and suddenly I'm faced with Google. The burden of boycott becomes much higher than in the Tesla case, which makes it reasonable to state that opt-out is "not [practically] possible".

The situations would be comparable if upon encountering a Google captcha I could choose to solve somebody else's captcha to access the same service.

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

#195

Post by tjoff »

ascorbic wrote: post #185
tjoff wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla does too. And it is much harder to get around it without modifying your Tesla. Not sure how they can be GDPR compliant, maybe it's only in the US where all cars are tracked in real-time?

After the most recent update I was asked whether I would give permission for video clips to be sent to Tesla to improve self-driving and sentry mode. It was optional. The GPS tracking is required if lots of features are to work, so permission isn't needed under GDRP unless it's also used for other purposes. There are details in their privacy policy: https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/about/legal

Thanks, that's sounds much better than what I've read before.

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

#196

Post by atq2119 »

pteredactyl wrote: post #145
pixelpoet wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

When I hear this, I hear jobs and the most revolutionary green company are not welcome. If that's the case, Berlin is lost. There is good and bad to gentrification. You don't hear stories of the people who bought their house for 50k in 1980 who then sold it in 2010 for 1.3MM. Or the people thankful they don't have to walk around in fear of gangs for themselves or their children. TO me the biggest problem is the State…

But as the article clearly shows, that revolutionary green company is welcome, in part because they're building on the outskirts of the city.

Location is everything.

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

#197

Post by odiroot »

iagooar wrote: post #168

It is great news for Berlin (and Brandenburg) as it will bring (big) money and attract talent. It might even attract people from Poland which is only an hour drive away and has a large pool of very talented and experienced engineers. So far besides maybe Siemens there wasn't too much industry here, which is more present in the south of the country. Being outside of the city center it won't contribute too much to gent…

> So far besides maybe Siemens there wasn't too much industry here, which is more present in the south of the country.

Siemens is big in Niedersachsen (e.g. Braunschweig) so it's more about East/West divide.

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

#198

Post by tannhaeuser »

NGC404 wrote: post #48

The number sold electric vehicles in germany is still exponential not saturated, the government recently announced to build additional charging stations across the country in the order of 10 thousands and to increase the (tax) incentives for hybrid and fully electric cars. It is a good time to build a factory for electric cars in germany. Berlin is a sweet spot when it comes to talent in high tech, suppliers and tran…

Except Germany has the highest energy prices in Europe, and as long as that doesn't change drastically, e-mobility is for a minority of enthusiasts and people who can afford to be bad at math. Just look at actual numbers of vehicles sold where Diesel still rules. Well, government could raise taxes on mineral oil (already at 63% [1]), but the German state is already drowning in cash and could issue bonds with negative yield. Charging stations are also an area where it goes completely wrong since these are owned and operated by municipalities and monopolist energy providers. Housing also goes wrong especially in Berlin where socialist government doesn't seem able to attract investors and plays ideological games for winning a left-wing electorate instead despite massive influx of 40000 people per year, in addition to energy-efficiency laws and lack of capacity making construction unprofitable (btw. solar industry also goes south).

[1]: https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Content/DE/Standardar...

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

#199

Post by HeadsUpHigh »

ponyfleisch wrote: post #161
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re making it look like it’s either the ghetto or the yuppies, but there is a clear middle that people don’t want to sacrifice either. Having a bunch of people paid 5 times what you are coming to your area is never fun.

> Having a bunch of people paid 5 times what you are coming to your area is never fun. It's probably a net positive overall though, especially if the money these people are paid (and spend locally) is coming from other parts of the world/country.

Nah. German people can live in the hipster area we are talking about here without a job requiring a 4 year degree. Google in that area would be a net negative for them.
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