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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

#261

Post by Kutta »

jansan wrote: post #179

Near Berlin means the state of Brandenburg, which is famous for failed mega projects: - Airport BER (still not open) - Cargolifter airship factory (now used as a waterpark) - Lausitzring (was supposed to host the F1, now hugely unprofitable) - Semiconductor factory in Frankfurt/Oder (abandoned, only the building got finished) I am not aware of one single project that materialized as planned. The odds are against Elon…

You can always put a project into a reference class consisting only of failed projects. You can also put this project into the class of Tesla factories, none of which failed so far.

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

#262

Post by sho_hn »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #191
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). Th…

Mercedes-Benz/Daimler also opened a software company in Berlin ~two years ago (MBition GmbH) that's in fast growth mode.

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

#263

Post by CathedralBorrow »

lnsru wrote: post #222
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…

It’s interesting what kind of talent one needs for a factory. Engineers? I doubt... These will be simple workers, couple equipment operators with some education. All the blueprints are coming from Tesla’s HQ anyway, so not much engineering needed. There is also Tesla in Germany that does all the engineering: https://teslagrohmannautomation.de/de/

That is really interesting. What expertise are you speaking from?

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

#264

Post by DarkWiiPlayer »

odiroot wrote: post #197
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.

Some background for the non-German readers: Within Germany there's still a very noticeable divide between east and west, with average waegs, for example, being considerably higher in the west. This goes back to the different ways the two regions were managed after WWII.

So when a big (and presumably well-paying) company is going to create lots of jobs in the country, whether this is in an eastern or a western state is indeed a very important question.

EDIT: Please note though, that it's somewhat controversial how relevant the divide really is these days. Some will tell you it's 90% in peoples heads, others will tell you that there's still a long way to go before we can really call the german reunification complete.

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

#265

Post by kmlx »

robert_foss wrote: post #253
tnolet wrote: 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.

Being a Berliner, on a personal level it would have been nice for me to have a Google office where they would have been. But I'm very happy about people standing up for their neighborhood and actually protesting. Having a Google office with >400 decidedly well-compensated people move in would very much change the neighborhood and not for the better. People fighting for their own local interests is what makes Berlin g…

> Having a Google office with >400 decidedly well-compensated people move in would very much change the neighborhood and not for the better.

i don't understand this. so berlin would rather have poor citizens? how is that better for the city? and how would >400 "well-compensated" people affect the city in anything but a positive manner? has there been any sort of study as to how better wages affect a city?

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

#266

Post by yorwba »

k__ wrote: post #120
zepearl wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quite nice recovery attempt - respect (unluckily the parent threads didn't mention Tempelhof nor did the anchor article of this discussion, therefore Tempelhof seems to be out-of-context. Additionally, after considering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Tempelhof_Airport#Post-... : the post does not seem to take into consideration its current situation and therefore does not seem to be realistic).

This wasn't recovery. I was at the Tempelhof and people told me that it's privatly owned and the onwer wasn't happy with the current usage.

The state of Berlin wholly owns the area since 2009: https://www.berlin.de/senuvk/umwelt/stadtgruen/aktuelles/de/...

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

#267

Post by CathedralBorrow »

pbreit wrote: post #166
notJim wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true, they both hemorrhage money, but at least with Tesla they also produce electric cars. (Tesla fans: relax.)

Might be getting downvoted since Tesla generated $2b in cash flow past 12m months and has all time high cash on hand. And then the "relax" insult despite being dead wrong.

I see Tesla fans emulate Elon's thin skin; how on earth is "relax" an insult?

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

#268

Post by CathedralBorrow »

kmlx wrote: post #265
robert_foss wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a Berliner, on a personal level it would have been nice for me to have a Google office where they would have been. But I'm very happy about people standing up for their neighborhood and actually protesting. Having a Google office with >400 decidedly well-compensated people move in would very much change the neighborhood and not for the better. People fighting for their own local interests is what makes Berlin g…

> Having a Google office with >400 decidedly well-compensated people move in would very much change the neighborhood and not for the better. i don't understand this. so berlin would rather have poor citizens? how is that better for the city? and how would >400 "well-compensated" people affect the city in anything but a positive manner? has there been any sort of study as to how better wages affect a city?

Do you reject the entire concept of gentrification or is there something about this particular instance you have trouble understanding?

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

#269

Post by Gravityloss »

jariel wrote: post #50
mdorazio wrote: post #8

They obviously needed to get one built in Europe sooner rather than later to boost marketshare there and stay ahead of demand without needing to ship from China or the US, but why Berlin? Does anyone know if they got subsidies out of it?

Without knowing the backroom deals - Berlin is a nice choice for things because it's like 'East Europe wages' with 'West Europe capabilities'. Germany is a very stable robust economy that might be their #1 'export source' - there's a lot of related knowledge - and in a 'cramped Europe' - the Berlin area is wide open. FYI Berlin has 'wide avenue streets' which are totally unlike most other European places, sometimes i…

I have heard that a working legal system is one way for a country to attract long term investment. There is less risk that some politician's friend ends up claiming your factory grounds.

There are ways yo try to "hack it" like subsidies or having personal relations with someone high up but I don't know how cost effective and long term they really are.

So if people want long term improvement, they should vote for a strong legal system instead of "I personally brought this factory here".

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

#270

Post by DarkWiiPlayer »

romanovcode wrote: post #243
wcoenen wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDP is comparable to the concept of revenue for a company, which is not the same as profit/loss. Revenue cannot be negative unless the company is charging negative prices. I think what you meant is that Berlin has a net inflow of tax money.

This chart[0] clearly shows that Germany would have +0.2% GDP per capita without Berlin. [0] https://qz.com/753244/berlin-is-the-only-capital-city-in-eur...

Think of big cities like managers. They don't produce any products, so you might conclude that they're a waste of money.

Likewise, cities have their place in a countries economy, even if it's not to directly produce goods and driving up the GDP per capita.

In even simpler words: Remove Berlin from Germany and the GDP of the rest of the country would also go down.

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