Tesla’s European gigafactory will be built in Berlin • Hacker News Board

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

#401

Post by kayoone » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

lm28469 wrote: post #314

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…

> which by Berlin standards is an amazing result. They only, and rightfully, get pissed when mega corps like google/amazon come in the city center, buy a 40 storey building and starts paying everyone 100% more than the average for the same position.

it's not only US megacorps, a lot of well funded tech companies pay salaries close to what Amazon or Google pay and they have to as that's what the market demands. As a software engineer in Berlin i can't really say i don't like that though. Berlin rents might have doubled since 2010, but they were also way below other german capitals due to Berlins history, so the rents coming to the same level as say Hamburg or Munich was just a matter of time anyway. In the end it creates value for the city, higher tax income, more spending. Yes, gentrification is a problem, but it's far less of a problem here then in other major capitals.

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

#402

Post by Animats » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

sobani wrote: post #275

Animats wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel is so small that you can go anywhere on one charge.

Plus, I remember seeing a video years ago from some electric car visionary (didn't went very far) that argued Israel is basically an island. In the west there is a sea and in the north/east/south there are hostile nations/deserts that you don't want to drive to. Compared to most other nations it's easy to bootstrap an electric driving infrastructure in Israel, because you don't have to do a continental wide rollout.

Oh, Better Place. I met their CEO once. He's really good looking, he's a great speaker, and his business plan made no sense. They burned through about a billion dollars and never did more than a few demos and a few hundred Renaults driven by their employees. But he was really good at getting close to heads of state and issuing press releases.

The whole battery swap thing was a bet against batteries and charging technology getting better.

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

#403

Post by Animats » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

propercoil wrote: post #296

altacc wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is a small scale producer, so their market sizes can be quite small (Norway's population is 5 million and a key market). What drives the market is desire, money and charging. It seems Israel has the first two but hasn't got a good charging infrastructure yet. Once it does, combined with increased incentives for electric cars, I imagine it'll be a good market for them.

What charging infrastructure? You would literally need two or three charging spots for the whole country.

Well, not quite. Electric cars are a good fit for a warm climate (so you don't have to spend too much power on the heater), lots of sun, and no oil.

Like Hawaii, which just passed 10,000 electric cars and has more solar power than the power company can absorb during the day.

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

#404

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

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.

[deleted]

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

#405

Post by Reason077 » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

avar wrote: post #312

Reason077 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Israel is probably just too small of a market” I’m not sure if size has much to do with it. Tesla is in remote countries like New Zealand (1/2 the population of Israel) and Iceland (about 1/20th the population of Israel), as well as neighbouring Jordan (similar size to Israel).

I don't know about New Zealand, but Iceland is part of the EU's single market when it comes to selling cars. I'd expect for a company like Tesla dealing with regulatory overhead in new markets might be the limiting factor. New Zealand is an English speaking country so perhaps it's easier for them, and to sell cars in Iceland you don't need to do anything more than ship cars you're selling in the EU over and pay impor…

Yes, but it's not quite as simple as registering cars and shipping them to customers. The cars need to be serviced, which means opening service centres in the destination market, and hiring skilled staff to do the servicing.

Since Tesla doesn't sell through dealers, they also usually open a sales centre / Tesla store (which often also acts as a service centre).

In Tesla's case, they also invest in building superchargers in the countries they operate in. All of this adds up to a fairly significant capital investment before they start selling vehicles in a new country.

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

#406

Post by pantalaimon » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 6:02 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #384

vertex-four wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m outside the SV bubble for the most part, the “joke” if there was one was that Tesla is going to have serious culture clash if they try to treat their German workers like their workers elsewhere, and I’m going to be reading about the resulting court cases for years.

Rumour has it that Amazon has a dedicated judge at the labour court in Munich. Just the existance of such a rumour is telling you a lot.

Amazon has adds running where they have workers affirming that the working conditions are allright. It's pretty uncanny.

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

#407

Post by advancingu » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 6:06 PM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #99

choeger wrote: post #2

Please drop your inevitable BER jokes below so we can recylce them properly later.

Wait, so if I have this correct, the airport took ~6 years to construct and 9 years and counting to correct problems with its construction? Meaning that it would have been faster to tear the entire building down and rebuild it from scratch than it is taking to remedy the issues? How does that happen‽

There is a fantastic English language podcast called "How To F#€k Up An Airport" that goes into great detail about the many failures that let to this debacle. Highly recommended.

http://www.radiospaetkauf.com/ber/

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

#408

Post by gmueckl » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 6:18 PM UTC

willyt wrote: post #340

gmueckl wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The smoke ventilation system was originally designed to rely on fans to blow the smoke downwards in the ventilation shafts. As far as I know, nobody had tried to build a system like this before. Rumor has it that ventilation pipes even imploded during a test. That's not all. Signs of poor planning and poor execution seem to be everywhere. Pipes for a central water cooling system for IT and other electronics were supp…

Have a look at this [0] as an example airport where there are no ducts or fans at high level. The skylights are probably automatically controlled to vent smoke using stack effect only and the undulating roof will act as a smoke reservoir to contain smoke in one structural bay. >The smoke ventilation system was originally designed to rely on fans to blow the smoke downwards in the ventilation shafts. As far as I know,…

I don't recall a single big change to the brief before the planned opening that failed so spectacularly. The project suffers death from a thousand papercuts. The brief did change since 2012, though. They added a whole new wing to the building to meet updated capacity demands.

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

#409

Post by jansan » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 7:02 PM UTC

Tomte wrote: post #381

jansan wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grohmann is located at the other end of Germany. Even for them, opening a factory in Brandenburg would probably result in quite a culture shock.

Labor law is federal and exactly the same.

But mentality is local and very different between for example Schwaben and Uckermark.

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

#410

Post by Nasrudith » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 7:15 PM UTC

abstractbarista wrote: post #360

Seeing a lot of comments saying their choice is good because it won't contribute to gentrification. Doesn't sound right to me. Why is that the first~third thing you're mentioning? It's almost like we scorn the concept of more people working in an area towards a positive goal (renewable transport). Yikes.

I think it highlights an issue with housing in general - if you judge by actions instead of words the logical but uncomfortable conclusion is that /everyone/, poor, middle class, or rich is horribly selfish and unwilling to agree to any cost which doesn't benefit them directly. From rent control to property values everyone has a "screw everyone else I have mine" attitude.

I actually start to feel sorry for politicians for a change when they have people who want mathematical impossibilities.