Are Tesla Gigafactory Berlin's days numbered? • Hacker News Board

Re: Are Tesla Gigafactory Berlin's days numbered?

#51

Post by jijijijij » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 1:38 PM UTC

kevin061 wrote: post #42

toomuchtodo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s always been this person, the wealth just amplified it. Sometimes the wrong people fall into power. Sometimes we trust the wrong people. Most of life is luck. Take the ketamine, wealth, and sycophants away, he will still be this person. But without the power. Human condition is tricky.

>most of life is luck I wish everyone understood this. Unfortunately, the rich and billionaire class are convinced they got where they did just because of sheer personal effort. This of course is delusional. Effort is important, but luck is essential.

We here are all guilty of this. Nobody is really aware of or grateful for all the things that enabled us to make a living.

Even if you are unloved, digging for gold with your bare hands, you were spared by people stronger, had people grow your food, teach you, build the streets, make your meds, literally deal with your shit all your life. And let's not forget the people who endured cruelty, suffered and died for your jeans and coffee...

(There are some great scenes in Pluribus, which illustrate this ignorance very well.)

Re: Are Tesla Gigafactory Berlin's days numbered?

#52

Post by diamond559 » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 3:25 PM UTC

diamond559 wrote: post #10

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for obvious reasons I will never understand two things: 1. Why Musk made such a hard-right turn politically, alienating most of his customers. People on the left were always far more likely to buy an EV than those on the right. 2. Why traders continue to buy Tesla stock even as sales nose-dive. Because of the promise of Robotaxis? Tesla's P/E is so high that the Tesla Robotaxi would have to sell more rides than Ube…

His customers aren't you or me buying cars anymore, it's fascists and foreign interests that are pumping his stock up past fundamentals. Oh and the deluded cultists that think handing him their life savings will literally bring world peace and end poverty.

See how they just downvote w/o saying anything to counter... They know and so does everyone else.

Re: Are Tesla Gigafactory Berlin's days numbered?

#53

Post by diamond559 » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 3:28 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #19

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for obvious reasons I will never understand two things: 1. Why Musk made such a hard-right turn politically, alienating most of his customers. People on the left were always far more likely to buy an EV than those on the right. 2. Why traders continue to buy Tesla stock even as sales nose-dive. Because of the promise of Robotaxis? Tesla's P/E is so high that the Tesla Robotaxi would have to sell more rides than Ube…

> Why traders continue to buy Tesla Same reason people play musical chairs or gamble. In both cases they know there has to be a loser holding the bag, they're just hoping it won't be them.

It's worse than that, foreign interests and domestic fascists are pumping the stock to create the cult around this far right Yahtzee for obvious political reasons.

Re: Are Tesla Gigafactory Berlin's days numbered?

#54

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 3:33 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #19

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for obvious reasons I will never understand two things: 1. Why Musk made such a hard-right turn politically, alienating most of his customers. People on the left were always far more likely to buy an EV than those on the right. 2. Why traders continue to buy Tesla stock even as sales nose-dive. Because of the promise of Robotaxis? Tesla's P/E is so high that the Tesla Robotaxi would have to sell more rides than Ube…

> Why traders continue to buy Tesla Same reason people play musical chairs or gamble. In both cases they know there has to be a loser holding the bag, they're just hoping it won't be them.

[deleted]

Re: Are Tesla Gigafactory Berlin's days numbered?

#55

Post by testing22321 » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 3:41 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #48

testing22321 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They’ll end up selling it to a German automaker who isn’t anti union None of them can compete with BYD.

I mean, this is a popular talking point, but in real life BYD's sales are dramatically smaller than VW AG's in Europe. They're even smaller than Geely's (another Chinese manufacturer): https://eu-evs.com/marketShare/ALL/Groups/Bar/All-time-by-Qu... BYD are huge in _China_, and in some other parts of the world, and they are growing in Europe, but the media focus on them is slightly excessive.

Look at how fast they’re growing. They added a Tesla worth of production capacity in a single quarter.

Re: Are Tesla Gigafactory Berlin's days numbered?

#56

Post by CamperBob2 » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 4:37 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #47

CamperBob2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Why Musk made such a hard-right turn politically, alienating most of his customers. People on the left were always far more likely to buy an EV than those on the right. I believe a couple of things happened over the last few years that basically broke him. One factor may have been his daughter coming out as trans, and I have a feeling that another factor was a realization that his ambition to start a Mars colony w…

> He started engaging in irrational, erratic behavior circa 2019-2020 Hrm, not sure about that. Remember the cave diver thing? He's been fairly unhinged for a while.

Right, that was Unsworth. 2019, IIRC?

Re: Are Tesla Gigafactory Berlin's days numbered?

#57

Post by CamperBob2 » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 4:39 PM UTC

ziml77 wrote: post #32

nebula8804 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean his first wife(mother of that trans daughter) wrote the following about him in 2010: "Still, there were warning signs. As we danced at our wedding reception, Elon told me, "I am the alpha in this relationship." I shrugged it off, just as I would later shrug off signing the postnuptial agreement, but as time went on, I learned that he was serious. He had grown up in the male-dominated culture of South Africa, a…

I'm glad you have some evidence of it being nothing remotely new. Reading these comments I was starting to feel like I was crazy for remembering that he had always been pretty nasty.

"Pretty nasty" is one thing. There's nothing in that article that isn't par for the course at his level of play.

The way he behaves now is actively self-destructive. That part is new.

Re: Are Tesla Gigafactory Berlin's days numbered?

#58

Post by rsynnott » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #56

rsynnott wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He started engaging in irrational, erratic behavior circa 2019-2020 Hrm, not sure about that. Remember the cave diver thing? He's been fairly unhinged for a while.

Right, that was Unsworth. 2019, IIRC?

2018, apparently. Thought it was earlier tbh.

Re: Are Tesla Gigafactory Berlin's days numbered?

#59

Post by toomuchtodo » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 6:05 PM UTC

disqard wrote: post #46

toomuchtodo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s always been this person, the wealth just amplified it. Sometimes the wrong people fall into power. Sometimes we trust the wrong people. Most of life is luck. Take the ketamine, wealth, and sycophants away, he will still be this person. But without the power. Human condition is tricky.

I think you have a point. I often think of Tony Hsieh (Zappos founder/CEO), who was a much more grounded and humble person before he became extremely wealthy. Perhaps he had the tendencies/propensities (that ended his life) dormant all along, and his wealth suddenly boosted those deadly habits. He went from this: https://youtu.be/jJ5k_Byd9Fs?si=XeYpu-rUNos_dwgI ...to this: https://straightforwardinteractive.com/2020/…

Tony was a genuinely good person from all the information I’ve consumed on him. The wealth was kryptonite to him. For the others, it is an accelerant.

Sometimes I think if Tony had given all the wealth away, he'd still be here. A cautionary tale.

Re: Are Tesla Gigafactory Berlin's days numbered?

#60

Post by nebula8804 » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 9:13 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #40

nebula8804 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man the US is the last giant standing. If the capitalists lose there, its game over. Before the events of the last few years I thought that maybe ultimately they were going to run to Israel or China if they lost the US. Both places are on shaky ground so probably not. If the US falls to Democratic Socialism, we could have a European style system across the entire western world. I hope to see it in my life. Maybe that…

Capitalists already lost. What republican party created is crony highly corrupt capitalism - that does not create competition but will make US look kind of like south america or russia. USA is on the path to oligarch run fiefdoms and not capitalism in its original sense.

What you are describing is late stage capitalism. A result of the current unchecked capitalism we have. The Bernie wing is really just proposing checked capitalism. We are just returning back to the roots of the country where asset owners were the elites and they owned everything. The last half century was more of an exception....so i'd argue the capitalists won big. Will we manage to pull things back to the mean? Ask me in 20 years.