Formation of Tesla Advanced Automation Germany
tesla.com
tesla.com
This is great news for people who like tech but must be worrying for the German automakers who have yet to come up with a trustworthy answer to Tesla.
I believe one of VW, Mercedes Benz and BMW will bankrupt in 5-10 years. None of them have taken EV serious yet and I fear it's soon too late. The EVs that they have come up with as answers to Tesla are almost cartoonish like vehicles. Take a look at this Mercedes EQ: http://www.autoblog.com/2016/09/29/mercedes-benz-generation-...
Or this VW I.D.: https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/28/meet-the-i-d-volkswagens-f... Same blue lights. I bet they will come with a space suit and a laser gun as well.
Both are still concept cars but they represent what they expect their EVs should look like. Mind you that this is something they plan to market in 2020 so it will probably be 2021 or later. And their planned 2020 EVs are inferior to Tesla model S, X and 3 in 2016/2017 in many ways, not just design wise. It is as though they think only hipsters will drive EVs in any foreseeable future.
So when in 2021 they realise that they underestimated that ordinary people want an EV that looks no more spacey than a combustion engine car, but comes with wireless upgrades, long range batteries, large trunk, fast acceleration, high safety rating etc., they will have to wait another 3-4 years until they have a real answer ready. By then, model 3 has been on the market for close to a decade and even better Tesla models with better range, faster charging etc. have been introduced. And the Tesla cars will have been trained with tens of billions of miles of self driving by then. How are the Germans going to catch up?
They would have to expend billions building out a competitive charging infrastructure and building a marketing machine that would advocate for "the car of the future". That car would be a minority of their sales and yet the marketing message would immediately make their other cars seem obsolete.
Basically, noone can take the market seriously until very late in the game (maybe 5 - 10 years from now). I agree with your point that this may not hurt them that much in the long run, though.
Love the way my car is tied to refills only from the car manufacturer's brand of gas station because it's the only one with the right shaped nozzles.
:rolleyes: for an annoying future.
I fully agree on the difficulty and importance of infrastructure, this is something where it would be really difficult to match Tesla, at the volume of a mainstream brand. When Tesla says that their cars are sold at a profit, the wording seems to be very carefully chosen to avoid admitting that the package of car plus charging network access is not.
And if anything, Tesla is internalizing risks with the strategy of vertical integration.
Do more Teslas catch fire than ordinary cars? I doubt it.
Tesla has some 400,000 buyers literally paying $1,000 for the honour of getting in line for years to pay Tesla another $35,000 for a model 3. Which other automaker has customers that passionate? Sure, Apple had a few thousand waiting for days in front of their stores before every iPhone. But that was college kids. But show me an automaker that can excite people as much as Tesla.
I hope that there will serious competition for Tesla, but I think VW and Mercedes are not the ones.
Lada.
Back in the Soviet Union, this is how every car was bought. Except the wait would sometimes be decades.
But here it doesn't apply, since it's a vastly new technology on all levels of production. You really need the rockstars since they will be the one building the new technologies. So when the big car companies realize what they need to do all the great engineers who can do it will already work for Tesla.
So I have to agree. The battle hasn't really begun yet, but the war already seems over.
You need to have 50-50 car engineers and software engineers and they need to work together to make that move happen. Do you think a guy with a black Star Wars t-shirt and an Arch Linux running Thinkpad could get any meaningful say in product development at any big German company, car companies and banks especially? If you would answer that with "no" we basically have the same view on how the German industry looks like. What we may not agree on is if that can succeed any longer in the automobile market.
Industry 4.0 - Germany's 4th industrial revolution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y990kaGbJD0
Industry 4.0 in the Volkswagen Group https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTl8w6yAjds
"Industrie 4.0" - Bosch plant in Blaichach, Germany https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKhSTjraHlU
CAR FACTORY: Mercedes-Benz Industrie 4.0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdXRTKy_TrM
German car companies and their suppliers (Continental, Bosch, ...) have already lots of smart engineers in this domain. Their current factories are among the highest automated in the world. Volkswagen invested $15.3 billion in R&D last year, Daimler $7.6 billion, BMW $5.5 billion. Number one, three and seven in the automotive world.
Tesla was spending $0.7 billion for R&D in 2015.
As I said I only remember Zalando being active on the hiring front, and they don't do cars (yet).
As for the bankruptcy speculation: they are too big to fail - whatever the consequences might be for the german taxpayer.
[1] http://www.accumotive.de/de/home-englisch.html [2] https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/mercedes-benz-energy/ [3] http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Elektromobilitaet-Dai... (german) [4] https://www.li-tec.de/en
> concept cars[...]represent what they expect
> their EVs should look like.
Most auto companies have ridiculous looking concept cars, the silly designs almost never make it to production, or if they do are significantly amended.
Which will still hit them hard, because the value of wrapping a giant battery in a car is about as low as wrapping a combustion engine in a car. The difference is that they made the engines in-house, whereas the batteries will most likely be third party commodity parts. They tried setting up their own battery production lines, but utterly failed at making them at competitive prices.
Even though there are initiatives to sell only electric cars in Germany by 2030, I doubt this is going to happen. The switch from ICE powered cars to electric ones is being observed with great uncertainty as the car industry keeps warning the public that the eventual switch is not going to come without losing jobs since it's apparently simpler to manufacture electric cars.
And the average German employee (Arbeitnehmer) who accidentally happens to work in the automobile sector will not be considering buying an electric car for the fear that it might cost him the employment.
German automakers actually worry about the trends in the US, the southeast Asia & China, and it's realistic to expect that their image/sale numbers is going to suffer if they don't offer viable electric cars and not unpractical and expensive concept cars.
At home, their power is unrivaled.
Nobody buys EVs because they are not an alternative yet. However this may change in 3-8 years. And then there will be german automakers with the best EVs in the world.
Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens, Alcatel were large, and valued EU companies producing cell phones. Where was the EU when the iPhone happened? Luckily, EU stayed out of it.
They don't do that.
> They are already operating on razor thin margins as it is.
Porsche's profit margin is over 16%, BMW at 8.5%, Mercedes at 11.4%, Audi at 6.9%.
Speaking of the fears: http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/studie-was-den-deu....
The title translated: "The awful truth: Electric cars destroy jobs".
I think one interesting point to keep in mind is that German manufacturers aren't the only European game in town. The Renault Zoe is the overall best selling European EV. Also, addressing an earlier comment, the Zoe EV doesn't look exceptionally futuristic. It really is an almost exact copy of the petrol Zoe. I find myself just looking for the exhaust in order to distinguish the two from a moderate distance.
Smaller, city going vehicles have a history of being more popular in Europe (Fiat 500, Mini, Polo, Smart etc), where roads don't tend to be as wide. I see quite a few Zoes and i3s in my moderate sized European city. They feel like the perfect commuting vehicle and second car, even if not particularly suited to long motorway miles.
[1] http://evobsession.com/500000-electric-cars-now-european-roa...
But those are huge companies. They cannot say "let's only sell EVs". They can't even say "let's downplay gas-driven cars and emphasize EVs".
What do you want them to do? Fire 95% of employees and sell 1% of the cars they are selling today?
Of course Tesla looks forward-looking. They are all-EV, they are fighting for profitability, they don't have existing business to protect.
And protect you must your existing business. "Pivoting" is one of the favourite words in VC and startup circles, but it's also fairy-land, not a plausible economic decision in this situation.
Seems to me that VW and BMW are not really pushing for EVs as much as they should – at least, I don't know anyone who is buying them instead of a VW or BMW with an internal combustion engine. Then again, I live in Finland, where nobody has an EV anyway.
So far, I haven't seen anything from VW or BMW that meets the performance, range, and cool factors anything like the Tesla does. I will not buy a hybrid, it seems like the worst of both worlds to me.
Once EV have reached a certain saturation amongst new car buyers, the second hand market might take some very interesting turns when that generation of cars is about to change ownership from original buyers with a high rate of home charging availability to second hand buyers with a low rate. If you are one of the comparatively rare second hand buyers with available home charging, you might see a very favorable market.
There's a lot of social conventions and what not to work out there, but I doubt any of it would be insurmountable. For overnight charging, a cord that you activate with your phone, with the activation locked to one vehicle, solves many of them.
In the US with our low gas taxes, neither the Bolt nor Model 3 make a great deal of financial sense, even after the swell $7500 tax credit.
Meanwhile US auto sales are 1 million+ per month. The larger automakers are all working on electric platforms, they aren't ignoring the market that is there, or more importantly, the market that will exist as costs come down. But the point is that they don't really have much to gain from getting way out in front of the battery costs.
Cost of ownership wise nothing will be cheaper. Check your facts.
I also wonder about the math. Edmunds puts a Civic at about $5000 a year (for 15,000 miles):
http://www.edmunds.com/honda/civic/2016/cost-to-own/
To save $2000 a year over that, a Model 3 has to go ~10 years with minimal costs beyond electricity.
Basically the cars are paid for by the minute and come with free street parking. You can unlock/lock through the app or a smartcard. This feels like BMW is trying to both figure out EVs and a possible post car ownership society.
Tesla will be similarly doomed when most people don't own their own cars (Tesla's most valuable asset is its brand and that means nothing when you aren't buying the car!).
Creative bookkeeping by selling to their own rental subsidies is nothing new in the car industry. The BMW carsharing fleets improve on that by not only creating favorable numbers, but also making them take part in a new market that might well be a significant part in future of car usage.
2. Teslas driving around right now are doing what they call fleet learning for self-driving purposes.
3. Tesla is absolutely getting ready for post ownership era of motorization, in fact the autopilot effort and announcements regarding for-profit car sharing only being available through Tesla network directly confirm that.
This is why I chuckle when everyone says "Look how few Tesla vehicles are produced!". They don't have to replace every vehicle purchased, just the vehicle miles driven. Cars sit idle 90-95% of the time, which means if you increase utilization with the Tesla Network, they need only 20-30% of total worldwide manufacturing capacity to replace all cars.
Total cars sold in the US this year? Just shy of 18 million. How many does Tesla need to build to replace that capacity if they're self driving? 4-6 million cars/year to start, decreasing rapidly depending on rideshare uptake. Easily doable with their automated manufacturing efforts.
Gonna be a bitch when Tesla manufacturing curve hits vehicle miles demand, and existing automaker sales plummet.
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000
https://i.imgur.com/5YFhBpx.png
As well as the labor force declining in general:
http://www.factcheck.org/2015/03/declining-labor-participati...
"Still, Priebus’ comment, tying the entirety of the drop in the labor force participation rate to “the Obama economy,” ignores some of the demographic and structural forces that have been driving the participation rate down for more than a decade, and that are expected to continue to drive the rate down for decades to come."
So in a hypothetical wherein Robotaxis have acheived full penetration, maybe we'll need 1/3 of the vehicles we use today.
There would likely be a lot less steel in those vehicles as well, since they'd largely be optimized for single commuters, and would need less of the redundancies built into current cars for safety.
I expect local governments to enact per mile taxes, replacing gas taxes, which at some point makes this unaffordable to constantly have your vehicle on the move for you (but still affordable if its part of a rideshare fleet generating revenue).
that being said, Volkswagen certainly is pushing electric vehicles now, all internal talk, newsletters are about the MEB (modular electric "toolbox", same as the current MQB for our conventional vehicles). The next investment meeting for the following 5 years is this november, a lot of money will certainly go for investments in electric vehicles.
Because very few people buy $75,000 cars, period. I don't know a single person either, and I'm in Canada. I know people here act like Tesla has already built and sold all these $35,000 Model 3s, but the truth is nobody has built an EV for the mainstream yet. Because it's hard.
All three companies have several brands (VW has Porsche, Audi, Skoda etc.) and each of their brands have several models. They are also produced in several factories in different countries.
4-5-6 years ago, when Tesla demonstrated to the world that an EV can have longish range and look attractive, the traditional car companies could have allocated resources and production lines to develop and produce competitive EVs. They would have been in a much better place to compete than tiny Tesla 5 years ago. But now, they are late in the game.
It's more a symptom of failed management than some function of a business law.
Everybody else pays the market price, which explains either vehicles at higher cost (BMW i8) than Tesla or vehicles with severely reduced range (VW eGolf).
It's not difficult for them to build EV. But it is nearly impossible for them to do so earning money, when they are essentially repackaging third party batteries into shells consisting of all the other stuff they are buying from their existing suppliers.
They buy on design, price, prestige, history and possibly other 'soft' aspects.
We're already starting to see BYD aiming to have 34GWH battery manufacturing capacity in 2020, same as Tesla.
I am no expert at history, however, during the 1930's Henry Ford did something similar to introduce the Flathead V8. Factories were closed, hundreds of thousands made unemployed, then, in secret, Ford worked on the V8 and the factory to make the new cars. When he was ready the gates opened and new hires were made.
They're still treating EVs as another "market segment" and that's a problem - for them.
Even though you don't like it, EVs are still a market segment. There are still lots of use cases where EVs don't make sense.
The greatest challenge they faced is one they still face: the Japanese auto manufacturers. Toyota remains unbeatable on quality; the pursuit of Toyota is claimed as an element of VW's recent fall from grace. At this point Tesla is barely a blip on the radar in comparison considering volume (current and planned) or quality.
> I believe one of VW, Mercedes Benz and BMW will bankrupt in 5-10 years. None of them have taken EV serious yet and I fear it's soon too late.
Daimler took it seriously enough to invest in Tesla, and to use Tesla as a supplier in their own B-class EV sold in the US. The BMW i series feature some pretty innovative thinking with respect to construction, materials, and design. The payoff is that the BMW i3 is the most efficient EPA-certified vehicle, more efficient than any of Tesla's models: http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/extremeMPG.jsp (e: and the i series are likely produced under a more efficient and sustainable production process, but it's hard to find a single link in support of this claim)
> Both are still concept cars but they represent what they expect their EVs should look like.
They are concepts, and so are explorations of design elements, features, etc. DFM changes the design significantly, even if one tries to keep to the concept.
> How are the Germans going to catch up?
They already have, they are just much more conservative in releasing their products because of earned experience. e: When the demand is present, the Germans and other incumbent manufacturers will be ready. This article reflects Tesla playing catchup with respect to automation, something the incumbents have already figured out.
They're far more than a blip. They are easily outselling their Japanese and German competition in their segment. Luxury cars.
> Daimler took it seriously enough to invest in Tesla, and to use Tesla as a supplier in their own B-class EV sold in the US.
They did. However, they still do not have an EV sedan or SUV in the market.
> The BMW i series feature some pretty innovative thinking with respect to construction, materials, and design.
It does. However, they still do not have an EV sedan or SUV in the market.
> The payoff is that the BMW i3 is the most efficient EPA-certified vehicle, more efficient than any of Tesla's models
Because it's tiny. It's like a clown car.
The simple fact is that the Germans know if they put out an EV sedan or SUV, they will cannibalize their own market share and their investments in combustion engine manufacturing, which are massive, will be lost. They are trying to slowly transition to EV. Tesla is using that to their advantage and eroding their market share.
https://cleantechnica.com/files/2016/01/US-luxury-car-sales-...
That was last year. This year is going to be worse for them.
The i3 is efficient not because it is tiny, but because it is light weight. Weight reduction is hard and it is a lesson Tesla has yet to learn.
> The simple fact is that the Germans know if they put out an EV sedan or SUV, they will cannibalize their own market share and their investments in combustion engine manufacturing, which are massive, will be lost.
They haven't put out an EV sedan or SUV yet because the market isn't profitable yet. The trend for engines has long been towards becoming a commodity sourced from elsewhere and tuned in-house or a scalable design, i.e., except for models where the engine is a selling point you're not investing your money in engines. As to cannibalizing their own sales, I don't understand your point.
Out of interest, are you the in the US? As I don't think the i3 is that small in the context of car sizes in other markets.
NB I also think it looks rather cute - but I've vowed never to buy another BMW.
i3 vs BMW 1 coupe: http://insideevs.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/i3-active-e....
i3 vs Mercedes B class: http://assets.inhabitat.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/201...
i3 vs Chevy Volt: http://insideevs.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/IMG_20140817...
i3 vs Tesla Model S: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-po2qhio3MHg/U-PtBsekEMI/AAAAAAAAFx...
It is very ugly, however. The mix of materials used... yuck!
This is a real car, the Toyota Mirai.[1] You can buy one right now in California. They've sold about 700 cars. $57,500, including 3 years of hydrogen fill-ups. 312 mile range. 5 minutes to refuel, not including the drive to one of the few hydrogen stations.
Here's the only hydrogen station near San Francisco, on S. Airport Blvd.[2] Hydrogen stations are subsidized by the State of California through 2023, unless somebody stops that. (Remember Arnold and the hydrogen-powered Hummer?)
[1] https://ssl.toyota.com/mirai/fcv.html [2] https://www.google.com/maps/@37.6481529,-122.4056447,3a,42.5...
This is about automation of production, and you can be sure that the manufacturers with their highly optimized supply chains and production lines have done a lot to make them very efficient.
Going as automatic as possible is often not the cheapest solution, and not the best decision with regards to public relations, lobbying power, etc. And probably not where we want to go. People need jobs after all...
Of course, big corps are also cautious and slower to move.
The reason why they haven't aggressively tackled EVs is because the market is not there. It's tiny. (for now)
Almost everyone is working on EVs and building up know how, but why would they go into it aggressively? They do just fine with gas guzzlers.
There are also big challenges with scaling up to large numbers, as seen by Tesla's issues with available batteries.
I admire Tesla for pushing innovations and creating a market. But that's almost always the role of newcomers, not the big, entrenched players.
My biggest fear is that Tesla will get chewed up in pushing technology and innovating, to the point of going bankrupt. Then the old manufacturers will swoop in and take over. (and buy up the know how)
In 5-10 years EU won't even have comfortable infrastructure for EVs, so no, no, petrol car makers will be fine.
Here's a reminder re: Toyota's coding practices: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9440094
Not one of them will be able to touch where Tesla will be in a few years from a software perspective, and that's where all the differentiating value will be in the coming wave of new automotive technology.
German banks just launched their own PayPal with way, way more bureaucracy for their customers and way less features.
VW and Mercedes had electric car prototypes when I was a kid in the 90s but they never did anything with it.
Meanwhile the german built very economic high tech cars, ever sat in a new Audi with their Virtual Cockpit ? Teslas interiors with the monstrous LCD look and feel like toys in contrast, it's not even close.
Modern diesel and petrol engines are super efficient and quiet, the infrastructure is everywhere, there is just no case for an EV only reality right now, it does not exist. Yet, they are working on EVs, trying different things and you can bet they will be ready when they have to.
I love Tesla and Musks Masterplan, but i also realise that he is a marketing and PR genius and it remains to be seen where Teslas will end up in the next 10 years. Realistically you should worry about Teslas future in the next 10 years as opposed to VW/Merc/Bmw.
The car industry is not sitting still, like Nokia. They are gradually preparing for the EV revolution. Just like Tesla is preparing for mass production.
> They also have the nerve to attack them in their own backyard where they can take advantage of German suppliers etc. What will be next? A Gigafactory in Europe?
Maybe. They allready have a factory next door from Germany, in The Netherlands, just like the German manufaturers have factories in the US.
Tesla is just going after the talent they couldn't find in the US. Nothing wrong with that. If BMW acquired a manufacturing specialist, noone would notice. But for Tesla it's still special.
> Both are still concept cars but they represent what they expect their EVs should look like.
No, they are concept cars. Concept cars have always looked a little ridiculous. Yes, the production i3 looks quite ridiculous in my opinion, but BMW never meant to sell them in any meaningful quantities. It's an experiment that sells better than expected.
BMW have also announced fully electric mini's and X3's. They will be a little later to the game when compared to Tesla. But this is historically not a winner takes all market.
> And the Tesla cars will have been trained with tens of billions of miles of self driving by then.
We all don't know how this market is going to develop (legally and technically) and which companies will be cooperating / sharing data. There are still a lot of ways to catch up. Maybe new technology comes along that will slash the amount of required training data, obliterating Tesla's advantage. We don't know.
> How are the Germans going to catch up?
They have the knowledge and infrastructure to scale up manufacturing across a broad line of models. They also have loyal customers who trust their brands. In a lot of markets, VW's cars were still selling even during / after the software debacle.
the real truth is Tesla is the one who has to watch out, the large makers have the resources to do what they want and when they want too, again look at GM and how quickly the Bolt came to market and came to market done right.
"None of them have taken EV serious yet"? You must have not pay attention to the news for the past few years.
BMW is ALL IN on EV!!! [1][2]
[1] https://cleantechnica.com/2013/10/01/bmw-electrify-entire-li...
[2] http://evobsession.com/bmw-still-aiming-models-go-electric-n...
Notwithstanding the somewhat muddy relationship between car brands and their business entities (Wikipedia has a helpful reminder that Volkswagen Group owns Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, SEAT, Škoda, Volkswagen marques; motorcycles under the Ducati brand; and commercial vehicles under the marques MAN, Scania, Neoplan and Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles), in defense of VW, people are not currently choosing between a Volkswagen and a Model S/X.
You're right about BMW and Mercedes (with the caveat that their parent Daimler AG owns quite a few brands for various submarkets that are unlikely to stop selling all at the same time) competing in luxury space - Tesla vehicles with their (comparable) lack of maintenance and cost of fueling offers a very attractive deal to luxury sedan and luxury SUV submarkets. BMW, MB, Lexus, Inifiniti, Jaguar and Land Rover would be the main brands competing for that submarket.
> I believe one of VW, Mercedes Benz and BMW will bankrupt in 5-10 years. None of them have taken EV serious yet and I fear it's soon too late.
Then you have to believe that also Ford, GM, Toyota, and other will be bankrupt in 5 to 10 years.
VW is next to Toyota the biggest car seller in the world, with Toyota currently the leader. BUT they are not doing cars only, they are also in commercial vehicles.
Second, also those car manufacturer have one big difference to Tesla, they have working manufacturing plants that build cars at a much higher automated level than Tesla does. VW has manufacturing facilities where one car is a sedan with the VW brand and the next one a convertible with an Audi brand. Tesla can't even produce Model S and Model X on the very same line depending on demand. They have separated lines.
The very key knowledge of all the existing car companies is production, and running production lines. If they want they could easily produce also other products that requires comparable assembly.
Actually, the car companies do not really care about the type of drive train. They care about the profit. They could fit any drive train into almost any car easily, when they want and if this would provide profit. But electric cars are currently have no profit. That is the problem.
By the way, most automotive knowledge is also by the TIER1. Did you know that e.g. the Model X braking system is developed, build, and delivered by BOSCH?
Also that most of the design of the manufacturing plants is provided by German companies, which is an open secret in the industry.
That may be so, but they are in deep, deep shit due to the emissions scandal. Especially now that it looks like Audis may also have defeat devices in them:
http://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/11/audis-may-have-cheated-o...
There are certain types of scandals that even huge companies cannot recover from. We'll see how things play out for VW...
EDIT: Oh it's actually 5-10 years and it's VW and BMW and Mercedes. And this is the top rated comment still...
That's not quite correct. Tesla have at least one general assembly line that can do both Model S and X:
http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/09/19/tesla-factory-tour-...
I've seen other similar reports.
Their second line may be X only.
"Fixed costs are too high, no sign that they will ever make a profit" is something you can say about almost all startups.
Musk confirmed that Tesla plans to choose a location for ‘Gigafactory 2’ in Europe next year and he added that the factory will combine both the production of batteries and complete cars.
https://electrek.co/2016/11/08/tesla-location-gigafactory-2-...
That describes the Chevy Bolt.[1] It comes off the same production line as the Chevy Sonic and looks about the same. At one assembly station, either a gas engine or a battery pack and motor go in. Reports are that every fourth or fifth car off that line is a Bolt. GM has the option of adjusting that ratio based on sales. That one line can make 90,000 cars a year per shift. They're only running one shift right now. So Chevy has, running right now, the capacity to make as many Bolts as they can sell, and can adjust output as needed.
[1] http://www.autonews.com/article/20161105/OEM04/161109897/gm-...
Yes: https://electrek.co/2016/11/08/tesla-location-gigafactory-2-...
None of them are taking it seriously, huh? You should try reading news other than this board, where everybody thinks that Tesla is dominating the entire industry, when in fact they have a tiny market share and competitors are coming on strong from all angles: Ford, GM, BMW, Apple, Google...companies that are printing billions in profits. But the German majors will be bankrupt in 5 years? Okay.
Why is it that the Tesla fans have to wish ill on the competition? It's better for all of us if everyone produces good EVs.
Don't get me wrong, I love Tesla and really admire the amazing work they are doing. I would love a Tesla Model 3. Howerver, I'd rather have a Mercedes GLE Coupe [1]. There is really nothing like owning a luxury German automobile. Also, while I am sure Tesla is on their radar, their sales are still a fraction of sales of BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, Audi, etc.
[1] https://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/vehicles/class/class-GLE/body...
They shouldn't stop there. Any good software engineer knows that even more attention should be paid to the abstract factory factories.
This place is filled with prototypical German engineers (in the good sense) and the company was always in growth-mode. I think this might be a very good acquisition for Tesla.
They're buying an existing company which is HQ'd there.
> Won't they have trouble with recruiting?
Why would they? People can easily move around.
I understand that, but it sounds like they are also planning to try and add a lot of people in the future.
> Why would they? People can easily move around.
Perhaps in Germany the attitudes are different (I recently moved here so maybe I'll find out!), but in the US you'd have an extremely hard time recruiting talented engineers to a city of just 5,000 people. Most educated people in the states want the amenities of a larger city.
You don't generally get these vast empty stretches of land between places in Germany, especially not in the West (the most densely populated region of Germany). But you also don't get American megacities like NYC, SF or LA.
The autobahn is frequently overestimated by foreigners. That there is no speed limit in principle doesn't mean that you can go any speed in practice. Most of the autobahn has speed limits and road works.
An hour drive is an hour drive, but 60 miles is an hour drive in the US, it might be 30~45mn via the Autobahn or Schnellstraßen.
> s. That there is no speed limit in principle doesn't mean that you can go any speed in practice. Most of the autobahn has speed limits and road works.
Sure, but speed limits tend to be much higher than they are on US interstate.
We don't have that many million people hubs in Germany so it's more common. And even with "Wüstenzulage" many Engineering salaries at VW are nowhere compared to SV salaries for engineers.
Especially with self-driving electric cars ;)
Also, the amount of big cities in a 100-200km radius might be interesting. And those being spread out over 5 countries.
That plus good infrastructure and moving around isn't that big a deal.
Culture counts too. In the north of the UK, the idea of living in Manchester city centre is awful compared to the idea of living in quiet rural.
I was going to say hope it has good train links for a more relaxed commute, but then relevantly the engineers might use Teslas on autopilot to work....
The good thing is most Germans living in rural areas are used to commuting by car anyway. I doubt there will be many commuters from Cologne (commuting by car from within Cologne is bad enough without having to drive for over an hour once you've managed to escape the city) but it seems like a nice region to settle down.
This was a bit of a culture clash for me when moving from a city of one million to a much smaller city of fifteen thousand. I was used to being able to take public transport to get everywhere and I can actually take the train to move between the two cities, but in the smaller city everybody has or shares a car.
There doesn't seem to be any public transit but in rural Germany most commuters use cars anyway. The next biggest nearby town seems to be Trier, which is one hour away by car.
There's also a US airforce base nearby and the town is relatively close to the borders of Luxembourg and Belgium.
I don't think they'll have trouble with recruiting. If the jobs are appealing enough, people will be willing to relocate -- if not to Prüm itself then probably to one of the nearby towns.
Wow, that's a brilliant way to keep senior talent longterm.
- The infrastructure available in Europe and Germany is tailored towards automobile manufacturing [1] -They have moved to the home turf of few of biggest automobile manufacturers . -The amount of talent available to poach would increase too.
I wonder how all the other German Automobile manufacturers look at this move.
[1]:https://www.ixpos.de/IXPOS/Content/EN/Your-business-in-germa...
Tesla is buying a relatively small company with just 700 people.
That's a drop in the ocean of automotive/manufacturing employees in Germany. The car companies have >750k employees and the suppliers another 300k employees.
I worked a few years in a german research facility for production technology and automation a few years ago and the stuff we were working on was impressive ... to say the least.
Very smart people and a lot a discipline => it's obviously paying off.
> Grohmann Engineering GmbH develops, supplies, and services production systems. Its products include assembly systems, placement machines, singulation machines, laser and bonding systems, test and thermal systems, liquid dispensing systems, product handling and tape application systems, flexfoil process equipment, fiber laying and coating systems, automated fiber-end finishing systems, terminal assembly systems, bonding and micro-molding systems, in-line assembly and molding systems, sealers, and machine platforms. The company serves automotive, telecommunications, consumer electronics, and biotechnical industries. Grohmann Engineering GmbH is based in Prüm, Germany. It has service and support centers in the Northern United States, Canada, China, Costa Rica, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, the United Kingdom/Ireland, South America, Australia, Scandinavia, Malaysia, and South Africa.
from http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.as...
The company website is http://www.grohmann-engineering.de/
Am I insufficiently caffeinated to see this as a big deal?
http://markmancapital.net/blog/2016/10/27/auto-industry-face...
"Morgan Stanley analysts think autonomy is the tipping point. “We believe shared and autonomous cars can deflate the cost per mile to as little as 20 cents, triggering a doubling of global miles travelled by 2030,” Jonas says.
At that cost, it no longer makes sense for consumers to buy vehicles. So, auto dealerships no longer make economic sense. The business-to-consumer auto insurance model collapses, given diminished risk. Ride-hailing, especially for groups, becomes cost competitive with short, regional air travel. Skippingthe TSA lines is an added bonus. Public parking spaces become mostly obsolete, yielding huge swaths of valuable urban real estate. And the economics of electric vehicles for fleets hastens the migration away from fossil fuels, leading to an energy glut and more heavily taxed electricity infrastructure."
(Not as bad as the Japanese company that bought a French robot company I'm sure)
For context: anecdotally American customers tend to overspecify their requirements with unrealistic and irrelevant details and then fail to follow the same requirements on their end. Not much of a problem for German manufacturers but certainly a bit of a culture clash initially. I bet Americans have similar stories faulting the Germans in turn though.
No, the turnover generated by the automotive sector represents 6.5% of EU GDP, in Germany it is 20%. In the US it is about 3%.
> The big manufacturers are adapting just fine
Any examples for that?
Since we don't know what the numbers mentioned above mean and if they are about comparable things, I tried to give a precise number for a sector.
In the context, your "Man" is ironic.
Another interesting thing is the entanglement of male personal identity with the corporation. Because men don't actually own fabs - corporations own fabs. Economic/legal entities designed to exploit human labour and creativity own fabs. The very people muttering these statements about real men are doing so while embedding themselves into a matrix of control.
And another way to interpret this - even if a positive vision of masculinity merely includes sufficient self dependence and a capability to provide for others - ie to be free, then this statement is blatantly true. The statement is that people who are truly able to be free are those who own the methods of production - something which the vast majority of men (or people really) in our world do not.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Men_Don%27t_Eat_Quiche