Tesla acquires German battery assembly line maker supplying BMW and Mercedes | Hacker News Reader

Tesla acquires German battery assembly line maker supplying BMW and Mercedes

electrek.co

41 points_Microft18 comments

I think the lithium supply chain news is more interesting, before (Australia->China->Japan->California) now (Virginia-> Texas)

EV stock channel: Tesla & Piedmont deal changes everything https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysIlkxP1D5M&feature=youtu.be...

I think you mean North Carolina, not Virginia. North Carolina is where the lithium industry originally came from.

They will also try to source from their own mines in Nevada, but that is a bit further off.

They will continue to also use the traditional route as well for many more years.

Scale requires all suppliers on all levels of refinement.

Shouldn't this ring any anti-trust bell?

Why would that be the case? Its a small company that was already in financial trouble.

> The company was in financial trouble and there were reports that it was about to close its doors.

> Now we learn that Tesla reportedly swooped in and bought the company of 210 employees.

At present, Tesla's share of the auto market is miniscule. 92 million autos were made in 2019, and at present Tesla has produced a total of a million vehicles over the past 17 years.

German automakers have everything they need to beat Tesla and yet I keep watching them doing nothing year after year. Oh yeah, the people that really build these companies in the first place were squeezed out it seems.

Exactly. Engineers need to be in charge of engineering companies. Boeing is a case study in what happens otherwise.

Maybe you are wrong in your assessment that they have everything they need.

Possible. But I know how they operate and they loose a lot of effort on nothing really.

Maybe you are wrong in your assessment that they are doing nothing year after year. Did any news of Volkswagen electric vehicles reach you?

Sure. Nothing was more pathetic than seeing a tv ad telling me about an electric VW car that I can not buy because it's not ready... This ad was preceded by another ad that was full of electric concept vehicles. None of it exists in reality.

> Oh yeah, the people that really build these companies in the first place were squeezed out it seems.

There seems to be a misunderstanding about the age of these companies. Both are a hundred years old - the founders died long ago.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz

Good. German automakers are known for squeezing their suppliers dry. Well guess what, maybe what they provide is worth more than the pittance the German car industry is willing to pay.

What I'm hoping for is competition that is willing to pay "fairer" prices, pushing prices up. The position of automakers against smaller suppliers is just so strong otherwise.

Its funny, some German Automakers are still using the 'Tesla bought Grohmann' as an excuse for slow EV roll out like 2-3 years after the sale.

This is great for Tesla, 210 people with experience in building battery lines is exactly what Tesla needs in Germany.

End all contract with the other manufacturer, focus on your own vertical integration, basic Tesla playbook.

Your answered yourself there. Tesla does not needs these guys, BMW and Mercedes do.

Remember when Apple went after the small Asian company that did the aluminum unibody for Asus laptops? Same thing here, just in a different business.

Tesla wants to grow 50% a year, they need everybody who even remotely knows what he is doing when it comes to battery production.

German automakers already are far behind and they try to stick to their combustion engines. Letting a battery manufacturer go insolvent just paints this picture more colorful. Hope that Tesla will have success with their plans in Germany, the industry here needs to wake up.

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