Bosch opens German chip plant
reuters.com
reuters.com
[1]https://www.reuters.com/article/bosch-factory/robert-bosch-t...
I'd call it luck.
I doubt that in the planning stages they could anticipate the auto industry order-then-Pandemic-cancel-then-order-again wave that messed up the logistics of the semiconductor industry.
Also, at that time it was obvious that power electronics was going to be in high demand, especially of SiC type.
And in terms of the fragility of the world's industrial and economic engines, perhaps this is a realization that globalization has gone too far and the pendulum needs to swing more towards slightly higher self-sufficiency. Not even for some philosophy of anti-globalism, but merely because things are too brittle as they are now.
Zhou Enlai: "I believe it is too early to tell."
(This quote, while authentic, is too good to be true - the quote harks from 1972, and in context it is evident they are discussing the 1968 student unrest, not the 1789 revolution. Still...)
It isn't always impossible to make good general predictions. For example, some papal encyclicals have predicted with spot on accuracy the general character of how things will develop long before they did if certain things aren't sorted out. These sorts of predictions, in part, benefit from concerning the unfolding of philosophical (and theological) beliefs, beliefs which contains within themselves their own logical entailments. So these encyclicals weren't predicting particularities like "what will be the stock price of Amazon in 2030" or "who will win the presidency in 2030 and will this president like ham", but rather the general prevailing conditions, attitudes, etc. characterizing future generations and the resulting social order, for example.
AMD also had a fab until around 2008 in Dresden.
2) Other countries build chip foundries to capitalize on the uncertainty
3) The risk of China provoking world war by reclaiming control over Taiwan reduces to an acceptable level, and they take over
4) No one cares because the supply of iPhones and Alexas is not disrupted
My guess is that they see this sort of diversification from reliance on China as inevitable. They resist it of course (see 5G equipment in Europe) but their investments throughout the rest of the world paint a picture of supporting developing nations economically to the point that as they grow & prosper, they grow into client states of China.
Well just for your information, they are not. The so called chip shortage is because a Renesas factory which produces microcontrollers burned down. To put this into perspective is like Intel using one of his fabs: you have the motherboard but no processor. Usually changing a component is no big deal but in this case is like a complete redesign.
So i do not see any link here between Bosch and TSMC.( except that they both make "chips").
This actually presents a bit of peril though. China is not going to be thrilled that its industrial influence is on the decline, and the question is "How will they respond?"
We already know part of the response: We can see it play out in the contentious situation regarding adoption of 5G equipment in Europe. There is also the fact that China is investing enormous sums of money in foreign ventures and areas of the developing world, e.g., parts of Africa. These areas may effectively become client states to China.
It is, in some ways, a very interesting response to the failed methods employed by the Soviet Union. There, client states were obtained & held largely through military means. That was done either with the threat of force to client states to keep in line, or military support for regimes or regime change, for example North Vietnam.
Especially having some experience with those endeavors, China has moved on to non-military methods-- economic development. That is probably preferable to the threat massive global conflict, or even just lots of smaller ones, but if you worry about China expanding their values throughout the world, in being more effective it is also more worrying.
Probably about the best thing we can do is the path we have started on: diversification from reliance on China, and our own support in equal or greater measures of the developing world.
I should be clear though: when I talk of expanding China's values as a negative, I always mean that in the political sense of the repressive Chinese government, not the people themselves.
In contrast to smaller nations, the EU as a whole is too large to ignore even if we aren't following the line of the cold war superpowers. We can do our own thing and cooperate where it suits us.
On another note, your example of Vietnam is pretty ridiculous, as the situation was the other way around - the US invaded and committed genocide in what was originally a one-sided civil war, in the name of "holding the red wave".
Vietnam wasn't a shining example of human rights, but US policy in this case was abysmal and led to the death of millions of people. And the fact that the US stil does not not accept that they committed a genocide speaks volumes about the moral integrity defenders of the Trans-Atlantic alliance like to bring up.
And chip being important to cars has been known for a long time with stories going back to 2013 within the industry. So you can at least infer that Bosch knew this for a long time. This is their second Fab and it was planned in 2017 and confirmed in 2018.
It is like TSMC, all of a sudden everyone talks about it. But in pre-2015 hardly anyone knew them or heard of it. Those that heard of it only thought they Fab chips for Nidia. It was Apple that bring them to the forefront.
Sometimes I just think mainstream media is such an unreliable source of information I am wondering if there are any point reading them at all other than to gather the flow of current society sentiment.
Bingo. I forget the name for this law/effect, but at some point everyone runs across a story in the mainstream news about which you happen to be more knowledgeable than the author/reporter/"expert guest" and the veil is lifted for a moment and you think "wow they really don't have any idea what they're talking about!" But then they go on to trust the opinion of these same outlets on economics or foreign policy, etc.
> other than to gather the flow of current society sentiment.
Even this I wouldn't trust. Perhaps if you treat it loosely as "the zeitgeist of manufactured consent" or "what They want you to think is the current society sentiment"
I don't know if the media I consume is "mainstream media" but I haven't seen anyone blame TSMC.
Congrats.
Which is why we also need 14 years to build a new, medium sized airport in the capital.
AFAIK we still don't know where it will be built, but there has been some progress... EDIT: They agreed upon where! But they don't know when and holding another forum due to public outcry over the chosen path... sigh.
Meanwhile, Switzerland built the connection ~40 years ago [1]
But this is a special situation, a really small gap between the Swiss highway and the Austrian/German highway, so transit had to go through the villages and clogging up everything at the bottlenecks along the border (or in Höchst, Hard, Bregenz, Lustenau, Hohenems, Feldkirch etc.)
The variant that (at the time) is supposed to be built would be 8.6km.
I don't know about German but French speakers will often use circulation for traffic because it's a false friend.
Several engineering and electronics companies, led by the German giants Siemens and Bosch, struggled to retain control over the complex fire protection system that included 3,000 fire doors, 65,000 sprinklers, thousands of smoke detectors, a labyrinth of smoke evacuation ducts, and the equivalent of 55 miles of cables.
“Our part, the detection of hot air or smoke ... is functioning,” says Thilo Resenhoeft, a Bosch spokesman. “The responsibility for the dysfunction lies with somebody else.” Siemens spokesman Oliver Santen confirms that the company was originally responsible for building the “automated fire protection facility” and “the control unit for fresh-air circulation.” Testing in 2013 “showed the need for reworking part of the system,” he says. Santen declines to attribute responsibility other than to say that Siemens is “responsible for the reconstruction of the fresh-air circulation system.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-07-23/how-berli...
(The issue was not fixed until 2019. Quite disappointed, we didn't even get a Murder Horse out of it.)
Damned, I am démasqué.
Good foresight by Bosch.
It was originally scheduled to open in 2007
*edit: "completely false" isn't helpful here.
The stereotype of German efficiency is based on centuries old reputation, but not really representative of present day Germans.
https://www.dw.com/en/german-efficiency-the-roots-of-a-stere...
Maybe a better way to express it is:
The stereotype of German efficiency is based on centuries old reputation, but not really representative of present day Germans.
Anecdotally, from working and living in Germany, I've very much noticed that Germans are better with time management, and work shorter hours and get more done compared with my home country (Australia).
I'd be surprised to see contrary evidence, though it's certainly a possibility. But the article you linked does not appear to demonstrate much of substance in terms of present day productivity.
Stereotypes can be damaging, sure, but when discussing certain aspects of a culture they can be true and based on cultural norms. I don't think we should broadly dismiss them when used in the right context, and not in a discriminatory fashion.
You come from a country where trains are ALWAYS VERY LATE, Germany is efficient because the trains are just a little late.
OR
You come from a country where the trains are ALWAYS ON TIME, Germany is inefficient because the trains are just a little late.
What I do think is interesting is that people think German's are efficient. Where does that come from? That's what the article is about.
Social studies have too many variables to strongly conclude exactly why, and I'm not coming out with great sources here (om phone), but it does appear that Germany works far less than Australia, US, Mexico etc.
https://www.instarem.com/blog/are-you-working-more-than-you-...
Some of it is likely wealth. But some of it is definitely cultural attitudes to work.
The rule-following in a work setting is all about risk mitigation and rules tend to help with that. Similarly for following established processes. I know this is pretty annoying but at least I'd argue the status of work is transparent and the outcome reliable (even if it may take a long time because too many hypotheticals were considered). The unstructured working style of the US can certainly drive a German a bit crazy at times :)
In a social setting rules are also enforced to ensure that you don't negatively impact the personal enjoyment of others. For example, no mowing your lawn on Sundays so everyone can enjoy a quiet peaceful day. No talking loudly at your table in a restaurant so you don't bother the other diners etc
Compared to the US I find Germans and French to be fairly similar with the difference being that French are more relaxed in attitude but definitely complain even more than Germans haha
- We are not lazy.
- Not everyone in the country does siesta. We just have lunch.
- There is no Sun everywhere. The North is rainier than the UK. And the sky is as much as gray, if not more.
- There is no Mediterranean climate everywhere.
- Catholicism plummeted since Franco's death.
But to respond directly to you, a stereotype typecasting an entire country to lazy is damaging and not particularly useful unless you want to insult someone.
However handwaving away trends in cultures as a stereotype can also result in missing important facets, e.g. Burn out in Japanese work culture.
Are Germans more "efficient"? Idk, let's look at some data and try to nut out whether it checks out.
If it is, would be nice to know what aspects make it so. Though it's usually not simple.
It's more complex than that. In Spain the "presentismo" (being in-place ,in your office, phisically in your seat) it's taken from the middle manager/boss as a religion. Thus, productiviy is halved even if we work even more than you than average.
And, yes, OFC, this was a big issue because of the Covid and remote work over the internet.
My guess is that because there are all sorts of limits on how much people can work (there are lots of holidays here) so the industries that tend to survive are those that are highly automated, and have high productivity per worker.
My feeling is that productivity-per-worker is essentially a political choice. Low skill, low automation labour is inherently unproductive, but it's also flexible and it doesn't require any strategic direction from the state. High skill high automation jobs are very productive, but they are brittle - if the market moves, all that skill and tooling becomes worthless.
The German (also Japanese) approach isn't all sunshine and rainbows, though. In Germany, for example, a pack of ten paracetamol costs like four euros. That's about a 100x markup from what paracetamol actually costs. This is because in Germany, pharmacies are protected from competition, to preserve the sector. The same is true of taxis, for example.
Obviously nothing is universal. But to an American visiting Spain the hours of operation there are striking! I only visited Madrid and Sevilla, but I found that restaurants and many stores were open much later than I was accustomed to (my hometown mostly shuts down around 8pm or 9pm, for example), and the fact that anything was closed around lunch was very odd! It definitely gave a fun "flavor" to my trip that was quite different from, say, Singapore.
Lately France is getting a bit more of the delay too, with shops opening at 10 and closing at 19.
Technically we should be on GMT, not GMT+1. Then we aren't that far from France.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204770404577082...
2 runways, 3 terminals, room for expansion for 2 more terminals. Capacity for 27 million passengers per year, going up to 50 million once expanded.
Compared to the absolute largest airports in the world (around 100 million passengers per year), yes, it's "medium". But it would be in the top 10 airports in Europe and still something like top 50 in the world, over time.
Right now it's still only France, but German politicians are talking about adopting a similar strategy.
The French model actually aims to ban flights that have a sub 4h train connection. Meaning the Eastern European nations without high speed rail would have fewer flights affected if this becomes EU policy.
It would cut a lot of flights to neighboring countries, and domestically in Germany.
Quite simply, if you're under 4h train connection you're far enough to justify a flight.
BER is pretty safe on flight numbers.
A railroad investor could look at existing flights and accurately project how many passengers they can expect, since flights would be blocked the second they open their carriage doors.
According to [1] and [2] it wouldn' even make the top 50.
As a German I feel insulted by the whole affair. It's ridiculous how incompetent and corrupt this project was managed.
1: https://gettocenter.com/airports/top-100-airports-in-world 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Brandenburg_Airport
But hey, if this pans out, Berlin can still be an okay local airport: https://www.businessinsider.com/first-look-new-transport-hub...
I think it’s just a question of leadership
The Internet says Jeff Bezos has a bit more than 10%.
Hence companies which are either not publicly traded (like Bosch) or is majority owned by someone or other (like Amazon) is much more likely to be able to make long term decisions - as they are not always geared towards getting the most impressive earnings during the current quarter to satisfy stockholders.
In France, some years ago, they closed a plant producing automotive parts, but they kept all the employees, retrained them and started producing solar panel components. It was pretty incredible as at the same time, French companies were just laying off brutally.
However the issue isn't really that they cannot find labour - it is that they cannot find labour at a cost which makes their current business model sustainable. (Mostly an issue in labour intensive, seasonal sectors relying on unskilled labour - agriculture, aquaculture, restaurants...)
Essentially, the gripe is 'If we paid our employees a decent wage, we'd be out of business.'
Sigh.
It's funny how depriving foreigners of their livelihood is so often pitched as being for their own good.
For instance, with wages being as they are, many unemployed people would get less payout working full time in the agricultural sector than they would just sitting at home receiving unemployment benefits (at slightly less than 2/3 of their former wage).
The result being, of course, that whatever labour does show up tends to be less than fully motivated, adding to the employers' woes and reluctance to hire them in the first place.
I don't mind migrant labour at all; what I do mind is the idea that when the labour pool shrinks drastically, employers still try to avoid the obvious solution to attract labour - by increasing wages, if only temporarily.
These are extraordinary times (one can but hope), and extraordinary short-term measures to counter that doesn't seem unreasonable.
We recruit folks from Romania promising them a decent wage, say $10 and hour, and they are typically naive folks straight out of school. Part of the contract is that they are provided with lodging, food, etc. Then they realise that after getting charged $50 for living in a tent and other "charges" they actually make like $10 a day.
The sceme basically provided a steady supply of serfs to pick fruit, and noone in britain would sign up for this.
Other cases are less egrigeous, but even in skilled work, the employee may realise the opportunity is not great, but depends on the job for visa and so decide to put up with it untill they can get permanent right to stay. Its not a terrible deal, but it wouldnt work for 'natives'
I have skin in this game because I'm married to a former migrant worker who started off over here working in restaurants and coffee shops, and have a niece who's currently here in the UK as a student. She completes her studies this summer and is taking up her 2 year work visa for graduates.
They all know that once they are inside the borders, its harder for the authorities to deport them.
Its basically the price to pay for a shot at first world lifestyle.
The last thing most of them want is a crackdown.
Deportation doesn't come into this, that's only relevant once you've broken the law or overstayed your visa.
The game is about meeting criteria for a visa route, and doing seasonal work does not help in any way. Having a UK degree enables you to get a job here easier, but thats about it.
In UK, if you are switching from a short-term to long-term visa you have to leave the country and apply for a visa again from outside the country.
Even if you are applying from inside the country, the home office does not hesitate to reject applications for the tiniest reasons. Once that happens, some people might go to court if they have the money and ground to dispute the decision, if your lot in your home country is really bad you might stay illegally, but for the vast majority neither option is worth it and they move on.
Whether you are pro or against immigration, it's unclear why unscurpulous employer should be the ones to benefit from this arrangement
Yes, that is precisely the route.
The billions (like moi) in the third world have realised that the longer they violate the immigration laws, the better their chances of having some activist argue their right to stay.
Their is no other law/regulation that I know of where the longer you violate the law, the more rights your have.
Which is exactly why the boat arrivals to Australia dried up once the processing was moved outside the jurisdiction of Australian law.
They were on to us.
I suggest you research “adverse possession”, and “easement by prescription”; if you view nation-states and their territory as analogous to persons and their real property, they are quite similar concepts to what you seem to view as unique.
I imagine that backfired since those are, you know, educated, motivated and the vast majority speak English, so at least a bunch of them figured out how to contact authorities.
I wouldn't be surprised if recent batches are from less educated segments.
It probably come down to the decision of one guy at Bosch who ultimately made the decision to go ahead with this, and this sounds like it was the democratic decision of an entire population of a country - who mostly don’t care what Bosch is up to.
> The Bosch plant will make specialist power-management chips and Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) that are designed to carry out a single task, such as triggering a car's automatic braking system.
> It will not however address shortages of products like microcontrollers which have forced auto makers to halt production and are expected by industry leaders and analysts to extend into next year.
As I understand it, there are no plans to turn Europe into a chip leader, they just want to protect automotive supply chain.
[1]: https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/bosch-opens-...
https://www.bosch-presse.de/pressportal/de/en/300-mm-wafer-f...
1B is barely news-worthy.
EDIT: Mobile Eye, EyeQ5 ADAS SoC is already 7nm FinFET.
The machines ASML produces allow you make ultra precise and tiny patterns of material. You still need to choose what those materials are, figure out how you're going to create the material (as in what dopants are you adding in what quantities), what your geometry actually is, and on and on and on.
Intel with its years of experiences in semis industry and yet Intel is not in the semis equipment business and Intel was in the very early stage of semis industry.
Signify is another subsidiary, the former lightning division from Philips.
Philips itself is doing very well in medical equipment. A sensible, sustainable and profitable pivot: in an age where every Chinese factory can churn out toasters or radio's with near zero margins, it makes little sense to remain worlds' leader in toasters or radio's.
Corporate espionage is still a big thing; my girlfriend told me a story about a company presenting their new device at a trade show (iirc it was a jewelry casting machine or something). The Chinese competitor that had a stand not far from them had their stand empty, but on the third day there was a replica of that same casting machine at half the price.
Medical equipment is a lot more specialized and probably harder to duplicate, and maybe more importantly, not a race to the bottom.
Surprise for you, Chinese factory can't run with near zero margins.
Electronics industry been on the downsizing trend in China for the last 10 years.
It now costs less to hire labour in flyover states in USA, than South China.
Chinese factories themselves are rushing to relocate to South Asia.
I am aware of that. But when they can "outsource" most R&D (read: copy or steal IP) a lot of businesses have a very hard time competing against those margins.
For example, when all the costs you make is plastics (raw materials), amortisation on your machines, wages and electricity, and some Ali-express fees, you can compete with a company like Lego easily. Because Lego has those same costs, but also marketing, R&D, legal, QA, distribution and so on.
I'm not saying that any of those are "wrong" per sé. Maybe Lego is in the wrong business or on a dead end, and maybe that is not bad: IDK. But I do see why many companies are pulling out of this race-to-the-bottom and either becoming "almost entirely marketing" (Nike, Adidas, etc.) or pivoting to niches with other easier to defend moats, like Philips.
This unfair advantage would only matter if the European Philips or Lego keeps all its production (of the entire chain) in Europe, which they do not.
(by "easily", of course, I mean "super hard but possible"). If there's any European company that knows how to source and train people who can operate fabs, it's ASML.
Regulators will block this.
Did anyone offer you a course on how to design ICs in university?
I heard that Singapore NTU has 100+ graduates with PCB and IC design skills each year. If I was a chip-foundry-to-be, I'd build my factory where the employees are.
Yes, standard courses in Computer Engineering, at least here at Vienna's Institute of Technology, which with comp. eng. and masters in similar fields (just a slight focus shift to, e.g., the modelling/verification side) there's about the same order of magnitudes of students graduating per year too.
Chip foundries do not go where their employees graduate, but where they get gov incentives for building their fabs.
The Netherlands is a very dense country with an agricultural economy, and fabs take up a lot of land and dirty a lot of water; but nonetheless, there is already a fab there, belonging to NXP (formerly Philips) https://www.nxp.com/company/about-nxp/worldwide-locations/ne...
Europe is behind in fabs and has historically underfunded the industry - understandable, as it had worked fine for a long time, with globalization, long supply chains and JIT inventories. Then came nativism, "Tariff Man" and a global pandemic, and Europe had to rethink its long-term strategy.
See KLA Tencor, Applied Materials, TEL, Advantest, ASM, Hirata, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, etc probably dozens more.
For example, FOUP cleaning machines are made only by Gudeng (as well as ultra low particle FOUPs themselves,) and don't think that "cleaning machine" is any much less sophisticated than other equipment. It's the size of a truck, made of space age materials to survive fluorines, and costs many megabucks.
Did this actually happen? Does Intel buy ASML machines?
The same reasons why the US doesn't have much presence any more:
1) Environment protection and emission laws: just look at the Silicon Valley, half of it is a Superfund site from decades of silicon manufacturing.
2) Lack of skilled and experienced (!) engineers
3) For Europe: lack of access to the many billions of dollars that a fab build requires
4) Cost: No matter what you do, simply alone due to wages, real estate and raw material cost, US and European-made components will always be more expensive than Asia-made. The military can afford it to specify "homemade" as requirement, but everyone else will be going with whoever is the cheapest option. Yes we have a bit of a supply stretch at the moment ("thanks" to shitcoin miners and fuck-ups by automotive), but this will even out sooner or later and the prices return to their old normal level, which means a domestic production won't be cost-effective any more, which in turn means it's hard to get funding for such a project from banks.
The only way out is massive government investments and subsidies.
Is one better than the other ?
If anything, corona has shown us how extremely unhealthy the dependency of modern society on the automotive industry is. We need to wean ourselves off of that, and the sooner we begin the better - climate change is the next catastrophe waiting in the starting block.
We don't have a culture of crazy investors, nor one of hypergrowth - I mean how many US startups went from nothing to a $1B valuation or takeover in a year, maybe two after they first started making waves?
Wages are not as crazy. Neither is cost of living, but it does mean the most talented people will pursue a career where the pay matches. Anyway when you consider things like income taxes going to a government that doesn't spend more on the military than any other country, socialist policies, and sane health care, it does even out a lot.
It's not as much of a union as they want to make believe. Anything that grows to a certain size will deal with a lot of international headaches. Freedom of movement and trade has made things a lot easier (something the UK wasn't aware of apparently, probably still stuck in English exceptionalism, and they're getting fucked over left and right because of it at the moment).
I mean one project going on right now is "they" are trying to build a EU focused AWS / GCE competitor, but instead of empowering or investing in a single company, or letting the market work for a company to rise in the ranks, they're making it some big international semi-government affair, where each country is fighting hard to protect and promote their interests. It's turned into not a technical or business challenge, but a political one. I mean I'm a complete fuckwit myself but give me a few billion in spending money and absolute power and I'll build you a secure EU cloud provider.
Taiwan doesn't have either crazy investors or hypergrowth. I suspect the chip hardware business requires many years of steady-but-compounding growth.
As for the AWS/GCE competitor: I suspect the policy goal is not to have one platform/product in X years that will soon be outdated. Rather, it's to nurture and grow a competitive domestic ecosystem that is self-sufficient. That way, you may have dozens of AWSes in thr future that keep you on the leading edge (not just inplementors)
TSMC started in 1987, and AFAIK, the government of Taiwan invest in the company to help their grow.
EU started some years ago, investing in R&D in this sector, some years ago. We need to wait at least a decade to see a real impact starting to grow with this initiatives.
also somehow people forget chips these days are really powerful.
Only powerful ;-) ? Just found out some FPGAs have embedded processor cores with them (no need to generate them like in 2000) just because their customers already need that and they have enough gates to use.
Other recent stuff like in the RPI2040 microcontroller is a way to code your own "independent" IO sub-programs that run in parallel by a dedicated procesor that does not interfere in your code.
Hardware never stops to amaze me.
I'm now curious how this all works in practice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bosch_GmbH#Corporate_af...
Seriously, look at their 'project list,' a film award is #2!
It may not be charity, but at least it’s stable.
I mean, the arts are something I support, because it is something I can afford. If I had more money, Id probably want to try harder to make a difference.
That's just my opinion, though. I'm happy they are doing something rather than nothing.
The Wittelsbacher family got of easier so, than the Habsburg rulers (they lost everything, Austria even went so far to abolish every single noble title) and the Hohenzollern of Prussia. I guess it helps not being in the main crosshairs of the Entente back then.
I'm looking at their financial report for the year 2019 and that's just not true. They are a very complex organization and simply looking at one film award project and calling the whole thing a scam is very wrong and frankly lazy.
Personnel and other operating expenses attributable to administration + Financial expenses, depreciation and amortization, and changes in provisions
and you're just cool with that?
I wonder if the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has the same criticisms?
Like I’m sure all the black business owners in Tulsa would have loved to do the same for their grandchildren, but were systematically denied that opportunity. Why should we go so far out of our way to support the will of certain dead people but not all of them?
We need generational wealth in the country. For people who are in top .01% they should have a wealth tax but for those in the top 1% and below they should be able to make sure future generations can have a chance to be successful.
Taxing those ill-gotten gains and improving the welfare state would probably be a more just outcome, no?
All this is to say that the broader public seems to be more efficiently entrepreneurially (in terms of creating new wealth) than what is achieved by hereditary wealth. Hereditary wealth transfer already has a huge leg up through social and educational networks and educational “legacy” that backstopping through actual wealth transfer on top of that doesn’t seem great for society as a whole.
On the other hand, if you have some data to indicate that children of entrepreneurs are better capable at starting new businesses than the general public I’m certainly interested to see that. My understanding above is a synthesis from studies I’ve come across and the general concept of reversion to the mean (eg the most unique individuals in any field/specialty you could name generally pop up spontaneously in the general population rather than consistently being overrepresented in a lineage). This makes sense for the survival of the species too- you want diversity so that you don’t overfit a given ecosystem and become hypersensitive to those conditions remaining true.
I like this part of the results:
> For example, in 2004, the net profit was US$2.1 billion, but only US$78 million was distributed as dividends to shareholders. Of that figure, US$72 million was distributed to the charitable foundation, and the other US$6 million to Bosch family stockholders. The remaining 96% of the profits were invested back into the company. In its core automotive technology business, Bosch invests 9% of its revenue on research and development, nearly double the industry average of 4.7%.
too bad that despite that they still decided to help vw fudge the emissions tests numbers
What makes you think they don't?
Neither private nor public businesses have to put profit maximization above all else. It's entirely a myth that that is a legal requirement or responsibility.
That is especially the case for private companies (ie most businesses), which further do not typically have the pressure of huge numbers of shareholders or large institutional investors / funds.
Sometimes one might wish a company would actually focus on sustainable profitability, not just on the short-term appearance of profitability. You'll routinely find incompetent management that does a poor job of focusing on sustainable profitability at all, and the business always suffers for it. From IBM to GE. Instead, their management put a focus on financial engineering - creating a conveniently expedient fake profile of profitability, while the bottom rotted out from under them.
Berkshire Hathaway by contrast - a $500 billion company - has openly pointed out to shareholders for 40-50 years now that they had no intention of pursuing a strategy focused on merely maximizing profit above all else. Simultaneously they have one of the greatest records of the last ~200 years for business performance. Berkshire knows the winning formula is to focus on the long-term and focus on having healthy businesses (which always means not only focusing on profitability), that the opposite is like a high sugar diet, maybe a bit of fun in the short run, and it'll kill you in the long run.
Most businesses that last a very long time and generate great returns operate more like Berkshire Hathaway, rather than the opposite (and certainly during their heyday they do, which may provide fuel to last a long time even as they rot). There are a seeming infinite number of ways a major corporation can try to focus on profitability at the expense of all else, and that's always a mistake. Smart, long-term thinking managers know that. If you find a company that actually focuses on profitability above all else, sell and don't look back, it won't end well; it never does. Focusing on profitability above all else means paying all of your best employees very poorly, which means you'll always be starved for talent and your business will fail given time.
There is a large amount of nuance involved in operating a for-profit business. Choosing to focus on the long-term vs short-term, financial engineering vs investing for the future, sacrificing shorter-term profits for a healthier longer-term business. The best businesses typically focus on the longer-term, not the shorter-term, and do not focus just on how they can blow out quarterly earnings or max out their profits here and now (inevitably that catches up with the business, and it all implodes).
I'm no expert on German stiftungs, but I tend to think of foundations as a subset of charities and that "not charity" wouldn't be quite right.
I was told however, that nowadays, due to a lot of acquisitions it's really hard to tell what kind of quality you get when it says Bosch on the box.
[0] https://www.bosch.com/stories/origin-robert-bosch-stiftung/
The Carlsberg Foundation spends its proceeds from Carlsberg on funding science and arts, so if you want to drink beer with a good conscience…
Edit: a more proof version is to put the 1% into another entity like a C-corp or a trust that you control. Estate planners have a field day dreaming up these schemes.
A bankruptcy judge would not hesitate to void this clause if those shares were being transferred by virtue of bankruptcy seizure.
The shares immediately loose all voting rights in that process.
The reason is to prevent a potentially hostile party from entering the shareholder group.
Edit: Here’s a better reference with an example what such a clause in the companies charter could look like: https://gmbhg.kommentar.de/Abschnitt-2/Einziehung-von-Gescha...
The Stiftung has no voting rights, however. Its voting rights are with a KG entity, which in turn has no ownership in the operative auto supplier entity.
The Stiftung receives a share of the auto supplier entity profit every year. Both entities operate separately, with the Stiftung pursuing various focus areas in healthcare, education, etc. The Stiftung also has a separate board whose mandate it is to execute on the Stiftung’s mission. It has nothing to do with making operative decisions at the auto supplier.
In 2020, the auto supplier paid approx 50% of its pretax profit in taxes.
The Bosch family is not involved. I only notice them via public news essentially.
It is nice to know that a big part of our profits goes into a charitable foundation instead of faceless stock holders.
Not being a public company means nobody cares about quarterly results. There is rather a yearly rhythm. The downside is that Bosch cannot get big cash infusions quickly. In case of a pandemic, this is an additional risk. Worked out though.
And this is why I like Bosch so much (as an employee for a very similar amount of time). The working climate in most places is relaxed compared to most competitors and there's less focus on looking great in random metrics every quarter, which makes actually doing your work easier.
> The downside is that Bosch cannot get big cash infusions quickly. In case of a pandemic, this is an additional risk. Worked out though.
Yep, it actually worked out much better than anticipated. They were able to generate a free cash flow of 5 billion Euro. AFAIK that was mainly because Bosch has a very good reputation of being financially stable. (Here is the source in corporate speech https://www.bosch-presse.de/pressportal/de/en/bosch-stays-on...)
Btw, I remember your nickname from your lobsters post about software architecture. Pretty cool to see fellow Boschlers active here or on lobsters!
link: https://www.bosch.com/stories/ibm-mainframe-computer-history... but I swear I saw more pictures somewhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...
It looks like this is the third plant of Bosch. The technology node is 65nm.
In 2009, Bosch issued a voluntary recall on certain model dishwashers that could overheat and pose a fire risk to consumers. In 2013, a second global recall was issued and covered more than five million machines. https://www.classaction.org/bosch-dishwasher-fire
But 2013 was so long ago in Internet years, wasn't it?
We own a Bosch dishwasher. We bought it knowing about their previous problems, because it was very quiet. The only thing I dislike about it is it insists on beeping every 10 minutes after completing a load. STFU, I know the dishes are clean!!!
Ironically, our previous non-Bosch dishwasher caught fire. Literally.
It's just that BSH is very small part of Bosch compared to the automotive parts of Bosch.
https://amp.dw.com/en/bosch-pays-90-million-euro-fine-over-d...
> The state-of-the-art technology in Bosch's new semiconductor factory in Dresden shows what outstanding results can be achieved when industry and government join forces," said European Commission Vice-President Margrethe Vestager.
who just cites the Bosch press officer, who even dared to mention AI and self-driving cars.
In reality this far away from "state of the art" or "outstanding". The plan is a 65nm fab, now they are still running 130nm for a year already. Their neighbors in Dresden are Infineon with a 90nm fab, and Global Foundries (Ex-AMD) with 22nm. This was once state of the art (some decade ago). Current state of the art is 4-7nm in Taiwan, and Germany/Europe is not even close.
130nm is close the masks which can be produced at home, just not at scale. http://sam.zeloof.xyz/
Some plant parts are state of the art though coming from Dresden. Such as the Ardenne wafer coating machines, which are used in Taiwan also.
But it also provides a stepping point for something more more aggressive if that's the future they want to move in.
The UK, given Brexit, needs to make at least 2 moves like this.
And the US needs to make 5.
This is a 65nm fab, still running for the last year at half density at 130nm. Neighbors in Dresden have much better fabs,Infinion with 90nm and Global Foundries (ex-AMD) with 22nm.
So the Bosch Asics will run at roughly C64 speeds. Good enough for consumer cars.
The fact that these are 150 and 200 mm fabs tells us that these are using machinery from the 80s or early 90s, respectively. So these fabs are probably using several-hundred nm processes.
> have much better fabs ... So the Bosch Asics will run at roughly C64 speeds. Good enough for consumer cars.
Maybe look at Bosch's semiconductor portfolio? They're not in the business of making commodity parts like processors or MCUs which benefit from being on small nodes. They do specialty mixed-signal, power ASICs and MEMS devices.
Smaller is not always better. This is easy to overlook when "silicon" is only though of as CPUs and GPUs.
No one offers it. Perhaps there will be a retro boutique Ferrari one day for the 0.01%. The rest needs tracking and surveillance.
Anyone here has more information about the projected products and other technical detail
Still though, I wish them good luck.
> The Bosch plant, which received 200 million euros ($243 million) in state aid under a European Union investment scheme, will start making chips for power tools in July, with output of automotive chips to follow from September.
> "The state-of-the-art technology in Bosch's new semiconductor factory in Dresden shows what outstanding results can be achieved when industry and government join forces," said European Commission Vice-President Margrethe Vestager.
> Kroeger said Bosch supported a broader strategic push by Brussels to revive Europe’s semiconductor industry. A recently unveiled plan targets doubling the region’s share of global chip production to 20% by 2030.
I saw a Guardian headline the other day that said Biden's mission at the G7 meeting is to find allies for a new Cold War against China[1], but the USA isn't actually a reliable partner for the EU, what with Trump 2024 a scenario they can't even rule out yet (thanks to the obstructionist party still being very influential and working very hard to disenfranchise voters). So it makes sense for the EU to ramp up chip production.
Interestingly for Bosch or other tech companies, it's probably a no-lose scenario, the EU money will probably keep coming for them.
[1] I DDGed "Biden new cold war" but the results are headlines that say he's accelerating it...
The only thing relevant for the US re risking starting this niche is brain drain and talent. The market is always growing, they already have vertical demand (power tools and simple car chips), and new more-local competition can never be dismissed.
It always comes down to the people at the end of the day. Your 2nd paragraph quote where they are declaring this a successful example of public/private just because the factory was built is a bit concerning to me. They’ve mearly just begun.
That's unlikely due to extremely high taxes in the EU for individuals. People who know their stuff tend to migrate where they get more in return for their talents.
Frankly, I don't see the point of celebrating the fact that my money is going to private companies as premiums/co-payments rather than to the central government as taxes, while getting worse medical outcomes for it (with a risk of medical bankruptcy).
Taxes actually come out about the same when you add the multitude of separate tax systems in the US (federal income, social security/medicare, state, local), and then in the US additionally have to pay extra for things that are paid by taxes in Europe, health care being the biggest such expense.
And then there is the expectation of working 24/7, nobody has much vacation and nobody takes what they get, etc etc etc. Yeah, quality of life for Americans is nowhere comparable to Europeans, unless you're in the "I no longer work for money, my money works for money" set.
Plus chip shortage/supply chain disruption makes it even more valuable.