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Comment by cpach | Hacker News Reader

Why not? From my POV Germany seems good at manufacturing. E.g. Siemens. And cars.

Labor laws would still be sort of OK for a high-tech factory like TSMC.

But I think environmental policy would be really hostile to a large fab. Politics seems really fickle about it too. For "old school" industries like coal they try to bend over backwards to make exceptions, but when it comes to new players especially local politics will have little reservations to tanking your multi million dollar projects.

This can obviously be a huge benefit to the population, but if I were in the position to choose a location I'd factor that in heavily.

Problem with new players imho is the high level of corruption in certain parts of government and industry. While you cannot usually bribe a policeman in Germany, construction, permitting and industry subsidies and politics are heavily corrupt. Old-school industries are propped up by an old-boys-network and revolving doors between political parties, unions, administration and industry. Many politicians who did well by the coal industry for example got their comfortable retirement position in the boards of energy giants. Same for the car industry. Parts of those industries are even still owned by the state or federal government, e.g. Volkswagen is partially owned by the state of Lower Saxony and Germany.

That is also possibly the reason Tesla is in such trouble over their new factory. While they are a car manufacturer, and a modern, hip and green one at that, which politics openly hails as good, secretly they are damaging established interests by the traditional German car manufacturers and their allies in high positions. So the administration will nod and smile, but try to find ways to hinder them.

I think Tesla is just in such trouble because they were building their factory without having all permits. They were allowed to do that, but had to get all the permits in the end. As I understood it Tesla then build stuff that are not usually allowed, I suspect Tesla was trying to establish facts and thereby trying circumvent regulation.

I don't really see the german government here at fault. They were eager to get the factory up and running and were working with Tesla to get it built quickly. If Tesla wants to build first and get the permits later, it also has to retroactively improve things when they were not up to code. You can't just get permits because you've built something.

You get some local activism against individual factories, but generally Germany is huge in building specialized industry and they manage to push companies to clean things up. For me that's all a win.

You can find giant chemical and manufacturing plants all across Germany.

Thinking Germany is problematic is a very narrow worldview, in most countries you have huge political/corruption/business continuity risks, from unsteady electricity to broken roads to terror threats - Germany is a safe and stable bet.

It sounds like a positive incentive to cleanup the processes involved. Where there is a will,there is a way, etc. I don’t think that offshoring dirty industry is anything but NIMBYism and ultimately we need to cleanup electronics fabrication

Then why hasn't this been an issue for any of the existing fabs? Semiconductor manufacturing has been a large welcome prestige thing pretty much anywhere.

Bosch recently built a fab in Dresden (afaik), so it has to be possible.

In general investment in the "old" EU countries is less profitable due to higher taxes, salaries, and other costs. That's why most of the European companies choose to build their new factories in Central Europe: Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, etc. TSMC should do the same.

I wish :) There's no infrastructure or know-how in Poland regarding microelectronics. The only related field is ASIC design - a few offices of American companies like Synopsys (>100 employees), Silicon Creations (a few dozen employees), Cadence (a few dozen as well). Intel has a massive R&D site but they don't do hardware design here, maybe except FPGA.

I'd bet that if they were opening actual edge fab in Poland, then the priest would appear to sprinkle EUV machine

Somewhat related though, that Poland has the only memory module fab in EU:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilk_Elektronik

https://www.goodram.com/en/

In the more distant past, i.e. up to 1990, all the Eastern European countries, including Poland, had semiconductor plants and many people, both engineers and workers, with good know-how.

However, after 1990, the plants have been closed and most of the skilled people have gone to USA, Canada or Western Europe.

So for the present time you might be right, it could be difficult to find enough experienced workforce, unlike many years ago.

You can find it in the west... But then you have to pay them a lot heh

This is more relevant when you're building lower technology items (toasters, gasoline engines, etc)

Personal cost in semi factories is much less relevant (and you actually want the higher-cost employees because they know how to drive the multi-billion dollar machines)

TSMC would go to Dresden if it decides to invest in Germany.

Bosch just opened a new chip fatory in Dresden.

https://www.bosch.com/stories/bosch-chip-factory-dresden/

Globafoundries and Infinion are there, too.

https://gfdresden.de

https://www.infineon.com/cms/dresden/en/

The Dresden/Saxony area is said to have in semiconductor manufacturing "2,300 companies with roughly 60,000 employees active in the industry in Saxony and generating revenues of some €16.5 billion last year."

Apple invests heavily in a Chip design center in Munich.

https://www.apple.com/uk/newsroom/2021/03/apple-to-invest-ov...

Customers for the TSMC chips would be in the automotive industry.

Tesla builds a new EV factory in Brandenburg near Berlin... Volkswagen has several factories working on current and future EVs, ... for example the ID.3 is being manufactured in Dresden, too.

https://www.volkswagen-newsroom.com/en/press-releases/id3-st...

Siemens was good 30 years ago. More recently, they seem a little bit too tied up with politics, hiring ex politicians, getting caught bribing (e.g. in Greece). It's not a pretty sight IMO and I wouldn't want to work there.

Probably red tape?

German engineering gave us BER

What does the (mis)management of a public infrastructure project have to do with Germany's attractiveness as a base for manufacturing?

Plants don't pop up overnight to the obliviousness of the state. This proposal brings into consideration vast amounts of money, tax revenue, and employment opportunities that the government will care about. All with unique infrastructure requirements and long roadplans.

To flip the question around: what does the ability to produce executive cars have to do with Germany's ability to fix the problem Intel have been stuck on for the better part of a decade?

Everything?

The lead of construction for BER was a dutch company

Imtech? It was their German branch. Regardless, at least they could rely on Siemens and Bosch to nail the fire system, PG BBI to do the planning, and GMP for the architecture.

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