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Comment by nixass | Hacker News Reader

Make it Munich, make it Munich, make it Munich

Please not Munich. We're dealing already with an overcrowded area where the cost of living and cost of renting apartments is exploding and the market of engineers is literally empty.

North of bavaria closer to e.g. Audi in Ingolstadt or BMW in lower-bavaria would make more sense.

Still, you could reach Munich by train or 30min drive and 30min traffic jam.

I'm all for concentrating the problems in a place where I don't live.

- A Berliner

Wouldn’t Dresden seem more likely? I think after AMD built the first fab there in the nineties a lot of suppliers settled there as well?

I would also like that, but its highly unlikely :) Saxony is actively pushing towards becoming "Silicon Saxony". Munich established itself as a design hub.

Munich does have Infineon as well and it's closer to lots of the eventual customers in the automobile industry.

But is the automotive industry really the main customers for TSMC? Judging by all the news I read about the company, the main reason for the hype is that they are always on the bleeding edge of semiconductor manufacturing, which isn't usually something that you'd find in the automotive sector.

And assuming that the automotive industry is the target customer: Volkswagen has their biggest plant in Saxony, which is their main EV plant. Also, Saxony is reasonably close to Brandenburg where Tesla is currently building their factory.

Looking closely at the net of motorways, any part of germany is in close distance to VW, BWM, Daimler and Porsche.

Automotive chips are less than 1% of TSMCs volume, but they can shout the loudest, have big pockets, and lobbying power.

"Big pockets" isn't really true in this aspect. Part of the problem with the automotive chip crisis is that car companies are stingy customers and treat their suppliers badly, with insane contracts. So when production was stopped, they cancelled orders. When they restarted production, not having any stock, suppliers gave them the middle finger because they had other less stingy customers to serve.

Automotive is influential, but all their suppliers hate them with a passion.

IFX and the split of part of Intel doesn't have Fabs in Munich area - but some testing.

Please no, my rent is already high enough as it is and more specialized and skilled technical workers in the area won't drive them down.

But this also means that wages would be higher than in Dresden which makes Dresden the more likely location... But ultimately it probably comes down to tax credits :D

It probably will be Bavaria with subsidies from the COVID relief fund. Intel has plans to that effect, as well: https://www.eenewseurope.com/news/intel-eyes-bavaria-wafer-f....

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