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Comment by fwsgonzo | Hacker News Reader

The Swedish Transport Agency says they are only able to ship license plates using PostNord according to regulation, so I'm not sure how exactly Tesla thought they were going to win this lawsuit.

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Tesla is trying any means necessary since they know that Swedish labour laws are strong: if they do not have a union agreement, workers are allowed to strike (indefinitely). This vacuum we are now in is probably very costly for Tesla so I at this point I think it is an ideological/personal battle..

> This vacuum we are now in is probably very costly for Tesla

i would assume the nordic markets are tiny compared to the RoW. does anyone here have any data on revenue from those markets for tesla?

Costly in terms of eventually being forced to choose between allowing unionization and leaving the nordic market entirely.

It's something that just about every other big anti-union American company have had to deal with and it's in the past always led to the American company basically surrendering and allowed unionization usually without any major loss of profit/revenue, apart from the money wasted fighting the strong and very popular Scandinavian trade unions.

Yup, not aware of any US company that would have exited nordics because of unions. Nordics are politically very integrated societies and large scale actors are all perceived to ”play on the same side” including unions etc. So Tesla is not just taking on the unions, they are challenging the entire social contract by proxy.

> leaving the nordic market entirely

This is an entirely Swedish conflict. Neighboring countries have their own systems.

Last I heard, Tesla is the biggest auto brand in Norway!

Norway and Sweden are both top 5 countries in sold Teslas.

less than 10% of US sales

Which is a number that makes it worse... it means they're only popular in at most 4 countries, and have stiff competition (or in general unappealing to buyers) everywhere else.

If they were selling like hotcakes more equally around the world, a place with only 10% of US sales would not be in their top 5.

Sure do, https://www.statista.com/outlook/mmo/passenger-cars/tesla/sw... sweden is $629m annually for tesla out of Tesla's $26b total annual revenue.

If I were Musk, I'd just shut down the whole operation in Sweden. It is not like the country is particularily big.

I believe this is what will happen. The Swedish unions can’t budge, and Elon won’t budge, so there’s really no other solution to this conflict.

Elon dont control Tesla the way he does X and have been consistently overruled by his the tesla board of directors so this will merely be another case of Elon loosing face.

Then he will likely have to do so in Denmark and Norway too.

If he does that, he will have to do the same with norway, and probably Denmark too.

Also, Tesla will have to open-source his hardware, because it will have to respect warranties, and without transport/local Tesla shops, the only alternative will be conventional car shop, which right now cannot really serve Teslas, at least in France.

> because it will have to respect warranties

How? If they leave how can a fine be levied against them? EU?

Yes, sorry i wasn't clear, but consumer protection laws spawns across all EU (i think it's more than that, even Switzerland is in that agreement), so if Tesla do not respect Swedish warranties, Tesla would be at risk in the whole EU.

And Eu is not the US. Some young people might like and follow Musk and his venture a lot, but most people just do not care about him, and when it comes to consumer laws, EU do not joke around. If you have to trust EU to agree on one thing, it's consumer protection. More than market integrity, for sure (hence what is allowed to happen in Ireland: if you do not import consumer grade product or food, the irish sea border basically isn't enforced). So unless Tesla is far more popular accross EU than the Uk, Tesla will have to bend.

EU sucks ass for consumer protection. I bought an overengineered EU designed electric plug adapter in Paris. It wouldn’t work without applying 10kg of force to insert my charger, which it broke doing so.

Store wouldn’t offer a refund only replacement. Only got a refund after I made the clerk test the replacement which also had the same issue.

Same happened with floss that was the thickness of shoelace. Tried to return but Monoprix wouldn’t take it.

In the US, stores take back anything and if they don’t it’s a credit card chargeback away (which I would have done for the electric plug if they didn’t refund me.)

If you didn't involve the authorities to exercise your rights, it sounds more like anecdotal experiences with those particular stores than the entire EU "sucking ass".

> he will have to do the same with norway

It seems to be gaining regional momentum [1].

[1] https://www.transportarbetaren.se/brett-stod-i-tesla-konflik...

> Also, Tesla will have to open-source his hardware, because it will have to respect warranties, and without transport/local Tesla shops, the only alternative will be conventional car shop, which right now cannot really serve Teslas, at least in France.

If force majeure is a valid reason to not receive mail, how is it not a valid reason to ignore warranties? Sauce for the goose and gander and all that.

Sorry, the situation is complex and I should have been more clear. As long as Tesla tries to operate normally in Sweden despite the strike, it probably won't be an issue (might go to court but it will win). If Tesla leave Sweden however, and the strike stops, Tesla might have to open source its hardware for local mechanics.

Consumer protections.

Currently the 5th biggest market for Tesla.

Only the 5th largest country, ans by doing so they might shut down their 4th largest country, Norway, as well.

less than 10% of US sales

5th largest country by what measure? It's definitely not even in the top 50 by population nor by the territory.

5th largest country by revenue. By the "population" or "territory" logic, Russia, India and China should be the most important markets for Tesla (they are not).

China is not? Tesla's revenue from the US is double that from China and from China is more than from the rest of the world yet Sweden is so important?

Are they on strike though? Are they refusing to come in to work and not being paid?

From the blurb it sounds like they're choosing to not deliver mail to one particular person/company .. which sounds absurd.. I assume postal workers can't on their own decide to not deliver mail to people/companies they don't like as long as it's framed as a protest

I think they probably have the power to not cross a picket line, or even a full blown sympathy strike if they want. In this case, the union who wants Tesla to accept the sectoral contract is striking, so the postal union is refusing to cross the picket line by doing business with Tesla.

That doesn't make sense. It says they're refusing to allow Tesla to pick up the license plates as well. And in any case, is a picket line a legally protected entity now?

Just going by what's been reported, so let me clarify I'm totally ignorant of the actual facts of Swedish law. But it appears that Tesla can't pick the plates up due to a law on the books stating that plates must be sent via mail.

I'm using the word "picket line" informally to describe a strike / labor action, which I would guess is a legally protected and regulated thing in Sweden, as indeed in the US.

It doesn't make sense? How so? They are supporting the strike by boycotting Tesla.

Stealing or withholding property is not a legitimate form of striking. If you don't want to deliver something, fine, but you can't stop someone from picking it up themselves

Welcome to Sweden, where unions and corporations determine the rules, and the government tries to stay out of it.

Which is actually a great system in my opinion. However, the government does still have to step in if the parties break law.

They are not stealing or withholding the property - they are refusing to deliver it. They are not stopping someone from picking it up, postnord is. It would be weird for any carrier to allow outsiders to enter their premises.

There are two defendants: postnord and the state agency.

Postnord should not refuse to let Tesla collect the plates that Postnord has. That would be theft

How is it theft? Nobody is touching the plates.

This could be more expensive for Sweden if the US gov decides to retaliate (current or next one) or companies watching this and considering entering their market or not.

I mean, this is hardly the first time this has happened; US and other foreign companies have incurred the wrath of the unions in the Nordics before. Why would the US _government_ retaliate against the Swedish _government_ for a dispute between the Swedish unions and a company? What form would this retaliation take? Bear in mind that, for practical purposes, even if for some reason it wanted to (and again, why would it?) the US couldn't really impose trade sanctions on Sweden without starting a trade war with the Common Market as a whole.

As for other companies entering the market, like, this is a thing companies know about the market before going in. This isn't something new.

>Why would the US _government_ retaliate against the Swedish _government_ for a dispute between the Swedish unions and a company?

If you want to go down a fun rabbit hole, look into conspiracy theories about how many things Tesla's (and Amazon's and Apple's and Microsoft's and-) stock price is propping up.

US officials have done so lots of times. Go to any official political meeting between countries and US businesses are participating together with state officials. Like in US China meetings.

Xi Jinping just met with Tim Cook, Elon Musk, etc.

Good, I’m rooting for the people. Tesla (and others) are blatantly ignoring human decency and social contracts in the pursuit of their founder’s greed. This must stop. I’m glad Sweden has strong enough labour unions to battle this at scale and head on, unlike most other countries where it’s too easy for corporations to exploit workers with little to be repercussions other than the occasional drop in the bucket settlement and massive profits.

The court just ordered the agency to hand over the license plates to Tesla within a week.

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/domstol-teslas-registreri...

I feel like this is more performative and/or grasping at straws, kinda like the recent X Corp v Media Matters suit.

Clearly performative IMO. The likely outcome is that the 100-odd employees Tesla have in Sweden are transferred to some other organization (with a union agreement) and Tesla proper just does not do business directly in Sweden.

Clearly performative?

The court just ordered the agency to hand over the license plates to Tesla within a week.

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/domstol-teslas-registreri...

First, this will not be decided by the tingsrätt, second, the context is wider than this single issue. The “performative” is why doesn’t Tesla just sign a union agreement, that is performative.

> The “performative” is why doesn’t Tesla just sign a union agreement

Because very few (none?) employees working for Tesla are actually on strike. There are a lot of postal employees, dockworkers, etc on strike, but not many from Tesla.

It appears that the IF Metall wants Tesla to sign a collective agreement, but neither Tesla nor most (all?) of Tesla's employees want that. As far as I can ascertain, the union's only grievance against Tesla is that they do not have a collective bargaining agreement (not pay, not conditions).

IF Metall has gotten so little traction that they are offering even non-member Tesla employees 130% of normal pay to go on strike, and also publicly talking about sanctions against member employees who continue to show up to work.

> they are offering even non-member Tesla employees 130% of normal pay to go on strike

That's what all striking members get. The extra 30% is meant to make up for benefits lost during the strike (e.g. retirement fund contributions and vacation day accrual).

The "special" thing they've done is to waive the waiting period that normally applies to new members, so that workers who do agree with the strike can join without to much financial risk.

> talking about sanctions against member employees who continue to show up to work

The sanction is expulsion from the union. Strikebreaking weakens the strike and the union, so that makes perfect sense.

On the "what is the legal basis for..." I think Tesla is beginning a process to have their hinds (and stock price) protected. A businessman will not just raise his hands up in the air in despair and say "ok I will not proceed". No, he/Tesla is suing as they have every right to and if local/top Swedish court says "oops can't do anything" then they can easily escalate to a higher court (EU) will solve it for them. Meanwhile a higher court can slap Sweden with a beautiful fine i.e. "after 1/1/2025 you will be paying €1m per week until you resolve this.

There are many solutions to this problem, and Swedish post office being a sympathetic dick is not (imho) the right way.

Sounds like an extremely optimistic timeline for this suit to have gone through the Swedish administrative court, the Swedish administrative court of appeal, the Swedish Supreme Administrative Court, the EU legal system and have the EU legal system impose a penalty payment in 400 days.

If Tesla has to do this, I'm guessing their cars are not going to have license plates for quite some time.

Wrong. The longer it takes the better for Tesla because they just won an interim decision in court.

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/domstol-teslas-registreri...

This was just one step on one issue. It sounds like Tesla may encounter many other turns and blockers in Sweden and neighbouring countries.

It's not the post office, it's its employees. Being a dick must be culture-dependent as I don't think many Swedes will consider someone being a dick for protecting their nation's social contract.

The EU doesn't have a say in this matter.

It will if they go to court, Tesla loses and escalates each time. After the supreme court of Sweden you can take things to the EU court.

You can take things to the EU courts only in specific cases. You have to find out if it's an applicable human rights issue (it isn't). You can try to get the European Commission interested (good luck with that). Etc. Even if an EU court examined the case and made a decision, Sweden wouldn't necessarily implement the judgement.

See e.g. https://commission.europa.eu/about-european-commission/conta...

>After the supreme court of Sweden you can take things to the EU court.

The EU doesn't have an appellate court; unless there's a question of interpretation of EU law (and that's for the court to decide, not parties to the case) there's no basis for making a referral.

The court just ordered the transport agency to hand over the license plates to Tesla within a week.

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/domstol-teslas-registreri...

For now. And why do you copy and paste this comment?

Have you seen this thread? So many branching conversations saying Tesla will lose. (They might eventually, but for now, they’re not.)

They've already won an injunction.

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