Sweden's Northvolt files for bankruptcy, in blow to Europe's EV ambitions
reuters.com
reuters.com
According to this (and other) reports, they never got their high volume production yields anywhere near that of their (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) competitors, which made their end products far too expensive. Geopolitics aside, they didn't have any competitive edge, it's difficult to see where they would get it, since both their raw materials and manufacturing equipment were majorly imported from Asia.
If you want to rush building a 'giga factory' you need to pay up for skilled people.
Which they didn't.
You don't get relevant engineers and workers to move to the middle of snow-where for the same wage as they have now.
And they tried to scale up production even before they were able to make proper batteries...
Dunno how they thought there would be room to house like 4000 employees in such a small town on such a short notice.
The effect on hireing is enormous. After you employeed all available able bodied locals you get desperate people happy to live in barracks.
IMHO, this is one of the biggest issues holding back EU labor mobility in places with strongly regulated rent controls. You're an EU citizen and wanna move somewhere else for a job but you get fucked on the housing market because the locals have privileges you don't have, so either employers need to take a hit and compresate foreign workers more for the trouble, or they don't and so you either get fucked if you choose to move to work there, or you don't bother moving at all because it's a shit deal so the employers are starved of labor and go bust. And that's besides the legal, linguistic and cultural hurdles you have when moving to a new country where you don't know the system and don't speak the language.
The EU fixed a similar issue like this when universities gave special privileges and conditions to local students but not to students coming from other EU countries who were being charged money for things the locals got for free, so the EU forced them to have to give the same benefits and treatments the local students were getting to all EU students coming to study there, ending this discrimination.
IMHO, the same needs to be done on the housing side if we wish to have actual labor mobility that improves the block's economic potential, and not just one that's on paper and holds back economic development by wanting to screw foreign workers of more money to prop up the local housing bubble.
If a skilled EU citizen moving to another EU country for work, the new host country is already getting a huge break for getting a new taxpayer paying into the welfare system out of the box for free, without having invested 20+ into their education like it did for the locals, so then why double dip and also screw them over with unfavorable housing rules that only serve to enrich landlords?
The economically superior way to help locals of lower means is through income transfers (because it fucks up the market way less), but the politically superior way is via price controls (because you hide the tax-transfer redistribution and can pretend that you're just sticking it to fat-cat landlords/corporations/investors).
I think they argue that Northvolt could have funded enough housing if they wanted. But they seemed to mainly have housed workers in barracks. I think 1000-2000 something lived in barracks.
Sure, this aids the locals on the short term and is politically popular, but I fear this kind of local protectionism and NIMBYism will further nerf the EU economically on the long term on the global stage (EU economy is now half the size of the US one, when 20 years ago we were on par).
I'm thinking on SF and the Bay Area. The tech boom there caused a lot of gentrification and displacement which was bad for some of the locals, but the tech industry there was still a massive net benefit to the US economy in the grand scheme of things.
So I don't think rent control and price brakes for the locals is the right solution. IMHO you should let the free market run its course and have government programs in place to assist people who can't keep up economically so they can realocate to more affordable areas and invest in those areas with infrastructure to make them desirable to live and attract future jobs.
Thanks, you put it more concise than me. And this is also a huge issue with ageing population and growing welfare costs. You'd think they'd want to encourage people to move to where the new jobs are being created in order to get the economy moving and taxes flowing into the welfare state.
If the EU wants to act like a dragon sitting on top of its gold pile, and the economy to be a bunch of ageing people holding onto their rent controlled apartments hoping to see the same welfare and retirement benefits while the economy slows down due to crazy costs on real estate and doing business, this won't end well.
Products like the first iPhone didn't have any innovative technologies in them created by Apple, they were built from commercially available off the shelf parts every other phone maker had access to. But the product as a whole package was still highly innovative and profitable. This is the kind of product innovation that's gone missing in Europe.
Stuff like the MP3 codec was an European invention at the Fraunhofer Institute, but it's not a product bringing in trillions in revenue for Europe even though it was a very important invention used in many commercial applications.
Europe is focused on niche innovations with little product scalability and low financial profitability. Exceptions do exist (IKEA, ASML, Airbus, Nono Nordisk) but those are very little compared to what the US cooked.
gotta start using this one
Isn't this the SV scale-up modus operandi? Talk the talk for investors to throw money at you hoping you'll eventually become profitable before they wise up. This worked during the zero-interest money days, not so much now.
Put up in a place
where it's easy to see
the cryptic admonishment
T.T.T.
When you feel how depressingly
slowly you climb,
it's well to remember that
Things Take Time.
Build one (small) factory first, make it work.
Instead of "Build Hype. Build five factories. See what happens"
I think owners could have put up with some loss margins for some time just for the fact of having control over production.
But someone needs to build the factory, not just talk about it and waste money.
https://www.breakit.se/artikel/39737/skattebetalarna-star-fo...
When I was born, Sweden had a state fund to last for another 200+ years of running the country.
Today, Sweden has no fund left and is quickly accumulating debt.
Get the prices down, and people will buy EVs.
For each export there is an import. The EU elite might be the ones overplaying their hand thinking that their voters care if a car is german or chinese.
I want a BYD.
I'm genuinely curious. I do think pricing being equal, people will probably still opt for more well known European/Japanese/Korean brands. It takes a generation or two for a new car brand to really penetrate a market, people are sometimes really really weird when it comes to their perception of and loyalty towards car brands.
Also I believe there is no spyware in those cars, compared to fancy brands. But that might change on short notice.
The US consumer has on average more purchasing power than the EU consumer, but BEH prices are roughly the same on both sides.
That sounds good and all, but how would you expect to get the prices down without loosing money and while still employing western workers at western standards of living? Prices don't come down magically just because you want them to.
EVs also have the range/public charging issue buyers are fleeing from, not just the price alone. Once you exhausted the market of buyers who can install chargers at home, the rest is impossible to cater to when public charging infrastructure is so shitty and expensive compared to those who have it at home or tanking at gas stations.
The government needs first to invest in cheap and plentiful public EV charging infrastructure if they wish to entice non-home-owners to switch from their ICEs. But when public chargers charge you through the nose for electricity (and loitering time!), they have shitty and buggy UX, or are broken half the time, why would you ever get an EV in favor of an ICE?
It's easy for politicians to say "we want an amazing outcome in 15 years where everything is green" and for voters to agree with that, the issue comes when the rubber hits the road, especially as the politicians who made the original promise won't be in power anymore by then.
I would also wish to look like Chris Hemsworth from Thor in 5 years time, but when I actually look into my genetics, diet and exercise regimen, that aint gonna happe without some very radical and mostly uncomfortable life changes that deep down I know I won't be able to do. I'm not gonna suddenly wake up with the six pack while I keep my existing lifestyle. Similarly, the EU is not gonna wake up to an EV future in 10 years while doing everything like before.
EU politicians and EU voters wants idealist outcomes (cheap green energy, EVs everywhere, welfare state, affordable housing, good paying jobs with social benefits) without putting in the radical (and maybe even unrealistic) changes needed to achieve those goals: energy independence on the cheap, manufacturing independence, investing in research, innovation and start-ups, investing in defense independence, investing in public housing and infrastructure, etc
Get rid off dealerships.
I work for a factory in Switzerland. Many villages in Switzerland have a factory producing some fine tuned gadget.