Are Tesla Gigafactory Berlin's days numbered? | Hacker News Reader

Are Tesla Gigafactory Berlin's days numbered?

electrek.co

32 pointspintxo59 comments

They’ll end up selling it to a German automaker who isn’t anti union. Tesla sales in Europe are mostly over and unlikely to recover, for obvious reasons. Musk did the Germans a favor, built a whole factory for them to buy at distressed pricing.

> for obvious reasons

I will never understand two things:

1. Why Musk made such a hard-right turn politically, alienating most of his customers. People on the left were always far more likely to buy an EV than those on the right.

2. Why traders continue to buy Tesla stock even as sales nose-dive. Because of the promise of Robotaxis? Tesla's P/E is so high that the Tesla Robotaxi would have to sell more rides than Uber, Lyft, and traditional taxi services combined in order to get anywhere NEAR justifying it.

What really saddens me is the side effects of Tesla beginning to fail. EVs are so synonymous with "Tesla" that I would sometimes see people criticize EVs in general when they mean to criticize just Tesla. And with Tesla sales falling, some people are interpreting that to mean "Nobody wants to buy an EV" rather than "Nobody wants to buy a Tesla" and other car makes are slowing down or cancelling EV developments.

I'm bummed that Chevy has effectively cancelled the Corvette EV.

Ego and lack of emotional intelligence is a hell of a thing. Global electrification continues without Tesla (~20% of global auto sales are EVs, ~50%+ in China, as of this comment), a casualty of hubris.

https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales

https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/the-ev-leapfrog-how...

Drug abuse, boundless wealth, and surrounding yourself with sycophants can skew one's perception of reality.

He’s always been this person, the wealth just amplified it. Sometimes the wrong people fall into power. Sometimes we trust the wrong people. Most of life is luck.

Take the ketamine, wealth, and sycophants away, he will still be this person. But without the power. Human condition is tricky.

He was not always the same person, certainty not politically. Like many other covid and a few other things had a major impact.

I could imagine that years of ass kissing have made him worse.

>most of life is luck

I wish everyone understood this.

Unfortunately, the rich and billionaire class are convinced they got where they did just because of sheer personal effort. This of course is delusional. Effort is important, but luck is essential.

We here are all guilty of this. Nobody is really aware of or grateful for all the things that enabled us to make a living.

Even if you are unloved, digging for gold with your bare hands, you were spared by people stronger, had people grow your food, teach you, build the streets, make your meds, literally deal with your shit all your life. And let's not forget the people who endured cruelty, suffered and died for your jeans and coffee...

(There are some great scenes in Pluribus, which illustrate this ignorance very well.)

I think you have a point.

I often think of Tony Hsieh (Zappos founder/CEO), who was a much more grounded and humble person before he became extremely wealthy. Perhaps he had the tendencies/propensities (that ended his life) dormant all along, and his wealth suddenly boosted those deadly habits.

He went from this:

https://youtu.be/jJ5k_Byd9Fs?si=XeYpu-rUNos_dwgI

...to this:

https://straightforwardinteractive.com/2020/12/08/tony-hsieh...

You can't be a billionaire without pathology. The power, unlimited access to every resource, the inherent isolation, security implications, factual immunity to most consequences, morbidly twisted self-efficacy, the ethical dissonance of having it all while others starve... the human brain evolved adapted to scarcity and existential group boundaries to check on social pathology. These guys are holistically unchecked, inherently dysregulated on every axis. Their brain is constantly in an extraordinary, extreme state, trying to reach homeostasis for a life that couldn't be more distant, trying to find a model of reality which explains the abnormal signals it is getting.

Tony was a genuinely good person from all the information I’ve consumed on him. The wealth was kryptonite to him. For the others, it is an accelerant.

Sometimes I think if Tony had given all the wealth away, he'd still be here. A cautionary tale.

His story really is a tragedy. We have a long way to go to properly treat mental health issues as a health issue (no different than allergies, cancer, etc), and to eradicate the stigma of acknowledging, accepting, and ultimately addressing them.

Didn't help that his family moved to South Africa because Canada wasn't racist enough.

I also think of him as a ten-year-old boy with access to infinite amounts of other people's money. Embarrassing stunts like "let that sink in" is the sort of thing my friends and I would have done at age ten thinking we were being awfully clever and witty, but no-one past the age of about fourteen or fifteen would still think that. And stuff like the Cybertruck is what you'd expect if you gave a ten-year-old (or Homer Simpson) some pencils and paper and said "draw your dream vehicle".

1. Why Musk made such a hard-right turn politically, alienating most of his customers. People on the left were always far more likely to buy an EV than those on the right.

I believe a couple of things happened over the last few years that basically broke him. One factor may have been his daughter coming out as trans, and I have a feeling that another factor was a realization that his ambition to start a Mars colony wasn't going to be possible in his lifetime. Being forced to give up a major life goal hurts deeply no matter how much money or influence you have.

He started engaging in irrational, erratic behavior circa 2019-2020, such as getting into the pissing match with Unsworth, offering and then being being forced to overpay for Twitter, and pivoting towards full-blown Trumpism and neo-Nazi-adjacent politics. Before then he was just known as a hard-driving Bill Gates-style nerd CEO. By now, I don't think he cares about any role except that of cult leader.

2. Why traders continue to buy Tesla stock even as sales nose-dive.

See above. It's not a car company. It's a robot company^W^WAI company^W^Wenergy company^W^Wtaxi company^W^W personality cult.

I mean his first wife(mother of that trans daughter) wrote the following about him in 2010:

"Still, there were warning signs. As we danced at our wedding reception, Elon told me, "I am the alpha in this relationship." I shrugged it off, just as I would later shrug off signing the postnuptial agreement, but as time went on, I learned that he was serious. He had grown up in the male-dominated culture of South Africa, and the will to compete and dominate that made him so successful in business did not magically shut off when he came home. This, and the vast economic imbalance between us, meant that in the months following our wedding, a certain dynamic began to take hold. Elon's judgment overruled mine, and he was constantly remarking on the ways he found me lacking. "I am your wife," I told him repeatedly, "not your employee."

"If you were my employee," he said just as often, "I would fire you.""

https://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/a5380/millionaire-start...

I was at /r/RealTesla when it began as an offshoot of /r/Teslamotors. A well known frequent critic of Tesla got banned and him and a bunch of other frustrated skeptics went off on their own.

The people in the auto and space industry were screaming from the rooftops about him for years. The Elon loving crowd were software techies who had no understanding and respect of the history of the auto and space industries totally ignored them.

I'm reminded from a quote from Bob Lutz, former vice chairman of GM (during the bankruptcy era): https://youtu.be/GXJnS9RgKsg?t=2686

Now to be fair to Tesla, they managed to attract tons of amazing talent that screwed up in some ways but produced absolute brilliance in many other ways.

Will Lutz ultimately be proven right just due to chance?(ie. Elon dropping the ball after everything that has transpired) I don't know really. In the end both pro and anti Tesla sides were right and wrong on many things.

I'm glad you have some evidence of it being nothing remotely new. Reading these comments I was starting to feel like I was crazy for remembering that he had always been pretty nasty.

"Pretty nasty" is one thing. There's nothing in that article that isn't par for the course at his level of play.

The way he behaves now is actively self-destructive. That part is new.

> He started engaging in irrational, erratic behavior circa 2019-2020

Hrm, not sure about that. Remember the cave diver thing? He's been fairly unhinged for a while.

Right, that was Unsworth. 2019, IIRC?

2018, apparently. Thought it was earlier tbh.

His customers aren't you or me buying cars anymore, it's fascists and foreign interests that are pumping his stock up past fundamentals. Oh and the deluded cultists that think handing him their life savings will literally bring world peace and end poverty.

See how they just downvote w/o saying anything to counter... They know and so does everyone else.

> 1. Why Musk made such a hard-right turn politically, alienating most of his customers. People on the left were always far more likely to buy an EV than those on the right.

Additionally, I think, social-darwinistic libertarianism is not exactly the best ideological foundation for a Mars colony :D

>and other car makes are slowing down or cancelling EV developments.

The sales didn't materialize plus they were forced to do so by governments and short term investors that saw Tesla's stock shoot up. Now GM is writing off ~7 billion dollars. Whats worse is when Dems take back the white house, they will force the automakers to go back to green again. This back and forth is going to lead to disaster.

I’m not sure dems are willing to go out on a limb for EVs. Other environmental things sure, but EV has become kind of toxic over the last 5 years. Which is a shame.

They pushed it hard during the Biden years. Thats partly why GM went so hard into it. If they manage to really elect an AOC type candidate next time, they will definitely go back to it. Maybe if they get a Fetterman like candidate, they will back off but I dont think thats going to happen given everything that has transpired election wise over the last year or so.

>The sales didn't materialize plus they were forced to do so by governments and short term investors that saw Tesla's stock shoot up. Now GM is writing off ~7 billion dollars. Whats worse is when Dems take back the white house, they will force the automakers to go back to green again.

Ah yes, the terrible force of getting EV subsidies, which the Republicans have now cancelled causing the writeoff. How dare the Dems force the Republicans to do that?

The $7,500 credit is not really what I am talking about. Most of the 7 Billion in investment came during the Biden years due to pressure (from the administration as well as investors). So the industry complied, spent the money, built all these factories, terminated ICE programs and supply chains and now they are forced to write off a lot of this investment because the market is not there in the US.

What specifically was the nature of that pressure from the administration?

From the outside, it looks like classic Innovators’ Dilemma. Traditional automakers failing to adapt to a radically different drivetrain is practically guaranteed under Christensen’s hypothesis.

Much of that money is inefficient infrastructure that didn't have that much of an effect. The car makers didn't go hard with EV because of politics. They got into it because Tesla was making 25% margin on mass market EV and it looked like EV were taking over in massive way. Politics didn't hurt but the direction was pretty clear.

The problem is the traditional companies fell all over-themselves making grand promises without having any understanding, and putting in huge amounts of money while having not enough understanding of the market and supply chain dynamics.

Announcing like 4 gigantic battery factories when you have never built a battery and you barley understand the supply chain for most of the components isn't a great plan.

GM, Ford, etc. recognize the existential threat posed by Chinese competition, proactively pivoted, then had those efforts sabotaged, with prejudice.

Re 1) I think it was basically reactionary escalation. He started falling out of favor with liberals in the late teens, took it personally, doubled down, and things ratcheted up from there.

He didn’t make a turn. He just started sharing himself out loud.

Billionaires are rarely aligned on any political spectrum. They pray at the altar of Mammon and they are aligned to whatever "side" promises the biggest financial upside.

Musk cosied up with Trump because he saw a way boost revenue with lucrative government contracts and a prez that is buyable wrt whatever other projects he has planned (Orion/Starship, Robotaxi etc)

He had a falling out with Trump when he realized that the winds were blowing in the opposite direction than anticipated.

Their only ideology is money, nothing else.

I think this view is limited. Right now, we can clearly see ideological motivations beyond money in these billionaires. They are going for the crown, they want to reign.

Thiel, Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, they want to rule the world. I think Musk is just the least competent, most impulsive of them. Thiel is probably the most dangerous, who, besides being completely insane, is able to pull off the long con and can moderate his ego best.

> Why traders continue to buy Tesla

Same reason people play musical chairs or gamble. In both cases they know there has to be a loser holding the bag, they're just hoping it won't be them.

It's worse than that, foreign interests and domestic fascists are pumping the stock to create the cult around this far right Yahtzee for obvious political reasons.

> and other car makes are slowing down or cancelling EV developments.

Only to US automakers are doing that, and that’s thanks to Trump gutting the EPA emissions regulations (I.e. V8s are back in everything!!!!)

All the US automakers are dead in 5-10 years anyway, it’s just prolonging the inevitable.

Obviously the high stock price is not justified by any current fact but it's the result of years of his successful endeavours and momentum and the investors hope he will come with a new breakthrough idea, which is becoming more and more difficult and unlikely. No emperor in history stood still for a long time showing hubris.

>1. Why Musk made such a hard-right turn politically, alienating most of his customers. People on the left were always far more likely to buy an EV than those on the right.

Yeah, makes no sense. Also anecdotally, I bought their EV out of concern for the environment and the thought that oil should be consumed as little as possible for geopolitical reasons.

Philip Low, a long-time peer and friend of Elon Musk offered one theory shortly after the nazi salutes: https://old.reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/1ibajmf/philip_l... (sorry about the format, couldn't find a better source)

He claims that Musk is just attracted to power and trolling, and will do both cynically instead of from any kind of principles. He guesses that Musk was worried at the time of losing the support of some actual nazis in the actual US government and wanted to signal them publically.

I'm not sure if a cynical nazi supporter is better or worse than an actual nazi. Could be worse, because those are the people who could and should be making better choices.

Let me help you with the link: https://archive.li/PkWxL archived version of the original LinkedIn post. Snopes veryfied a couple of facts mentioned in the reddit post but cannot ultimately vouch for its authenticity: https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/01/28/elon-musk-billionaire...

What turn? He did radicalized, sure, but there is no sign of him to be fundamentally different in the past.

> They’ll end up selling it to a German automaker who isn’t anti union

None of them can compete with BYD.

The German government cannot afford to lose domestic auto production (it employs ~770k workers), even if they must subsidize and be protectionist. I suppose BYD could buy it as well.

The German government and the US government are going to do everything they can with tariffs and nonsense to protect their domestic auto manufacturers.

It means those people will not have access to better, cheaper vehicles, and it will all be for nothing in the end.

I mean, this is a popular talking point, but in real life BYD's sales are dramatically smaller than VW AG's in Europe. They're even smaller than Geely's (another Chinese manufacturer): https://eu-evs.com/marketShare/ALL/Groups/Bar/All-time-by-Qu...

BYD are huge in _China_, and in some other parts of the world, and they are growing in Europe, but the media focus on them is slightly excessive.

Look at how fast they’re growing. They added a Tesla worth of production capacity in a single quarter.

Certainly seems plausible.

I've gone past it a few times on train (nearly said "driven" past, which at least shows my grasp of the German language is improving), and development there has very obviously stalled at the half-way point.

Kick them out along with Twitter.

You may fare better with a well reasoned, thougtful comment as to why Germany should be rid of both Tesla and Ex-Twitter rather than a short opinion followed by faux-outrage at its reception.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Its not that easy. This factory provided a lot of jobs.

Walmart learned 20 years ago, not everyone wants the American way of life. Guess, US hubris entails the inability to learn from such mistakes. Thanks for the factory.

Man the US is the last giant standing. If the capitalists lose there, its game over. Before the events of the last few years I thought that maybe ultimately they were going to run to Israel or China if they lost the US. Both places are on shaky ground so probably not. If the US falls to Democratic Socialism, we could have a European style system across the entire western world. I hope to see it in my life.

Maybe that will be the lasting impact of Millenials and Gen Z: being a transition generation that finally kills this "unchecked capitalism" virus for enough time for humans to enter the next era successfully.

China may be a giant but those demographic issues will catch up to them so its really just the US thats the issue.

Very strange assessment. First of all Europe isn't democratic socialism. Its social democratic and in pretty much every European country the social democrats kicked out the socialists from the party or marginalized them.

By the actual numbers, social spending and so on, the US isn't that incredibly different from Europe. And Europe is by any definition capitalist.

And the US has plenty of regulation, so its not really unchecked, its just differently checked.

> finally kills this "unchecked capitalism" virus for enough time for humans to enter the next era successfully.

This is just incredibly simplistics marxist 'stages of history' thinking and almost completely useless. If the US adopt European regulation we wouldn't 'enter a new era'.

Yes what the Bernie people are proposing isn't really a 1:1 match of what Europe has. Thats too ambitious and only a small percentage of the left even believe we can strive for that. The rest of the progressive left is thinking smaller because they feel that some progress is better than nothing.

>By the actual numbers, social spending and so on, the US isn't that incredibly different from Europe. And Europe is by any definition capitalist.

Do you live in the US? The US is the worst of all worlds, spending (ie taxes) similar to Europe in many respects but the value is extracted at many layers along the way so the results are nowhere near what Europe can produce. Just look at the outcomes from healthcare, education, infrastructure etc.

>And the US has plenty of regulation, so its not really unchecked, its just differently checked.

You are just describing a symptom of the overall problem. Regulation is a tool that can be used incorrectly to further the goal of unchecked capitalism. Example: NYC elected a Democratic Socialist recently and he talks about corner store small business owners having to deal with extra permitting and regulation that affects them more than bix box stores because every little expense hurts them more than the big guys, this naturally leads to the small business more likelihood of failing when competing with the big guys. Its regulation weaponized due to corruption.

>This is just incredibly simplistics marxist 'stages of history' thinking and almost completely useless. If the US adopt European regulation we wouldn't 'enter a new era'.

ok. We've tried everything else and its failing. So there are really only two directions. We either try to check unrestricted capitalism or we just accept that the old way of living that we all went through will not be coming back ever and it was just a footnote of history.

Capitalists already lost. What republican party created is crony highly corrupt capitalism - that does not create competition but will make US look kind of like south america or russia.

USA is on the path to oligarch run fiefdoms and not capitalism in its original sense.

What you are describing is late stage capitalism. A result of the current unchecked capitalism we have. The Bernie wing is really just proposing checked capitalism. We are just returning back to the roots of the country where asset owners were the elites and they owned everything. The last half century was more of an exception....so i'd argue the capitalists won big. Will we manage to pull things back to the mean? Ask me in 20 years.

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