It is great news for Berlin (and Brandenburg) as it will bring (big) money and attract talent. It might even attract people from Poland which is only an hour drive away and has a large pool of very talented and experienced engineers. So far besides maybe Siemens there wasn't too much industry here, which is more present in the south of the country.
Being outside of the city center it won't contribute too much to gentrification and probably it will help Brandenburg getting more people to live there, pay taxes, buy property, shop, etc.
So far reactions have been neutral to good, which by Berlin standards is an amazing result.
I kind of wonder if the decision of bringing the factory to Berlin wasn't based on the amount of software engineering talent that is available, more than the more traditional engineers.
In any case, I'm happy about Tesla coming to Germany, interesting times!
I think it makes sense from that angle but also from the angle that Germany is rich grounds for poaching people that are currently working for one of the other big car manufacturers. E.g. VW just opened a huge plant for producing their EVs in Zwickau which would about 300km away.
Brandenburg as a state is an interesting. Crucially, it's not the state of Berlin (Berlin is s city state within the German federation). That means access to lots of grants/subsidies and also that they are somewhat shielded from the chaotic governance in Berlin.
Yes, Germany is a federation of states. I think there are about 16 of them. They have their own governments, elections, etc. A few of those are city states (Berlin, Hamburg,...). Here's a list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_of_Germany
The location Tesla picked is just outside of Berlin in the state of Brandenburg.
well it's a federation by name, unfortunatly most useful things aren't really as federalist as it should be.
that's why some things in germany are somewhat broken.
some states want their autonomy, but this autonomy makes some things stupid, like our school politics (which are done by our states) and/or our public transport companies can be operated by states which sometimes just can't work (db is not)
germany actually has the same problem as the eu. states want to be as autonomous as possible, no matter the risks. and changes to this are seen as really bad, because people do not like "einheitsbrei".
A federal republic is a form of federation, so calling Germany a federation of states is not wrong. Neither is calling it a federal republic more correct; just more specific.
It’s interesting what kind of talent one needs for a factory. Engineers? I doubt... These will be simple workers, couple equipment operators with some education. All the blueprints are coming from Tesla’s HQ anyway, so not much engineering needed. There is also Tesla in Germany that does all the engineering: https://teslagrohmannautomation.de/de/
You are thinking of engineering the cars itself. However, in a factory like this, engineering is much more than that. Engineering, maintaining, and improving the factory won't be an exclusive gig from across the Atlantic (+ Great Plains + Rockys).
Aside from that, Brandenburg is rich grounds for the other staff a factory needs. You can combine cheaper EU-labor with mid-range jobs very well in Germany.
The only thing Tesla could face which it wont like are unions and workers rights because Germans sure won't put up with 100 hour work weeks or similar business practices.
Having real engineers with 6 years education on assembly lines is very important, and I'd say that's one of the reasons why China has so much success in manufacturing.
Without engineers among line workforce, there will be nobody to spot and correct tiny manufacturing defects and mistakes in the design that would otherwise be quietly "duct taped" and forgotten.
For my 10 years in OEM manufacturing, I haven't seen a single design that the factory people didn't send back to the client without a long "to fix" list. And those designs were coming from rather serious clients, with serious in house engineering.
Do you have any proof that Tesla was going to build a plant in the UK before? Or are you overlooking how Germany has manufacturing and infrastructure more suited to building cars over all other EU members, including the UK!
He also said “Some of the best cars in the world are made in Germany. Everyone knows that German engineering is outstanding, for sure, and that’s part of the reason why we are locating our gigafactory Europe in Germany. We are also going to create an engineering and design centre in Berlin.”
Thing is with Brexit, you have 50% wanting to leave, 50% wanting to stay and a proportional represented result being playout out by a first past the post system, yielding all sorts of chaotic stagnation. Which all gets blamed upon the initial proportional vote.
Hence if any business is asked about the UK, the whole uncertainty and chaos will come up in the subject. Just that people love to presume that was the single reason and without that things would be different. I don't see any reason or indication from Elon or Tesla to of picked the UK, even without the current climate of chaos and limbo finger pointing politics.
Plus, while congratulating the winners, it's more tactful to mention the reasons that made you decide in their favour rather than saying "we would have gone to the UK, if not for Brexit".
I don't know, without Brexit Tesla might have chosen Germany anyway.
There are many good reasons that have already been cited why Germany makes sense, additionally when you're building cars for a whole continent, for shipping reasons it makes sense to build a factory in the middle of it rather than an island on the side.
Britain has excellent sea connections, several existing large car manufacturers take advantage of that. (Germany does too, with river transport.) I doubt the land transport makes a significant difference either -- a good rail network extends across the whole EU, and there is car manufacturing in Spain, Romania etc.
I'm not going to pretend I'm in any way able to make a reasonable comparison, but companies like Ford and Nissan appear to have had no intention to move their UK manufacturing to Germany.
I work in a factory and support factories in other countries. Headquarters have many engineers, satellite factories have only dozen. Mostly for maintenance and quality control. All the thinking and decision making happens in HQ.
>It is great news for Berlin (and Brandenburg) as it will bring (big) money and attract talent.
Like the Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo did for New York state?:
But according to SolarCity’s financial statements, state officials “quietly issued a series of 10 amendments” to Tesla, allowing the high-tech jobs to become regular positions and requiring just 500 hires within two years -- down from 900. Tesla told Vanity Fair it was still responsible for creating 5,000 jobs, but the timing for the additional jobs has been extended to 10 years after the factory’s completion.
SolarCity was the center of the Buffalo Billion corruption probe by federal prosecutors, which last year led to high-profile bribery convictions of several people, including Louis Ciminelli, whose firm won the solar plant construction deal.
It's definitely positive, although I'm also slightly disappointed. I think the original plan was to build it near Dresden. That would have been quite a signal, but on the other hand it might be good for it to be successful to have it connected with the metropolitan region Berlin/Brandenburg.
One important difference between Brandenburg and Saxony that I'm guessing may have played a role: There is a component of the corporate tax called "Gewerbesteuer" which, in Brandenburg, is set at city-level and differs widely from city to city, whereas in Saxony it is high across the board. My guess would be that there must have been a mayor somewhere in Brandenburg that made them an offer that no mayor in Saxony could compete with.
It's set at a city/regional level in all of Germany, there are just very few areas that offer very low taxes. Those tend to be close to large cities to get companies to move headquarters out of the city. Hamburg and Frankfurt also have areas with one of the lowest tax rates just outside of city limits (not sure if Munich has one).
In the end, I'm not sure if it makes such a big difference, other incentives, land prices and availability of talent probably outweighs this.
...but in the countries of the former east there is barely any variation, whereas in Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and Brandenburg there is massive variation. Also, you'd expect that in the countries of the former east, taxes would be lower to attract more business activity, but the opposite is the case, since those tend to have more left-leaning leadership.
They only, and rightfully, get pissed when mega corps like google/amazon come in the city center, buy a 40 storey building and starts paying everyone 100% more than the average for the same position.
Rent prices didn't double because incomes doubled, otherwise people could still afford it. Rent increases because Berlin doesn't build enough affordable housing.
No, they are exactly right. Former migrant and working-class districts have been turned into habitats for the rich and the upper-middle class. Lower and middle income groups are driven out of the city. (Not completely. After all, we need them to take a two hour commute to wash the clothes of the rich and serve them coffee.)
Also because big corps pay insane amount of money and most companies can't follow, especially in berlin, which is neither a tech nor a financial hub.
There isn't a single cause to that but these companies are definitely part of it. If no one could rent these flats they wouldn't be that pricey... There is a lot of affordable housing too, I'm in the process of looking for a flat and a good 30% of them requires a Wohnberechtigungsschein
If a few thousand well paid people are enough to double the rents is a city of 3.6 million people, this is not the fault of the corporations "paying too much", it's the result of poor city planning.
it's not only US megacorps, a lot of well funded tech companies pay salaries close to what Amazon or Google pay and they have to as that's what the market demands. As a software engineer in Berlin i can't really say i don't like that though.
Berlin rents might have doubled since 2010, but they were also way below other german capitals due to Berlins history, so the rents coming to the same level as say Hamburg or Munich was just a matter of time anyway.
In the end it creates value for the city, higher tax income, more spending. Yes, gentrification is a problem, but it's far less of a problem here then in other major capitals.
I don't know what Google pays for a Senior engineer, but from what I know about Amazon it's about 70-100k. Other companies that pay on this level:
- Zalando
- HERE Technologies
- N26
- Delivery Hero
- Soundcloud
- VW/Mercedes/Porsche backend startups (Proshare, Coup, Porsche Digital Lab)
And many smaller ones. From my circle, most Senior engineers earn in the 70-100k range total compensation. Since Berlin is still quite affordable, that allows a good standard of living.
I'm not, I don't want Berlin to become SF, rent prices are high enough. The fact that these companies do everything they can to not pay tax (aka give back to the local economy) is already enough for most people to tell them to fuck off.
Some background for the non-German readers: Within Germany there's still a very noticeable divide between east and west, with average waegs, for example, being considerably higher in the west. This goes back to the different ways the two regions were managed after WWII.
So when a big (and presumably well-paying) company is going to create lots of jobs in the country, whether this is in an eastern or a western state is indeed a very important question.
EDIT: Please note though, that it's somewhat controversial how relevant the divide really is these days. Some will tell you it's 90% in peoples heads, others will tell you that there's still a long way to go before we can really call the german reunification complete.
That's a bit skewed by the fact that most of Eastern Germany is also part of Northern Germany. I don't doubt that there is a north-south divide, but the industrial divide is still mostly West-East. In Eastern Germany, there was little manufacturing capacity at reunification which still shows effects today. Other parts of Northern Germany have been strongholds of car manufacturing for >50 years (most notably VW and Siemens).
I absolutely do not want more tech companies gentrifying Berlin and continuing the encroachment of foreign corporate Neubauten. The amount of berlin for the working class is shrinking by the day and the culture that draws people to this city is being scrubbed out as a result. When the protests inevitably happen, as they did for the Google campus before it, I’ll be standing on the picket line.
It's delusional to think Berlin will forever be the leftist dreamland that it has been for the last 30 years. This change is inevitable and in the end creates value for the city. The problems can be solved in different ways than fighting against tech companies that want to create well paying jobs and pay a lot of taxes.
This actually draws a lot of diversity to Berlin, almost none of my friends and coworkers are germans, not even europeans and i love that.
What you are trying to say is that the average GDP per capita of Berlin is lower than the average of Germany, thus having an overall negative effect on the per capita numbers for Germany. In this, Berlin stands alone among capitols. Usually, capitols are major "benefits" to their respective countries GDP per capita numbers.
But the statistic I assume you are referencing is a few years old, and Berlin has been the fastest growing state in Germany for quite a while now, a development that is still increasing. The numbers for 2019 aren't out yet, but I assume that at this point, Berlin is exactly average in per capita terms for Germany.
Why Berlin has been an outlier for capitols is quite obvious: It has only been Germanys capitol for a bit less than 30 years, and before that was divided.
Wages at the higher levels of education are not significantly lower in Berlin than anywhere else in Germany. Berlin (and Brandenburg) still has a somewhat higher levels of unemployment (at 7.x and 5.x%, respectively), but that doesn't really do much for such a project. Land is relatively cheap, but I doubt that makes much of a difference.
If I had to speculate, Tesla is concerned about finding people willing to relocate, and Berlin is a rather attractive destination even for people not speaking German.
GDP is comparable to the concept of revenue for a company, which is not the same as profit/loss. Revenue cannot be negative unless the company is charging negative prices.
I think what you meant is that Berlin has a net inflow of tax money.
GDP measures value added (final output). If you want to measure total value of new goods and services you should look at Gross Output (GO). GO includes sales to other industries (intermediate inputs).
For example, US GDP is $21 trillion, US GO is $37 trillion.
That means the GDP per capita is lower than the country average, not that the GDP contribution is negative and not that getting rid of Berlin would be good for the German economy.
Brandenburg and Berlin are fundamentally unrelated, they’re two completely distinct, and politically and (largely) economically independent regions. While Berlin is geographically within Brandenburg, they couldn’t be more different, and the geography is mostly of historical relevance when it comes to Berlin’s current economic position.
No, this is bad news; it's a smaller version of the economic bomb/distortion of creating a google campus somewhere. This will be bad for everything from housing up to the general health of startup culture in Berlin. Desperate move by the economically starved Brandenburg. (and of course they won't suffer the consequences)
Well I am a part of the Berlin startup scene, so I have personal experience there, completing a fundraising attempt myself. I'm not saying there is no tech happening in Berlin, I just don't think that Car2Go and Coup are good examples of startups.
They are actually perfect example of the German mentality in investing in startups - fairly secure plays which they can understand.
As far as early stage investments companies go, it's not as nice as you make it sound. Have a look at any list of startups and apart from infarm (which is great and I've worked there) and maybe n26, most are ecommerce platform plays and some fintech (of which most are too late to the game). A lot of the people in my network wanting to do something different had to go elsewhere
Urbansportspass is a great example of a german startup: They have steady growth, good revenue flows, a great app and content customers.
I feel like in recent years the startup scene in Berlin has gone rather off rails, with obviously flawed projects getting funding. The truth of the startup scene is that >99% of projects are pretty bad, and never deserved to leave the brainstorming phase in the first place.
I also see a lot of hare-brained stuff in Berlin, fairly transparent money grabbing schemes with little hope to make a positive difference for anything and little innovation / originality.
Germany's most successful former startup is Zalando - they sell clothes online. Notably its success isn't selling the company to a stronger US rival who could have as well crushed it, but saved time and maybe money by buying instead.
So it would be better for Berlin if this factory was in another city? Taking that to its logical conclusion, it would be better for Germany to not have this factory in the country?
As long as we don't know at least the amount of subsidies paid by the state and the amount (and pay level) of employees who will work there, no factory at all could certainly be better, yes. The subsidies could be spent elsewhere, and the people could find work in facilities that won't exist because the new Gigafactory displaced competition. Without actual numbers this is all guesswork.
I could imagine that the factory staff would often live closer to the site, in Brandenburg, not in Berlin which has housing problems and is accumulating more of them through rent regulation.
Good strategy from Treelon overall. You'll have Tesla producing cars and employing thousands of workers in the U.S, China & Germany so that no one would stifle the company's path towards autonomous EV's.
This will produce pressure on Europe to ease for instance the AI regulations and basically removed Customs tax from many other countries because Tesla can send the cars from three different locations.
I just don't understand why Tesla is slow in expanding to other countries. Here in Israel we don't have Teslas and it's an extremely innovative place with very good conditions for an EV as Israel stretches 424 km (263 mi) from north to south. like two or three charging locations and you're done.
> International car company Tesla published an ad seeking an operations manager in Israel, thus confirming that it plans to launch significant operations here. [1]
Plus, I remember seeing a video years ago from some electric car visionary (didn't went very far) that argued Israel is basically an island. In the west there is a sea and in the north/east/south there are hostile nations/deserts that you don't want to drive to.
Compared to most other nations it's easy to bootstrap an electric driving infrastructure in Israel, because you don't have to do a continental wide rollout.
Oh, Better Place. I met their CEO once. He's really good looking, he's a great speaker, and his business plan made no sense. They burned through about a billion dollars and never did more than a few demos and a few hundred Renaults driven by their employees. But he was really good at getting close to heads of state and issuing press releases.
The whole battery swap thing was a bet against batteries and charging technology getting better.
Tesla is a small scale producer, so their market sizes can be quite small (Norway's population is 5 million and a key market). What drives the market is desire, money and charging. It seems Israel has the first two but hasn't got a good charging infrastructure yet. Once it does, combined with increased incentives for electric cars, I imagine it'll be a good market for them.
That's not how people use their cars or charging stations! People don't drive to places to charge their cars, they drive their cars to get places and park where they can charge. A charging infrastructure needs to have charging stations a few minutes walk away from where people are going to.
Oslo is roughly 454 km² and it has over 400 charging stations. Oslo has a lot of electric cars because of incentives and the relative ease of finding somewhere to charge your car. Tel Aviv's centre is 52km² and its metropolitan area is 1,519 km², so it alone is going to need quite a few charging stations.
> I just don't understand why Tesla is slow in expanding to other countries.
They don't have the capacity. Last quarter, they made as many M3s they have the capacity to make, and sold all of them. Opening new markets just means underserving the current ones more. They will start operations in new countries as they increase capacity and start saturating sales in their current ones.
>Last quarter, they made as many M3s they have the capacity to make, and sold all of them.
We were told, repeatedly, that Tesla would be producing 10,000 Model 3s per week in 2019, with a single factory. Suddenly, now, they don't have the capacity at ~6,000 per week and need multiple factories on zero year-over-year growth?
Now, please be precise with wording. 2019 hasn't ended, and the 10000 figure was given with the second gigafactory in mind.(which will start production in this year, actually)
Israel is probably just too small of a market at the moment. In most European countries there still isn't a official Tesla store or service center.
I live in the Baltic's and a friend of a freind has a Model X which was involved in a minor accident (other drivers fault) last year. To get it repaired without affecting the warranty it had to be sent to Tesla, which meant it had to be taken to Finland (700km) or Germany (1000km).
There are some costs to expand in European countries.
EU passed a law (GVO) in 2004 saying something like that: one can repair a car in any mechanic shop and still don't loose warranty.
Shop has to:
- have access to service manuals using Pass Thru - this is requirement on the car producer.
- document all repairs
- do the repairs in a way the producer documented them
I’m not sure if size has much to do with it. Tesla is in remote countries like New Zealand (1/2 the population of Israel) and Iceland (about 1/20th the population of Israel), as well as neighbouring Jordan (similar size to Israel).
I don't know about New Zealand, but Iceland is part of the EU's single market when it comes to selling cars. I'd expect for a company like Tesla dealing with regulatory overhead in new markets might be the limiting factor.
New Zealand is an English speaking country so perhaps it's easier for them, and to sell cars in Iceland you don't need to do anything more than ship cars you're selling in the EU over and pay import tolls & registration fees.
Yes, but it's not quite as simple as registering cars and shipping them to customers. The cars need to be serviced, which means opening service centres in the destination market, and hiring skilled staff to do the servicing.
Since Tesla doesn't sell through dealers, they also usually open a sales centre / Tesla store (which often also acts as a service centre).
In Tesla's case, they also invest in building superchargers in the countries they operate in. All of this adds up to a fairly significant capital investment before they start selling vehicles in a new country.
Sadly, that is just where Tesla is in terms of making replacement parts, the same holds true within the US.
Even getting parts to certified shops anywhere right now is particularly challenging, its is one of the reasons I think they aren't profitable yet--they have to pay for a loaner car.
They've made a ton of progress and can now mass produce S/X/3 with reasonable turn around, but with the recent production hell ramp up with 3, they had to direct all resources to those desposit holders and that meant slowing down part manufacturing for non deliverable sales.
The factory in Fremont is HUGE but near there is a body shop where you'll see a ton of S/X/3 waiting for parts to be shipped out. I honestly thought it was an auxiliary parking lot when I saw it.
What part of he Baltics? With Rimac putting its footprint down you'd think that area would be have more of a Market for EVs.
Slow to expand to other countries? I would say they are operating at lightspeed! Think for a moment the colossal effort involved in expanding a car company around the world. And not just a car company, but a direct-to-customer model with a completely new fueling method.
>I just don't understand why Tesla is slow in expanding to other countries
Tesla is expanding as fast as they can. After huge struggles they finally got their Fremont plant working right. Then they immediately set to work building a plant in China, and got done remarkably fast.
Now they are going to build a plant in Europe. Probably next will come India, and then maybe Latin America or the Middle East, and there I suppose Israel would be the best location.
Israel is not a good location for a Middle East factory. Most countries in the region will not trade with it, and even those that will, like Jordan and Egypt, do not have free trade or good transportation links with the country.
> Now they are going to build a plant in Europe. Probably next will come India, and then maybe Latin America or the Middle East, and there I suppose Israel would be the best location.
ROI may be? the market size in Israel is not as big in other countries, so it makes sense to target bigger audience first. Also does Israel have any good local EV manufacturers that can give Tesla any competition?
No competition for Tesla at all, only e-tron is selling here a bit and I think the model 3 and Y will crush it here. In terms of market size, well they have them in Jordan next to us which have the same population size and they don't have half the country working in the tech space as our GDP per capita is way higher.
> the market size in Israel is not as big in other countries
Why, comma, you say that as if building a car outside of Germany and selling it inside of Germany would face some sort of unfair obstacles, rather than being a straightforward and painless process as it ought.
There are no* import taxes on any goods moved within the EU. That's a fundamental principle of the thing.
The fee to register a car for use on public road varies. It's very high in Denmark (120% of the value or something) but the place of manufacture doesn't affect that. Second hand imported cars still need to pay it.
* Exception is the duty paid on alcohol and cigarettes, depending how you define it.
Paying a tax on something you import from the EU which you don't pay if you buy in country is difficult to see as anything other than an import tax, no matter how it is named. See VRT in Ireland for example.
VRT is paid whether you buy a new vehicle from a manufacturer in Ireland or elsewhere in the EU. It's also paid if you buy a new vehicle from outside the EU, but in that case there will additionally be import taxes.
It might be that the administration is different (e.g. the large vehicle importer usually pays it, but you pay it yourself if you're buying some exotic Lotus direct from Britain).
Denmark has high taxes for registering a vehicle for public use to pay for road construction or maintenance and to discourage car use (or rather, to make the people using the roads pay their way).
The EU has import taxes on vehicles to protect its own vehicle industry, to both maintain that industry and the jobs within it.
They just put up one hiring position which is exciting but nevertheless, it's been 11 years since Tesla's inception so we are not holding our breath. Ordered a Tesla hat though! haha
I will say that Tel Aviv and Haifa both have excellent engineers. As Tesla grows I'd be a bit surprised if they didn't have engineers in Israel. That said, most of the engineering is still based out of Silicon Valley, so that might be why?
As a tesla fan and owner, I hope you get your superchargers. I've heard rumors that they've just started seriously producing the supercharger v3 hardware at the Buffalo, NY factory (Gigafactory 2), so maybe as that ramps up you'll be good.
Consider tweeting @elonmusk and asking. I did that for slow parts delivery and had the issue resolved in two days.
For Y they are just going to stamp the whole frame out in one fell swoop.
> Another new innovation revealed in the patents is a “Multi-Directional Unibody Casting Machine for a Vehicle Frame and Associated Methods.” Musk himself let this cat out of the bag earlier on by revealing the new casting machine will be capable of casting almost the entire body of a Tesla EV in one piece.
> This startling innovation will virtually eliminate the need for a tremendous number of welds across an EV body.
They also reduced the total length of wiring from 1.5km to 100m in the Y.
No, but worst case you simply register a local company that will act as an importer (like anywhere else). This company will declare profits of 0 every year as all revenues will be shipped to Tesla U.S.
The issue is with Tesla, they still didn't make the move on us I guess. At least I have my Tesla shares though.
-9C here and I didn't wear my coat today. Naturally it's unsurprising that relative perspectives vary. I'm just always fascinated by how other people experience existence. For me really cold and really hot is -30 and +30. I'm going to bet there's a billion or so people who would laugh at the idea of +30 being "really hot".
One thing I haven't really thought of, until I recently went to Israel, is that people drive only in Israel. It's like an island. Technically, I guess, people could drive to Jordan and Egypt, but no one does that. It's a limited range then, fwiw.
"so that no one would stifle the company's path towards autonomous EV's."
Who is "stifling"? And many companies work on autonomous cars.
"This will produce pressure on Europe to ease for instance the AI regulations"
What AI regulations in Europe? And what is Europe? The EU?
"and basically removed Customs tax"
This is not how custom taxes work. The EU is one of the biggest free trade zone in the world. If Mercosul joins, it is the biggest.
"I just don't understand why Tesla is slow in expanding to other countries. Here in Israel we don't have Teslas and it's an extremely innovative place"
Because Tesla is burning through cash like a motherfucker. And Israel is a tiny place. This is also why, to my knowledge, nobody build cars in Israel. I mean, why not Dubai?
> "and basically removed Customs tax"
> This is not how custom taxes work. The EU is one of the biggest free trade zone in the world. If Mercosul joins, it is the biggest.
Wait, isn't this is exactly how custom taxes work? Say the EU charges a 10% tax on all imported passenger cars (it does, and 25% on pickups and other trucks). Now, if Tesla sells cars to the EU that were made in the USA, wouldn't it trigger that import tax?
Now, say Tesla builds a factory inside the EU and makes cars there (as it plans to do). When sold in the EU, those cars wouldn't be charged an import tax because they're not being imported.
You’re right on both. Just as an added plus Tesla will have better tariffs to other countries while taking advantage of each of its hosting jurisdiction’s bilateral deals, so the impact is larger.
Also, most of the self-driving car regulation is state-level until the DOT pushes something through or Congress passes something, so for now, there are fifty different regulatory environments to pick from here.
> Mercosul join
If a whole other continent joins, it will be the biggest? The whole point is that Europe has geographical and (some) cultural continuity. Mercosul is South American. Why would it join the EU, especially considering that it would be out-numbered by its former colonial masters?
> Israel is a tiny place
No one said build there, people mentioned selling. Apparently, they're also sold in neighboring Jordan. I really can't understand why they wouldn't sell in Israel; it's a richer nation and a better market.
"If a whole other continent joins, it will be the biggest?"
Yes. The biggest free trade zone. Read the news from time to time. The EU-Mercosul FTA is supposed to be signed but may not due to Austria and partly also to France.
>" Mercosul is South American. Why would it join the EU..."
Nobody's talking about joining the EU, but rather a free trade area. Regarding cars, the free trade area makes sense as many EU carmakers (Fiat, Renault, etc) are active in South America.
EU regulations prohibit the turning angle of the wheel unlike the U.S. You simply can’t navigate on autopilot in the same way.
Also the EU makes money from the auto companies in their jurisdiction and they don’t want a U.S auto company competing with them. Now that Tesla opens a factory in Germany “massages” things.
The customs tax is in regards to countries/jurisdictions other than the ones with the Tesla factories. For instance a country like Israel might have a 20% tariff from Europe but 0% from China due to different bilateral deals so Tesla will send cars from there.
Israel is different than Dubai because literally a third of the population are in the tech space. Israel’s main export is tech and the tech ecosystem will build on-top of Tesla (Waze for example was founded here and there are many auto security startups for instance).
Germany and EU very obviously have a policy preference to any large auto-companies that both operate and sell there.
It’s not going to be written down on paper but there’s plenty of evidence to support it through their history of actions. And Germany has the largest influence on the EU economy wise having the largest GDP by far.
Completely dropping customs tax because a foreign company factory opened there is a bit much though.
Watching a SV company suddenly have to deal with German workers' rights (think: unions, significant protection from being fired without cause, rights to paid holiday and enforced maternity leave, even workers' councils which have representation at a management level) is going to be hilarious.
I get you are joking, but there are two points that I would like to raise:
There are many, many SV companies with large offices in parts of the world with very strong workers rights. I work in one of these. There is no problem, other then I'm not expected to work weekends and be on-call at unreasonable hours. If this is required I would need to be compensated for it.
Secondly; perhaps I am reading into this, but I get the sense you are implying that "less work" will be done due to these protections. You may be surprised to find out that German factories are actually quite efficient ;) , and that treating workers well gets them to work more, not less. Having a healthcare system that means you can bring your children to A&E at the weekend and not get caught for $1000s means you can come to work on Monday with a clear head.
Having protection from "right to work" means you can voice an opposing opinion without fear.
Having a paid holiday means you can come back to work refreshed with a clear mind, and not "burn out" as fast.
Having maternity, and paternity leave, means happier parents (like, in a abstract way, not like in a oh I haven't slept in 8 months I'm soooo happy way). Let's call it out here. Giving children a good start in life sets them up for success.
On a global team you can quite clearly see the results of the different work environments, and the various impacts each environment has. From a tech point of view, I see this most critically in the ability to voice controversial opinions, or push back against your manager for example.
I’m outside the SV bubble for the most part, the “joke” if there was one was that Tesla is going to have serious culture clash if they try to treat their German workers like their workers elsewhere, and I’m going to be reading about the resulting court cases for years.
There is only one warehouse nearby, Munich is the German HQ so. Let's just say that Amazon likes to use the applicable laws to the fullest. Sometimes that means getting an official verdict at court.
>Having protection from "right to work" means you can voice an opposing opinion without fear.
I assume you mean "at-will employment"?
Right-to-work laws, in the US, are laws saying that employees cannot be forced to join a union as a prerequisite to employment.
At-will employment laws, again in the US, are laws saying that employees can be terminated for any or no reason, except for a list of specific reasons like race, sex, age, religion, and probably a few others. Unless there's some kind of employment contract, which the majority of jobs in the US don't have.
I was told about a support call with a US university a few years ago and the director fired the sys admin in the middle of the conference call. It was in the EMEA time zone (like 4am central). Everyone heard about it because that sort of thing just wouldn't be done here.
The guy had done nothing wrong, he had been up all night trying to fix the problem, and the director came on the call and lost it.
I always think in that environment so much of your energy must be spent on ass coverage and politics over working.
They already own Grohmann, so I'm guessing they have a fair idea. I remember a flap at the time about Tesla forcing them to ditch their other clients as quickly as possible, which was a bit of a culture shock, but why else would they have bought them in the first place?
This subthread is not about a Swabian moving to Berlin, but about Tesla operating in Germany.
It is entirely about labor law ("Watching a SV company suddenly have to deal with German workers' rights"), not about whether the bread roll should be called "Weckle" or "Schrippe".
Wrong, the culture shock in this thread was mentioned in relation to Tesla making Grohmann to ditch their other clients, which has nothing to do with labor law. This has to do with mentality, so there is not point for you playing the thread police here.
You seem to be unaware that Tesla already has a sizable presence in Europe, including a final assembly plant in the Netherlands. Some of the details are different, but I don't see employing a significant amount of Germans being novel for them.
Germany has been spearheading the neoliberal assault on democracy alongside the US and Great Britain as early as the 1980s. In the 2000s we created "Europe's best low-income sector" (Gerhard Schroeder) and destroyed the pension scheme. This dramatically decreased social security among low- to middle-income workers.
German labor institutions are strategically oriented towards collaboration (much like in the US), they are extremely centralized and anti-democratic and if you're in the workers' council and you're a member of the supervisory board, socio-economically you belong to the upper class. This facilitates the same corporate conspiracies as everywhere else.
Furthermore, East-Germany's labor market as a whole is much more like Eastern European labor markets. It is super-exploited. However, it is right in Western Europe where you've got access to decent infrastructure and massive subsidies.
Wait, so if I have this correct, the airport took ~6 years to construct and 9 years and counting to correct problems with its construction? Meaning that it would have been faster to tear the entire building down and rebuild it from scratch than it is taking to remedy the issues?
Massive failures in oversight and management. Airport building/management company that makes changes to the design pretty randomly, total failure in oversight mechanisms (basically, there was no review process in place which could have caught this while it was going on), as a result a building that doesn't match the original plans, doesn't conform to regulations and where in the end the actual state of what exists wasn't even known. Brought down by failing the fire safety certifications shortly before the opening, at which point the slow "figure out what happened and who to blame" process began, and then attempts to fix it. It's a glorious mess.
Even if there had been a consensus on almost-rip-and-replace immediately, it's not clear that could have been done as quickly, given the amount of preparation needed.
(As an example of the kind of changes, during the building process they decided to re-assign arrivals and departures to different floors of the building. Which in an airport has fairly fundamental consequences due to security zones etc...)
According to lore, it all started with the architect deciding against the tried and tested usage of little chimney-like structure on top of the terminal roofs for fire protection de-fuming, insisting instead on some novel, less visible solutions for aesthetic reasons. Those then caused all kinds of follow-up issues, eventually leading into the construction equivalent of the perpetual bugfix cycle, where every fix brings two new problems. Compounded by a colorful parade of high level "fix it guys" taking over the reins and failing in short progression, adding to the chaos.
As far as I remember, the estimation was that the fire system was properly designed (although more complex for the mentioned artistic reasons) and would have worked - for the building that was originally planned, which the airport company then changed massively.
Seems like there's a lesson there about sticking to tried and proven solutions even if you come up with a better one. Or maybe it's a worse is better thing?
> In 2014 it was revealed that Alfredo di Mauro, the chief planner for the airport’s fire protection system, was not a qualified engineer but an engineering draftsman. He admitted this, saying everyone thought he was a proper engineer and ‘he didn’t contradict them.’
> His mistakes have cost hundreds of millions of dollars to fix.
As a tangent, not to belittle the corruption around BER, and with more tongue in cheek than snark: I wonder how many people responsible for things on this list https://hn.algolia.com/?q=breach (insofar the cause was negligence) have "software engineer" in their job title or description? If you ctrl+F "engineer" in those articles and discussions, you'll see it thrown about quite casually. If architecture was like software, buildings would regularly just collapse, and sudden death would just be an accepted risk risk of going into a building or walking past one. Some people would complain about that, but we would consider them idealists and their demands incompatible with progress and prosperity.
Emergency smoke ventilation is a solved problem, ‘little chimneys on the roof’ are one of many different solutions; there are lots of different strategies. So that sounds like nonsense. Source, I’ve worked on mega projects like this. If it’s true that someone decided to swap departures with arrivals once the building was already on site, I would say that’s your problem right there. Whoever is responsible for that caused this mess. I would hazard a guess that the airport was originally briefed to be designed as primarily a government funded transport interchange, someone decided it should make some money to help pay for the costs and the only way to make room for the extended corridors full of shops was to turn the design concept upside down.
The smoke ventilation system was originally designed to rely on fans to blow the smoke downwards in the ventilation shafts. As far as I know, nobody had tried to build a system like this before. Rumor has it that ventilation pipes even imploded during a test.
That's not all. Signs of poor planning and poor execution seem to be everywhere. Pipes for a central water cooling system for IT and other electronics were supposedly embedded directly into concrete walls instead of into shafts and the system was known to have too little capacity before the building was supposed to open. One escalator turned out to be too short when delivered. Instead of fixing the escalator, they extended it by adding regular stairs to the end. The contents of cable shafts in the building is completely unknown. Nobody knows anymore. New cables are thrown in randomly to suit current needs. Some shafts seem to have already filled up completely because of that.
The management of the construction site has also been a complete disaster. I don't recall how many tech leads had to go because of allegations of corruption, for example.
These are just the worst issues that I remeber. The smoke ventilation was just the straw that broke the camel's back.
Have a look at this [0] as an example airport where there are no ducts or fans at high level. The skylights are probably automatically controlled to vent smoke using stack effect only and the undulating roof will act as a smoke reservoir to contain smoke in one structural bay.
>The smoke ventilation system was originally designed to rely on fans to blow the smoke downwards in the ventilation shafts. As far as I know, nobody had tried to build a system like this before. Rumor has it that ventilation pipes even imploded during a test.
Well I do know of places where this has been done. It's not as failsafe as having a duct which relies on the stack effect but you have additional fans and redundant power supplies etc to make sure the system does not fail. Also the fans suck air through the system to the smoke extract outlet point as you want the pressure inside the duct to be lower than inside the building otherwise you risk blowing smoke into other parts of the building. Ducts imploding sounds like a problem with smoke dampers not activating correctly. Confusion about which dampers should be operating would be caused by a big last minute change to the layout of the spaces inside the building, which brings me back to wondering if it was because they introduced a lot more shopping area where there was none before because this is a classic last minute change in airport design that has caused problems with other airports. Big changes to space utilisation are going to cause delays and budget overruns once you have got passed the concept sketch stage.
> One escalator turned out to be too short when delivered. Instead of fixing the escalator, they extended it by adding regular stairs to the end.
Would be a major and obvious crowd safety problem and a contravention of regulations in many countries, I am assuming this would also be the case in a well regulated country like Germany. Which is why I find it hard to believe that this would be installed, rather than sent back to the factory and extended.
It's a question of managing expectations, every building is a prototype and loads of things go wrong all the time. I have heard of all the problems you describe happening on other projects for both public and private sector clients, they were just fixed and everything carried on. What you are describing has details that don't sound technically correct, so it seems like there is someone out there running a smear campaign to deflect blame from whoever made the big change to the brief, which makes me curious to know what the truth is.
For government clients airports are adverts for cities and a symbol of municipal pride so they like something that is spectacular, but private sector clients want a shopping mall with passengers winding through intestine like corridors full of shops on their way to the airplanes parked outside. Changing from one model to the other halfway through is not going to be a smooth process.
A major brief change or an unclear starting brief is what causes building (and software) projects to go late and over budget, not lots of little things like what you are describing.
I don't recall a single big change to the brief before the planned opening that failed so spectacularly. The project suffers death from a thousand papercuts. The brief did change since 2012, though. They added a whole new wing to the building to meet updated capacity demands.
The BER airport was originally meant to be a HUB airport even though no airline wanted to place a hub operation there. AirBerlin was thought of as a good candidate, but that airline no longer exists.
> Meaning that it would have been faster to tear the entire building down and rebuild it from scratch than it is taking to remedy the issues?
This sentence is never true.
It's not true in software it's even less so in construction.
The issues would have been there even if the construction was done perfectly, you always fix such massive infrastructure for their whole lifetime (it's not simply a building!)
This time they fucked up and the airport didn't pass the safety checks necessary to open it, but there is constant fixing and changing and upgrading and scaling in an airport facility.
Tearing down it and rebuilding it it's never an option and never a good idea, unless the structure is severely damaged or contaminated (e.g. asbestos)
In addition to the excellent replies so far, there's a compounding problem: The long delay means that new safety regulations for new buildings apply, and so they have to iterate again.
There is a fantastic English language podcast called "How To F#€k Up An Airport" that goes into great detail about the many failures that let to this debacle. Highly recommended.
Well, it's not just years, every day of that means money that gets shifted. I couldn't find the article I read years ago about one of the companies involved, and their string of similar projects in other countries, but here's something to give you an idea how much this thing reeks: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36185194
When I read "embarrassingly poor planning" and similar phrases in articles about it, I have to think of someone who "clumsily" spills coffee on the dress of Marilyn Monroe, for lack of a better image, and then "embarrassingly" ends up with his head planted on her chest, because he "stumbled" while "hastily trying to make up for the mistake with a handkerchief". Sure, that's one way to put it. But beyond all the plausible deniability, someone is benefitting, one way or another.
I read that it's mainly a software problem, which would make sense why the delay is so long. Building and fixing problems with the building are done faster than fixing the software to manage that airport.
No, it's not mainly a software problem. As is common in big delays, there are multiple issues, but a fairly big contributor was political arrogance that wanted to brush away fire regulations. That didn't work.
Might be getting downvoted since Tesla generated $2b in cash flow past 12m months and has all time high cash on hand. And then the "relax" insult despite being dead wrong.
It's not open yet, there's a chance it will never open.
Might even be an investment opportunity: Swoop in and buy the whole mess once the German government decides it has thrown enough money into their bottomless pit.
The Brexiteers scoffing at "Project Fear" and crowing about the uppity Europeans begging us for our (UK) car business have been strangely quiet on this one.
1. Brexit hasn't happened yet. I.e. UK has not been able to introduce policies that would make it a lot more competitive and friendly for business than the EU/Germany, make it friendlier for international talent, which is one of the opportunities created by Brexit.
2. We do not know what would have happened had Parliament and civil service been more positive and cooperative on Brexit. It could be a self-fulfilling prophecy - remainers in Parliament inadvertently creating greater uncertainty, which in turn drives business away as the leavers are unable to realistically guarantee a more competitive / friendlier for business Britain in the future.
I’m not OP, but I would argue that. There’s no realistic scenario in which leaving the single market makes Britain a more attractive place for (most) businesses.
1. Extremely easy and friendly immigration policies for world’s top talent - better than in the US
2. Legal ability to easily hire and fire people
3. Legal ability to run a business out of your garage
4. Lower taxes - income, corporate, capital gains - than in the US
5. Free trade, even if unilateral, as the US is involved in tariffs and trade wars
All of this combined, given that the UK is English speaking, could lead to the UK overtaking Silicon Valley in terms of startups. Most of the world’s top talent would, all else being equal, prefer to live around Cambridge than in Palo Alto.
And I think an argument could be made that being more competitive on all those points would be easier outside the EU.
I suspect you would disagree with Paul's essay/the goals he outlined, and that's fine. My point is that if you did agree with his essay, you might see that Brexit could also open opportunities.
I wouldn't dispute there are potential benefits to Brexit, I'm saying there are no obvious winning arguments, and clear counters to all of yours.
Also by purely framing it in terms of business, you are in danger of making two errors:
1. Assuming all business has the same needs, and all business owners have the same perspective.
2. Much more importantly, business is just one factor of the national life affected by the split, and - as pointed out -has a natural tension with other issues like rights and standards that you haven't addressed.
I didn't downvote you (I posted the parent to your response) but your comment read to me as coming from a perspective skewed through Brexiteer-tinted glasses, which both Remainers and neutrals wanting objectivity might find frustrating.
I can believe there might be positive aspects for business, but pretty much all of them involve a deterioration in workers and other rights (human, animal) and standards. And generally speaking, while agility and flexibility are likely to follow from becoming newly small and skinny, I don't see how that helps when in the trading ring with very big, very strong heavyweights.
Here is how you approach this: in which scenarios would Canada become a more attractive place for business if it left the USMCA (ex NAFTA) RELATIVE to the USA or Mexico.
As they want to open their factory next to the new Airport, it will basically be in Brandenburg and not in the center of Berlin (not that it would fit there). They probably will change the neighbourhood there, but automobile engineers are perceived as worker class while google techies generally are not. I also think that Google would have had no problems If they would have opened their office in Adlershof.
So to summarize:
Tesla:
- builds factory in a practically greenfield area
- employs middle-class workers
Google:
- buys old building in the middle of the "hip" leftist city district
- employs high-wage workers which will drive gentrification
So I think this will be received at least with mixed voices, but mostly positively.
That probably depends on the definition but I'm with you there. What I meant was the (media) perception which is definitely different for "hardworking, family-supporting car workers" vs "single, well-earning entitled startup employees", which are obviously clichés.
It's curious to be sure, but I think they will react positively to Tesla.
1) Berlin is suffering from pollution, especially the diesel. For city dwellers the switch to electric car can't happen fast enough, and German auto makers have been absolutely dragging their heels. Tesla has become a symbol, a fuck-you to BMW, Mercedes, VW and their gas guzzling, diesel pushing ways. It's unbelievable how out of touch the german automakers have been.
2) The factory means some working-class jobs. The left won't see anything wrong with that. It's the coming gentrification that caused the upset against Google.
3) Factory is just outside Berlin, technically in Brandenburg. Near the (forever in construction) BER airport means less concerns about noise, etc.
This was a pure territorial war. I’ve seen the German campaign material, there was no sign of good reasons, at most a lot of misunderstanding of the idea of a startup incubator. I remember how I had to explain the idea to a very vocal campaigner who clearly did not get that Google was not planning to open a big dev center in their kiez after Google gave up. The underlying reason was the fear of rents rising in Kreuzberg.
They didn’t protest against the new Spandau Siemens campus either. Siemens being in the arms industry, while Googlers openly protested against any military-related research during the same year. It’s just that no nobody wants to live in Spandau.
The area around BER is even further away, and the close-by Adlershof is pretty much Berlins center for STEM research (many suppliers are there too). Could be a good move.
Second largest district in Berlin with the lowest population .... From that you could say Spandauers are the most ... 'unique' of the Berliners.. Seriously though, the only negative thing (besides the constant bei jokes) is the food is pretty crap in Spandau -- that's improving though.
Being a Berliner, on a personal level it would have been nice for me to have a Google office where they would have been.
But I'm very happy about people standing up for their neighborhood and actually protesting. Having a Google office with >400 decidedly well-compensated people move in would very much change the neighborhood and not for the better.
People fighting for their own local interests is what makes Berlin great, and it is _so_ refreshing after having lived in North America where no-one protests anything and letting corporate interests dominate yours is the norm.
> Having a Google office with >400 decidedly well-compensated people move in would very much change the neighborhood and not for the better.
i don't understand this. so berlin would rather have poor citizens? how is that better for the city?
and how would >400 "well-compensated" people affect the city in anything but a positive manner?
has there been any sort of study as to how better wages affect a city?
That's fair. And you presumably get that other people can have a different opinion so you probably wouldn't be flabbergasted when someone wishes to avoid gentrification. That's what I'm curious about re: parent poster.
> I certainly reject the concept of gentrification
What do you feel about non-resident Chinese nationals investing in real-estate in your city & driving up prices? I noticed HN tends to be ok with gentrification if it's done by well-paid geeks, but not when the same group gets priced-out.
There is a finite and already fully utilized number of domiciles. Adding 400 well off families would undoubtedly displace 400 not so well off families over time.
All while jacking up prices of apartments/food/services for everyone.
Where is the positive net effect for people here? The city&state will earn more tax revenue, but for the neighborhood there's nothing positive that's going to happen.
I take "poor citizens" but cultural fecund Berlin anytime over "rich" USA cities with homeless people living on the streets while FAANG workers spend half of their huge salary on mediocre apartments
> and how would >400 "well-compensated" people affect the city in anything but a positive manner?
a city is not only (I would say not at all) the offices of big corporations.
Berlin is also many other things like Köpi or Blu's graffiti in Kreuzberg that he removed few years ago because gentrifiers saw them as a way to keep the place "cool" and raise prices [1]
But Google did not want to open a dev center with its own employees there. Campaigners acted like their Kreuzberg was the navel of the world believing that.
This was a „Google for Startups Campus“ project. Co-working spaces and startup events and so on. Money and potential funding for the Berlin startup scene.
I’m rather worried how some vocal and partly violent people, seemingly without a lot of understanding of what they are campaigning against and how the tech world works managed to stop this project.
It's not really about that, so much as wanting to avoid what happened to the Bay Area. Massive gentrification, something Berlin has already struggled with for about 10 years (almost its defining issue in modern times IMO), is a serious problem if the rest of the city is rather poor, which Berlin actually was in the 2000s compared to the rest of the country ("poor but sexy", as it was sold).
When I hear this, I hear jobs and the most revolutionary green company are not welcome. If that's the case, Berlin is lost.
There is good and bad to gentrification. You don't hear stories of the people who bought their house for 50k in 1980 who then sold it in 2010 for 1.3MM. Or the people thankful they don't have to walk around in fear of gangs for themselves or their children.
TO me the biggest problem is the State. In SF, among many many other things, it's their zoning policies that caused the housing crisis. But they run education and media. So people blame the most revolutionary green company, or others bring wealth to the area, instead of the State.
You’re making it look like it’s either the ghetto or the yuppies, but there is a clear middle that people don’t want to sacrifice either. Having a bunch of people paid 5 times what you are coming to your area is never fun.
> Having a bunch of people paid 5 times what you are coming to your area is never fun.
It's probably a net positive overall though, especially if the money these people are paid (and spend locally) is coming from other parts of the world/country.
Nah. German people can live in the hipster area we are talking about here without a job requiring a 4 year degree. Google in that area would be a net negative for them.
> When I hear this, I hear jobs and the most revolutionary green company are not welcome. If that's the case, Berlin is lost.
If there is not enough housing and you keep adding jobs then those jobs will be lost. It's better to "lose" a city than an entire country like USA did.
You couldn't buy your house in 1980 when the houses are owned by the communist GDR state. A lot of the issues in Berlin result from the conflict between 1) the very cheap property in the east that became available when the wall fell and 2) the huge shift in lifestyle for people that have lived in the area for any length of time. The massive fluctuations in wealth (not to mention currency) are but one point that make people averse to change.
After the most recent update I was asked whether I would give permission for video clips to be sent to Tesla to improve self-driving and sentry mode. It was optional. The GPS tracking is required if lots of features are to work, so permission isn't needed under GDRP unless it's also used for other purposes. There are details in their privacy policy: https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/about/legal
You can opt out of recaptcha by just boycotting the website which uses it.
But of course by "opt out" you mean to remain a user of a service but not the parts you don't like. Whether you are entitled to do this or not is still up for debate.
> You can opt out of recaptcha by just boycotting the website which uses it.
Ah, I was waiting for somebody to make this argument, which I find somewhat disingenuous given how widespread reCaptcha's use is.
With sites I don't care about leaving them is exactly what I do - but there are sites I pay a lot of money to use, and can't really avoid using for business reasons, yet they still subject me to reCaptcha.
The path I've taken instead is to address this with the site owners. Most weren't really aware of how overreaching reCaptcha feels to some, and I've had good discussions. Of course nobody changed their site based on my complaint, but I like to think I raised awareness.
> But of course by "opt out" you mean to remain a user of a service but not the parts you don't like.
Specifically, a part of user verification. I'm still not sure why they feel they need to verify my humanity - they've got my credit card details and everything.
> Whether you are entitled to do this or not is still up for debate.
Let me ask the opposite question: is the owner of a website entitled to sell my privacy for their own (debatable) convenience?
This is totally disingenuous, especially in a thread comparing to Tesla.
With Tesla, I'm directly buying their product or not, and they do have competitors that I could choose from (not particularly great ones yet, I'll admit, but they do exist today and they're going to get there eventually).
With Google's ad tech and captcha, my data is being siphoned off to them by third parties. I'm looking at totally unrelated service X, and suddenly I'm faced with Google. The burden of boycott becomes much higher than in the Tesla case, which makes it reasonable to state that opt-out is "not [practically] possible".
The situations would be comparable if upon encountering a Google captcha I could choose to solve somebody else's captcha to access the same service.
> my data is being siphoned off to them by third parties.
they are not "third-party". If a site uses google's products (like analytics or recaptcha), then you could reasonably consider them partner sites to google.
Indeed, google is difficult to boycott - no one is diputing it. However, google obviously isn't very offensive to a large number of people, because there are very dedicated groups who dedicate time and energy into boycotting companies like nestle (which is _very_ difficult to boycott). May be a lot of laymen just don't think that their data is worth protecting (whether they are right or not remains to be seen).
Google users are not the only target of Google's data mining, so this is extremely disingenuous. I'm not even sure how to define a Google user.
Furthermore the comment seemed in reference to the origins of fascist political ideology in Europe and their relation to what happened when data mining was weaponized against a population.
I wasn't actually going to point to the surveillance question, and I didn't say that Google itself was fascist, but the parent poster seemed to think that antifa might have some opposition to google and did not offer their own reason.
Tesla is a luxury-good company that collects petabytes of data from public roads daily, is run by a billionaire that regularly makes an ass of himself on Twitter and is vocally anti-union.
They obviously needed to get one built in Europe sooner rather than later to boost marketshare there and stay ahead of demand without needing to ship from China or the US, but why Berlin? Does anyone know if they got subsidies out of it?
I think Berlin is a great choice, because it excels at the metrics that matter most in constructing a new gigafactory. I believe the most critical metrics are:
- cost of construction, including cost of land: extremely low in Berlin
- cost of labour/wages: extremely low in Berlin
- standard of living: very high, healthy
- reachability: near Airport, highways, railroad
- location within Europe: Germany/Berlin is perfectly in the middle of Europe with great railroad/truck connections to all other
- regulation/friendliness to car industry: exceptional in Germany, as auto industry is the world's biggest
- talent: world-class in Germany
- law and order/rule of law: one of the best in the world
Romania's infrastructure is crap, though. Shipping those cars would probably be quite a bit more expensive. Also, the workforce is on average less educated and way fewer highly educated foreigners would be willing to relocate to Romania.
Source: I'm Romanian, I've been to Germany repeatedly.
Probably will attract a few people from Volkswagen. I personally know people who commute to WOB from Berlin, since they just cant stand the town. (And you cant blame them). Although to be fair VW acknowledges the undesirability of their hometown and has also opened Dev offices in Berlin.
Wolfsburg ist 200km away from Berlin. Cologne has Ford, Hesse has Opel and continental, although the center of gravity is in the south, it's not like the industry doesn't have a certain spread throughout the country.
200 km is the same distance everywhere, how "long" it actually ends up depends on the supporting infrastructure, and that's usually pretty good in Germany.
For the US it usually means some successful SV FAANG type software company.
For Germany it's usually some successful hardware engineering company (Siemens, Bosch, Mercedes, Arri, Infineon, Continental etc.). Those companies can afford to pay the equivalent of FAANG wages in Germany albeit at a smaller scale.
Southern Germany has more experience and talent in the latter while Berlin has more software startups and web devs, similar to the former.
Berlin definitely also has a hardware engineering/embedded software scene.
It's just that there is no single big company (or cluster of big companies) that dominates the market, but rather smaller shops that mostly do contract work or have some specialised product.
There is also a steady supply of students from that branch of tech - AFAIK AutoNOMOS Lab still exists and there are multiple universities in town that over computer science focused on embedded systems.
"Several years ago, Chancellor Angela Merkel said the one in every seven jobs in Germany were "directly or indirectly" linked to the [automotive] sector."
Germany is the home of Mercedes, BMW, and VW (which owns Porsche and Audi and is one of the largest car manufacturers in the world). Their economy is very dependent on the auto industry. They are also home to many automotive suppliers including bosch and kuka. They are also one of the largest markets in Europe.
So yeh it's all these reasons: logistics, infrastructure, talent. Plus they need German's to think of Tesla as a local brand. Imagine if Tesla is gutting market share from these other companies and they were in another country. It would engender resentment.
Well, but Berlin can't grow anymore... Building new apartments and houses basically cut in half because the rent control law.. To no one's surprise.. If telsa cant find the talent in Berlin. They will be out of lick because no one can't or want to move to Berlin...
What you said is just absolutely wrong. On every level. You are just repeating the propaganda of the landlord lobby.
First off, the number of building permits did actually increase more twofold (by number of apartments) between 2012 and 2018 (the first rent control law took effect in 2015)[1].
Secondly, the rent control law doesn't apply to newly constructed buildings. So suggesting it would somehow decrease incentive to build new apartments is ludicrous. In fact the opposite is true. If you want to have higher rents, you need to construct new buildings.
That article speaks of a 10% change for a 9 month period on a number that sometimes changed by more than 60% (2013 vs 2014) on a yearly basis in recent years.
In any case a 10% fluctuation can hardly be called "basically cut in half", as you put it. I am reading "10%" as "basically unchanged".
As it stands your argument is not even supported by the sources you are citing yourself.
Edit:
Ahah! When just comparing the single month of September we can find a decrease of about 50% though, according to the article (couldn't find a source for the number though, see below). So at least we have a number like that if we make the window so small that the data we have is beyond useful.
A 50% fluctuation on a monthly basis is perfectly normal though. For instance there was a +120% change in April 2018 / April 2019 (1517 vs 3345)[1] in total permits on a per-apartment basis. You can find plenty of such fluctuations though when just looking at months.
The data is pretty much completely useless on a month-by-month basis and can easily be skewed by a few large projects.
Also I can't figure out where that article is pulling its numbers from, because it quotes "more than 1700 permits for apartments last year in September", while the official statistics[1] just have 1301 when counting any kind of permit. For completeness, here is the press release referred to by the article, which also doesn't contain any number like that: https://www.statistik-berlin-brandenburg.de/pms/2019/19-11-0...
Could be partially political. Close to federal power, far-ish (in a different state than) from other car companies. No idea if there's supplier or other partner concerns that align (some R&D stuff in Berlin maybe, if they plan on doing anything like that there? I know they work with some Berlin companies, but that doesn't seem so important). Would expect Brandenburg to give some kind of subsidy, but other states would too.
Without knowing the backroom deals - Berlin is a nice choice for things because it's like 'East Europe wages' with 'West Europe capabilities'.
Germany is a very stable robust economy that might be their #1 'export source' - there's a lot of related knowledge - and in a 'cramped Europe' - the Berlin area is wide open.
FYI Berlin has 'wide avenue streets' which are totally unlike most other European places, sometimes it feels like Los Angeles and not Europe.
It might have been possible to go to Czech/Poland but there are just a large number of 'little things' that can go wrong over there, issues best left to those who know and operate the market well.
Compound this with the probable politics of the game and it makes sense.
I have heard that a working legal system is one way for a country to attract long term investment. There is less risk that some politician's friend ends up claiming your factory grounds.
There are ways yo try to "hack it" like subsidies or having personal relations with someone high up but I don't know how cost effective and long term they really are.
So if people want long term improvement, they should vote for a strong legal system instead of "I personally brought this factory here".
German/French car companies, with long and historic ties on many levels to say, Poland, can fathom the risk of going there, especially with a long term view.
Volskwagen can plan decades ahead in some facets.
It takes 'a whole team' i.e. government (local, Fed, EU), probably financing/banking on both sides, political buy-in etc..
But for a new US company to go to Czech ... is asking for trouble.
The difference between E/W Europe is definitely centred around competitive advantage and long-established industries - but I'd argue more than anything it's 'good governance' at every level, private and public. And it's the same all over the 'developing' world.
Seeing a lot of comments saying their choice is good because it won't contribute to gentrification.
Doesn't sound right to me. Why is that the first~third thing you're mentioning? It's almost like we scorn the concept of more people working in an area towards a positive goal (renewable transport). Yikes.
I think it highlights an issue with housing in general - if you judge by actions instead of words the logical but uncomfortable conclusion is that /everyone/, poor, middle class, or rich is horribly selfish and unwilling to agree to any cost which doesn't benefit them directly. From rent control to property values everyone has a "screw everyone else I have mine" attitude.
I actually start to feel sorry for politicians for a change when they have people who want mathematical impossibilities.
Checkout this internal memo from Elon just as the Model 3 was going into ramp-up for production:
– Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time. Please get of all large meetings, unless you’re certain they are providing value to the whole audience, in which case keep them very short.
– Also get rid of frequent meetings, unless you are dealing with an extremely urgent matter. Meeting frequency should drop rapidly once the urgent matter is resolved.
– Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren’t adding value. It is not rude to leave, it is rude to make someone stay and waste their time.
– Don’t use acronyms or nonsense words for objects, software or processes at Tesla. In general, anything that requires an explanation inhibits communication. We don’t want people to have to memorize a glossary just to function at Tesla.
– Communication should travel via the shortest path necessary to get the job done, not through the “chain of command”. Any manager who attempts to enforce chain of command communication will soon find themselves working elsewhere.
– A major source of issues is poor communication between depts. The way to solve this is allow free flow of information between all levels. If, in order to get something done between depts, an individual contributor has to talk to their manager, who talks to a director, who talks to a VP, who talks to another VP, who talks to a director, who talks to a manager, who talks to someone doing the actual work, then super dumb things will happen. It must be ok for people to talk directly and just make the right thing happen.
– In general, always pick common sense as your guide. If following a “company rule” is obviously ridiculous in a particular situation, such that it would make for a great Dilbert cartoon, then the rule should change.
If there is something you think should be done to make Tesla execute better or allow you to look forward to coming to work more (same thing in the long term), please send a note to [redacted]
According to local news sources, the location of the factory will be at/near Grünheide near Berlin, roughly here:
https://goo.gl/maps/orssVTcRQ6hwBTR76
Why should a GIGA factory be located near the airport and in a city ? A factory meant to mass produce something should be somewhere the land is cheap should not it be ?
The area just south of Berlin (it's not in the city) is suitable for the gigafactory for the same reason it was chosen as the site for the new airport: there's not much else there, so you can build big.
Of course that applies to many other places in Brandenburg with similar distance to Berlin, but the airport means that transportation to and from the city has been (or will be) built out for higher capacity.
Berlin is in a special situation due to the history. As only west Berlin belonged to west Germany and east Berlin and all the surrounding areas were part of the DDR, there is still a steep fall-off in industrialization as soon as you leave the direct Berlin area. Also in the DDR the industrial centers were in other cities than Berlin. So there should be plenty of cheap real estate not too far from Berlin.
Also in Bavaria, once you leave Munich (BMW), Augsburg or Ingoldstadt (Audi), there is quite a steep drop-off in density. The traditional high-density industrial regions of Germany are rather in the west and south-west.
If it is directly under the flight path the noise would make it less desirable and lower costs while the easy access to labor could possibly make up for the rest of the land costs.
The number sold electric vehicles in germany is still exponential not saturated, the government recently announced to build additional charging stations across the country in the order of 10 thousands and to increase the (tax) incentives for hybrid and fully electric cars. It is a good time to build a factory for electric cars in germany. Berlin is a sweet spot when it comes to talent in high tech, suppliers and transport connection.
Except Germany has the highest energy prices in Europe, and as long as that doesn't change drastically, e-mobility is for a minority of enthusiasts and people who can afford to be bad at math. Just look at actual numbers of vehicles sold where Diesel still rules. Well, government could raise taxes on mineral oil (already at 63% [1]), but the German state is already drowning in cash and could issue bonds with negative yield. Charging stations are also an area where it goes completely wrong since these are owned and operated by municipalities and monopolist energy providers. Housing also goes wrong especially in Berlin where socialist government doesn't seem able to attract investors and plays ideological games for winning a left-wing electorate instead despite massive influx of 40000 people per year, in addition to energy-efficiency laws and lack of capacity making construction unprofitable (btw. solar industry also goes south).
Within EU, immediate local demand is barely relevant compared to labor and manufacturing conditions, for setting up a factory. A Tesla factory in Germany will obviously supply at least the whole EU.
This is all good news. Just wondering about repairs globally as Tesla's start aging and they need to be repaired, or for whatever the current % of their vehicles require service year over year. They must have that info given the amount of telematics they generate AND that they are sole source for maintenance and repair.
With no carburetors, alternators, starter motors, fuel pumps, fuel filters, oil filters, oil leaks, gas leaks, exhaust buildup, spark plugs, timing belts, radiators, head gaskets, mufflers, rings, manifolds, belts... and with brake pads that last forever... it's significantly less maintenance.
And Teslas are not designed to milk the consumer for repairs over the years; they are designed to convince consumers that electric cars are a better choice.
The Model 3 is designed to last 1 million miles. So sure, it will be fascinating to see how they do... but that's like 25 or more years from now.
Not true if you live in an area where the roads are salted in the winter. Then they don't last any longer than on an ICE car unless you reduce or turn off regenerative braking. I had to have two replaced at the last service because of rust for just that reason and the car is only four years old (Model S).
Tesla's advice was to reduce regen in the winter so that the brakes get used a bit more. A colleague also suggests doing an emergency stop once a year in the summer on a dry road to scour the brakes, not tried it, no idea if it would really be effective.
Yes exception for very cold weather when regen is limited. Not so much to do with road salting, just use of brake pads versus non use, although salt could help cause rust to disks, not pads, which could in turn affect pads. But yes certain conditions may vary.
> Then they don't last any longer than on an ICE car unless you reduce or turn off regenerative braking.
This makes no sense. Reducing or turning off regen would make brake pad wear worse, not better. As an owner I assume you know your stuff so typo maybe?
I was talking about the disks, sorry I didn't make that clear.
If the rust is too extensive then the car will fail its periodic test. All cars in Norway must be tested every two years (first test when the car is four years old) and the condition of the brake disks is one of the check points.
I agree that the pads will last much longer with regen but the pads are relatively cheap compared to the disks.
What makes me curious is that this village is actually within a nature protection area, Naturschutzgebiet Löcknitztal. I could imagine that building such a symbol of international market economy there might attract anti-capitalist demonstrators and involve protesting and riots. But perhaps I'm wrong.
I also find it somewhat interesting that in the political composition of this village of 8000 residents, the Social Democrats and Linke (Left) have 3 seats, and two seats are held by CDU, AfD, and.... Freiwillige Feuerwehr.
Yes, the voluntary fire brigade is apparently popular enough to feature in local politics. I think this is a somewhat sympathetic phenomenon in German local politics.
Looking at that map I'd assume they're planning on building the factory in the cleared area at the top, just off the Lichtenower Weg, with good close access to Highway 1.
Cars are high-price, low-volume goods, and Tesla loves automating their factories. If you're making a car you don't want low regulation, you want highly qualified labor, and stable and predictable regulation.
I know that's how Elon Musk sells his factories. But in reality, people are moving around boxes with their bare hands and getting their fingers crushed.
From the article you linked, a man had his fingertip severed when a shelf he was helping install was lowered too soon.
I cut the tip of my finger off with a chefs knife last year, luckily just took off about 1-2mm. The man in the story looks to have lost a bit more than that - but still has a fingernail on his right index finger. I’m not sure where the official line is drawn between cut and amputation when talking about fingertips. Once you’re cutting through fingernail though I would say it’s around there.
The fork lifts are automated. The wages are an average of 4x minimum wage, they hire at-risk college dropouts and train then to become techs while paying their tuition at community college, and they even housed a homeless employee at a local hotel while he worked there. All from the same article.
Property assessments are up 80% but TFA claims there’s no new tax revenue to cover the cost of services which a factory that large requires.
It’s a typical hit-job piece against an incredible factory which employs 7,000 in an extremely safe environment which is unfortunately not a utopia, but involves on average 1 emergency call per day for anything from fighting, DUI, chest pains, pregnancy related, and yes, occasionally workplace injury.
> Several hours into his shift, Dillon was helping guide a rack into place so it could be bolted into the factory floor. The racks are so heavy it takes a team of four people to maneuver them.
The issue is that these guys are moving very heavy shelves by hand, instead of using forklifts.
I would assume that moving heavy equipment around is a pretty standard case in a car factory. It probably shouldn't be lifted by human muscle, which is prone to failure and coordination issues.
Tesla fails to report OSHA violations, or even workplace injuries (such as Dillon's missing finger). As such, their statistics are fully bunk. We're blind to the issue, outside of scattered reports.
Tesla needs to fix their reporting problem before we can even have hope at measuring the incidence rate at their factory.
It’s less of a good idea than the people here seem to think (especially Germans). Germany, as a shareholder of VW and very dependent upon taxes paid by all German car manufacturers is the “enemy” and has a large arsenal of methods available to hurt Tesla on its turf.
It was originally intended to replace both Schönefeld and Berlin Tegel Airport and become the single commercial airport serving Berlin and the surrounding State of Brandenburg, an area with a combined 6 million inhabitants. However, it is now planned that it will not replace any, with Schönefeld Airport currently being expanded due to rising passenger numbers, and Tegel which will remain open after a referendum.
After almost 15 years of planning, construction began in 2006. Originally planned to open in October 2011, the airport has encountered a series of delays and cost overruns.
Since German reunification, air traffic in Berlin has grown greatly. In 1991, the combined passenger volume of the city's airports was at 7.9 million per year. By 2014, this number had risen to 28 million. When Berlin Brandenburg opens, it will have a capacity of 27 million passengers per year.
Summarized: when/if BER will open, if it will manage to handle immediately its max capacity (best-case scenario), it won't have enough capacity => the other airports will still be needed (until BER is expanded) :|
I'm guessing they'll take longer to get things done in Germany than in China, but hoping that they'll bring their relentless efficiency to Europe as well :)
A quite nice recovery attempt - respect (unluckily the parent threads didn't mention Tempelhof nor did the anchor article of this discussion, therefore Tempelhof seems to be out-of-context. Additionally, after considering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Tempelhof_Airport#Post-... : the post does not seem to take into consideration its current situation and therefore does not seem to be realistic).
There are a lot of Berliners who love Tegel and don't want it to close even when BBI is eventually open (whenever that may be). TXL is truly a fantastic airport, and would become even better when not overcrowded.
Terminal A is great, separate security queues for each gate means you can arrive 20 mins before your flight leaves and it's fine, provided you're flying BA or Lufthansa...
B, C and D are as crappy as you'd expect hosting sleazyjet, ryanair, germanwings etc etc, although it's 80% business flights in the mornings and seasoned air travelers tend to make security and so on less bothersome than if you arrive at the same time as 150 hungover brits trying to get back to gatwick.. ;)
there are a lot of cool projects to be built in the area of Tegel, including more housing. My University wants/needs to expand its campus there too and people who bought apartments in the area would get screwed over if Tegel would stay. It needs to go.
How would people who bought apartments next to the airport get screwed over? Are you suggesting that a potentially-inaccurate prediction of the future was priced in?
Millions of more people use Tegel than use those apartments, and if they aren’t “screwed over” living near the airport today, they wouldn’t be if it stayed open.
It wasn't a prediction, this was set in stone and only the disaster that is the BER construction made some people reevaluate it. Of course it was risky to buy a home based on this, but there are many other forward looking projects to be based in the Tegel area, many of which have been planned for over a decade and that have been invested in already.
You really think turning a popular public park (or if you mean the buildings, a publicly owned/used building with preservation status) in a central-ish location in the city, with worse freight transport connections than the airport, into a factory is a sensible or politically viable solution?
They're a manufacturing powerhouse. It's a joke referencing that Tesla is head to head with BMW/Volkswagen et. al. and is setting up in their backyard.
I assume it was some snark related to what's happening in Bolivia. I haven't followed that development closely enough myself to comment more than that.
I did not follow the news, either, but it just occured to me that what's happening in Bolivia could have major implications for the German car industry.
You can always put a project into a reference class consisting only of failed projects. You can also put this project into the class of Tesla factories, none of which failed so far.
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Being outside of the city center it won't contribute too much to gentrification and probably it will help Brandenburg getting more people to live there, pay taxes, buy property, shop, etc.
So far reactions have been neutral to good, which by Berlin standards is an amazing result.
I kind of wonder if the decision of bringing the factory to Berlin wasn't based on the amount of software engineering talent that is available, more than the more traditional engineers.
In any case, I'm happy about Tesla coming to Germany, interesting times!