5 ms·

I guess Tesla knows better, but wouldn't another country be a better choice?

by bserge 5y ago

LightG 5y ago
"Better" should be defined ... do you mean "better" as in one more willing to bend over for them?
cyberpunk 5y ago
The location is a bit weird also. Ingolstadt or similar they’d at least be able to find a lot of staff, I think it may be tricky around Berlin.. Time will tell I guess.
- mitjam 5y ago
  Wolfsburg is a 1h 7min train ride away. Quite a few commute from Berlin. Berlin has three large universities and some smaller ones. Still, the real automotive hotspots like Stuttgart area would have been more attractive but there was certainly headwind from incumbents.
- maverwa 5y ago
  For context: Berlin is one (or the) central for IT jobs and startups, but for car manufacturing Ingolstadt, Stuttgart or Wolfsburg would be more „traditional“ choices, since that’s where the big car makers are. Oh, and the Ruhrarea ofc.
  - ahartmetz 5y ago
    OTOH, unemployment is average in the region and wages and salaries are below average (maybe not in IT anymore). Traditional car industry regions have low unemployment and high wages and salaries - IG Metall, the traditional union of the car industry, is very strong. It will be interesting to see how Tesla deals with the unions. Wal-Mart had its troubles with that.
- G3rn0ti 5y ago
  Due to being partly surrounded by a big wall until 30 years ago and being governed by its own state legislature, Berlin's urban sprawl is still pretty limited and land is aplenty in the surrounding state called "Brandenburg". So it's much cheaper to buy land there compared to (South)Western German areas.
- wongarsu 5y ago
  In Bavaria they would have been one of many major companies. In Brandenburg they are the exciting thing happening in terms of industry, giving them a lot of political support. Also lower wages, both because Brandenburg has low wages and because it's close to the Polish border. Also "Gigafactory Berlin" is only a slight stretch of the truth and has a much nicer ring to it than "Gigafactory Ingolstadt". Being big and flashy is important to Tesla (hence "Gigafactory", not "factory"), and Berlin is just much more recognizable than the alternatives.
_Microft 5y ago
A few years ago, Tesla bought a german supplier of automation equipment, Grohmann Engineering [0]. They should be familiar with the way things work here by now, so they hopefully factored all that into their decision already. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Grohmann_Automation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Grohmann_Automation
yarcob 5y ago
Germany has a lot of high end car manufacturers and other industry, which means that there are a lot of experienced engineers in the country that they can hire. Most people also speak English well enough, which makes it easier to collaborate with US engineers (compared to eg. Spain, where many people really struggle with English).
- karxxm 5y ago
  Due to the highly specialized and high quality automotive industry, there are also numerous suppliers that Telsa tries to reach.
  - kfprt 5y ago
    Tesla vehicles are full of German parts. The most obvious instance is the turn stalk in the model S/X borrowed from Mercedes.
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  If recruiting experienced engineers was a primary consideration, they would have built in Southern Germany rather than Eastern Germany.
  - sho_hn 5y ago
    All of the established domestic car manufacturers have significantly expanded their operations in Berlin in the last 5 years (though mainly R&D, especially software). Germany has relatively high immigration, and it's a lot easier to draw highly qualified immigrants to Berlin than to the Southern German countryside due to the youthful appeal and lower CoL of the city. The US, OTOH, has become more hostile to immigration over time. From a "competition for global talent" PoV, Berlin is a decent stake in the ground in many ways. Tesla also has plans to build an R&D site on the land of the recently shuttered Tegel inner city airport.
hnbad 5y ago
Building in Poland would be too on the nose and building in Germany brings prestige while still being close enough to the Polish border to benefit from cheap labor with minimal labor protection laws. I guess it's a trade-off.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  > cheap labor with minimal labor protection law I'm confused by your statement. That cheap labor you're referring to is cheap while it's in Poland, but being in Germany, you're now under German contractual union agreements regardless of your nationality, so labor no longer cheap and you're also under German labor law, not Polish. So what gives? Or do you thing German worker's rights don't apply to workers from Poland?
  - hnbad 5y ago
    They don't if you outsource the labor to a Polish staffing company and feign ignorance about their handling of labor issues. This is how most large industry companies handle cheap foreign labor in the country. Employing most of your industrial work force directly is so pre-Agenda-2010. This practice actually became somewhat infamous during the pandemic when an outbreak in a meat factory shined light on Eastern European workers' working and living conditions. The company went on to hire thousands of workers directly in an attempt to salvage some of its reputation but previously had outsourced the work to a network of such staffing companies it claimed to have no insight into while actually having funded (and likely owned) several of them.
- cyberpunk 5y ago
  Why would building in Poland be on the nose? I don’t really understand the prestige thing either, anyone who has lived for any amount of time in Germany is presumably as equally baffled as I am by this image. I still can’t pay by card in my favourite restaurant in berlin, until very recently you need a paper ticket on the bahn in the capital (although these days you can have a pdf emailed to you (!!))
  - 5y ago

I guess Tesla knows better, but wouldn't another country be a better choice?

by bserge 5y ago

I guess Tesla knows better, but wouldn't another country be a better choice?

LightG 5y ago

"Better" should be defined ... do you mean "better" as in one more willing to bend over for them?

cyberpunk 5y ago

The location is a bit weird also. Ingolstadt or similar they’d at least be able to find a lot of staff, I think it may be tricky around Berlin.. Time will tell I guess.

mitjam 5y ago
Wolfsburg is a 1h 7min train ride away. Quite a few commute from Berlin. Berlin has three large universities and some smaller ones. Still, the real automotive hotspots like Stuttgart area would have been more attractive but there was certainly headwind from incumbents.
maverwa 5y ago
For context: Berlin is one (or the) central for IT jobs and startups, but for car manufacturing Ingolstadt, Stuttgart or Wolfsburg would be more „traditional“ choices, since that’s where the big car makers are. Oh, and the Ruhrarea ofc.
- ahartmetz 5y ago
  OTOH, unemployment is average in the region and wages and salaries are below average (maybe not in IT anymore). Traditional car industry regions have low unemployment and high wages and salaries - IG Metall, the traditional union of the car industry, is very strong. It will be interesting to see how Tesla deals with the unions. Wal-Mart had its troubles with that.
G3rn0ti 5y ago
Due to being partly surrounded by a big wall until 30 years ago and being governed by its own state legislature, Berlin's urban sprawl is still pretty limited and land is aplenty in the surrounding state called "Brandenburg". So it's much cheaper to buy land there compared to (South)Western German areas.
wongarsu 5y ago
In Bavaria they would have been one of many major companies. In Brandenburg they are the exciting thing happening in terms of industry, giving them a lot of political support. Also lower wages, both because Brandenburg has low wages and because it's close to the Polish border. Also "Gigafactory Berlin" is only a slight stretch of the truth and has a much nicer ring to it than "Gigafactory Ingolstadt". Being big and flashy is important to Tesla (hence "Gigafactory", not "factory"), and Berlin is just much more recognizable than the alternatives.

_Microft 5y ago

A few years ago, Tesla bought a german supplier of automation equipment, Grohmann Engineering [0]. They should be familiar with the way things work here by now, so they hopefully factored all that into their decision already. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Grohmann_Automation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Grohmann_Automation

yarcob 5y ago

Germany has a lot of high end car manufacturers and other industry, which means that there are a lot of experienced engineers in the country that they can hire. Most people also speak English well enough, which makes it easier to collaborate with US engineers (compared to eg. Spain, where many people really struggle with English).

karxxm 5y ago
Due to the highly specialized and high quality automotive industry, there are also numerous suppliers that Telsa tries to reach.
- kfprt 5y ago
  Tesla vehicles are full of German parts. The most obvious instance is the turn stalk in the model S/X borrowed from Mercedes.
bryanlarsen 5y ago
If recruiting experienced engineers was a primary consideration, they would have built in Southern Germany rather than Eastern Germany.
- sho_hn 5y ago
  All of the established domestic car manufacturers have significantly expanded their operations in Berlin in the last 5 years (though mainly R&D, especially software). Germany has relatively high immigration, and it's a lot easier to draw highly qualified immigrants to Berlin than to the Southern German countryside due to the youthful appeal and lower CoL of the city. The US, OTOH, has become more hostile to immigration over time. From a "competition for global talent" PoV, Berlin is a decent stake in the ground in many ways. Tesla also has plans to build an R&D site on the land of the recently shuttered Tegel inner city airport.

hnbad 5y ago

Building in Poland would be too on the nose and building in Germany brings prestige while still being close enough to the Polish border to benefit from cheap labor with minimal labor protection laws. I guess it's a trade-off.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago
> cheap labor with minimal labor protection law I'm confused by your statement. That cheap labor you're referring to is cheap while it's in Poland, but being in Germany, you're now under German contractual union agreements regardless of your nationality, so labor no longer cheap and you're also under German labor law, not Polish. So what gives? Or do you thing German worker's rights don't apply to workers from Poland?
- hnbad 5y ago
  They don't if you outsource the labor to a Polish staffing company and feign ignorance about their handling of labor issues. This is how most large industry companies handle cheap foreign labor in the country. Employing most of your industrial work force directly is so pre-Agenda-2010. This practice actually became somewhat infamous during the pandemic when an outbreak in a meat factory shined light on Eastern European workers' working and living conditions. The company went on to hire thousands of workers directly in an attempt to salvage some of its reputation but previously had outsourced the work to a network of such staffing companies it claimed to have no insight into while actually having funded (and likely owned) several of them.
cyberpunk 5y ago
Why would building in Poland be on the nose? I don’t really understand the prestige thing either, anyone who has lived for any amount of time in Germany is presumably as equally baffled as I am by this image. I still can’t pay by card in my favourite restaurant in berlin, until very recently you need a paper ticket on the bahn in the capital (although these days you can have a pdf emailed to you (!!))
- 5y ago