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There's an interesting AMA on Reddit from a Northvolt engineer: https://old.reddit.com/r/sweden/comments/1g1xkmx/jag_%C3%A4r_ingenj%C3%B6r_p%C3%A5_northvolt_ama

by em500 2y ago

There's an interesting AMA on Reddit from a Northvolt engineer: https://old.reddit.com/r/sweden/comments/1g1xkmx/jag_%C3%A4r_ingenj%C3%B6r_p%C3%A5_northvolt_ama/ https://old.reddit.com/r/sweden/comments/1g1xkmx/jag_%C3%A4r... (Google translate works well on the old.reddit.com site). According to this (and other) reports, they never got their high volume production yields anywhere near that of their (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) competitors, which made their end products far too expensive. Geopolitics aside, they didn't have any competitive edge, it's difficult to see where they would get it, since both their raw materials and manufacturing equipment were majorly imported from Asia.

rightbyte 2y ago
Also, Northvolt had leadership with hubris. All talk and no batteries. If you want to rush building a 'giga factory' you need to pay up for skilled people. Which they didn't. You don't get relevant engineers and workers to move to the middle of snow-where for the same wage as they have now. And they tried to scale up production even before they were able to make proper batteries...
- lifestyleguru 2y ago
  Nothing attracts skilled labor better than perspective of paying 45% monthly contributions then begging the housing market to accept you, so you can pay another 40% of net salary on rent.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    Rent? The town does rent control. There is nothing to rent. You can't outprice the locals with their queue time. Dunno how they thought there would be room to house like 4000 employees in such a small town on such a short notice. The effect on hireing is enormous. After you employeed all available able bodied locals you get desperate people happy to live in barracks.
    - lifestyleguru 2y ago
      You have to make sacrifices to live in our venerable society, "beggars can't be choosers" as I heard a lot.
    - Cumpiler69 2y ago
      >Rent? The town does rent control. There is nothing to rent. You can't outprice the locals with their queue time. IMHO, this is one of the biggest issues holding back EU labor mobility in places with strongly regulated rent controls. You're an EU citizen and wanna move somewhere else for a job but you get fucked on the housing market because the locals have privileges you don't have, so either employers need to take a hit and compresate foreign workers more for the trouble, or they don't and so you either get fucked if you choose to move to work there, or you don't bother moving at all because it's a shit deal so the employers are starved of labor and go bust. And that's besides the legal, linguistic and cultural hurdles you have when moving to a new country where you don't know the system and don't speak the language. The EU fixed a similar issue like this when universities gave special privileges and conditions to local students but not to students coming from other EU countries who were being charged money for things the locals got for free, so the EU forced them to have to give the same benefits and treatments the local students were getting to all EU students coming to study there, ending this discrimination. IMHO, the same needs to be done on the housing side if we wish to have actual labor mobility that improves the block's economic potential, and not just one that's on paper and holds back economic development by wanting to screw foreign workers of more money to prop up the local housing bubble. If a skilled EU citizen moving to another EU country for work, the new host country is already getting a huge break for getting a new taxpayer paying into the welfare system out of the box for free, without having invested 20+ into their education like it did for the locals, so then why double dip and also screw them over with unfavorable housing rules that only serve to enrich landlords?
      - em500 2y ago
        This is one of the reasons that pretty much all academic economists, regardless of political affiliation, agree that rent control is bad policy. The economically superior way to help locals of lower means is through income transfers (because it fucks up the market way less), but the politically superior way is via price controls (because you hide the tax-transfer redistribution and can pretend that you're just sticking it to fat-cat landlords/corporations/investors).
- euroderf 2y ago
  "the middle of snow-where" gotta start using this one
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    Be my guest!
- Cumpiler69 2y ago
  >Also, Northvolt had leadership with hubris. All talk and no batteries. Isn't this the SV scale-up modus operandi? Talk the talk for investors to throw money at you hoping you'll eventually become profitable before they wise up. This worked during the zero-interest money days, not so much now.
- fifilura 2y ago
  I think it was more a problem with TTT, Things Take Time. Put up in a place where it's easy to see the cryptic admonishment T.T.T. When you feel how depressingly slowly you climb, it's well to remember that Things Take Time. -- Piet Hein Build one (small) factory first, make it work. Instead of "Build Hype. Build five factories. See what happens" I think owners could have put up with some loss margins for some time just for the fact of having control over production. But someone needs to build the factory, not just talk about it and waste money.
stuaxo 2y ago
Probably need government support to bootstrap all that.
- mikae1 2y ago
  Swedish tax payers have already payed 88 billion SEK in support. https://www.breakit.se/artikel/39737/skattebetalarna-star-for-88-miljarder-av-northvolts-pengar-nu-vacks-kritik https://www.breakit.se/artikel/39737/skattebetalarna-star-fo...
  - kaffekaka 2y ago
    The article says that 50B of those 88B are from Canada and Germany.
    - mikae1 2y ago
      Oh damn... Sorry Canadians and Germans.
    - 0points 2y ago
      Truly a joint fuckupery worse than the Nuon scandal or the Nya Karolinska hospital construction scandal. When I was born, Sweden had a state fund to last for another 200+ years of running the country. Today, Sweden has no fund left and is quickly accumulating debt.
- belorn 2y ago
  They were offered government loans, but they did not accept it. The government has also said that direct subsidizes are not on the table since they already gotten enough. Applying more subsidizes will decrease trust people have in the venture and increase the view that falling prices in batteries are from subsidies rather than advances in technology.
em500 2y ago
Self-reply, direct gtranslate link: https://old-reddit-com.translate.goog/r/sweden/comments/1g1xkmx/jag_%C3%A4r_ingenj%C3%B6r_p%C3%A5_northvolt_ama/?_x_tr_sl=sv&_x_tr_tl=en https://old-reddit-com.translate.goog/r/sweden/comments/1g1x...

by em500 2y ago

rightbyte 2y ago

Also, Northvolt had leadership with hubris. All talk and no batteries. If you want to rush building a 'giga factory' you need to pay up for skilled people. Which they didn't. You don't get relevant engineers and workers to move to the middle of snow-where for the same wage as they have now. And they tried to scale up production even before they were able to make proper batteries...

lifestyleguru 2y ago
Nothing attracts skilled labor better than perspective of paying 45% monthly contributions then begging the housing market to accept you, so you can pay another 40% of net salary on rent.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  Rent? The town does rent control. There is nothing to rent. You can't outprice the locals with their queue time. Dunno how they thought there would be room to house like 4000 employees in such a small town on such a short notice. The effect on hireing is enormous. After you employeed all available able bodied locals you get desperate people happy to live in barracks.
  - lifestyleguru 2y ago
    You have to make sacrifices to live in our venerable society, "beggars can't be choosers" as I heard a lot.
  - Cumpiler69 2y ago
    >Rent? The town does rent control. There is nothing to rent. You can't outprice the locals with their queue time. IMHO, this is one of the biggest issues holding back EU labor mobility in places with strongly regulated rent controls. You're an EU citizen and wanna move somewhere else for a job but you get fucked on the housing market because the locals have privileges you don't have, so either employers need to take a hit and compresate foreign workers more for the trouble, or they don't and so you either get fucked if you choose to move to work there, or you don't bother moving at all because it's a shit deal so the employers are starved of labor and go bust. And that's besides the legal, linguistic and cultural hurdles you have when moving to a new country where you don't know the system and don't speak the language. The EU fixed a similar issue like this when universities gave special privileges and conditions to local students but not to students coming from other EU countries who were being charged money for things the locals got for free, so the EU forced them to have to give the same benefits and treatments the local students were getting to all EU students coming to study there, ending this discrimination. IMHO, the same needs to be done on the housing side if we wish to have actual labor mobility that improves the block's economic potential, and not just one that's on paper and holds back economic development by wanting to screw foreign workers of more money to prop up the local housing bubble. If a skilled EU citizen moving to another EU country for work, the new host country is already getting a huge break for getting a new taxpayer paying into the welfare system out of the box for free, without having invested 20+ into their education like it did for the locals, so then why double dip and also screw them over with unfavorable housing rules that only serve to enrich landlords?
    - em500 2y ago
      This is one of the reasons that pretty much all academic economists, regardless of political affiliation, agree that rent control is bad policy. The economically superior way to help locals of lower means is through income transfers (because it fucks up the market way less), but the politically superior way is via price controls (because you hide the tax-transfer redistribution and can pretend that you're just sticking it to fat-cat landlords/corporations/investors).
euroderf 2y ago
"the middle of snow-where" gotta start using this one
- rightbyte 2y ago
  Be my guest!
Cumpiler69 2y ago
>Also, Northvolt had leadership with hubris. All talk and no batteries. Isn't this the SV scale-up modus operandi? Talk the talk for investors to throw money at you hoping you'll eventually become profitable before they wise up. This worked during the zero-interest money days, not so much now.
fifilura 2y ago
I think it was more a problem with TTT, Things Take Time. Put up in a place where it's easy to see the cryptic admonishment T.T.T. When you feel how depressingly slowly you climb, it's well to remember that Things Take Time. -- Piet Hein Build one (small) factory first, make it work. Instead of "Build Hype. Build five factories. See what happens" I think owners could have put up with some loss margins for some time just for the fact of having control over production. But someone needs to build the factory, not just talk about it and waste money.

stuaxo 2y ago

Probably need government support to bootstrap all that.

mikae1 2y ago
Swedish tax payers have already payed 88 billion SEK in support. https://www.breakit.se/artikel/39737/skattebetalarna-star-for-88-miljarder-av-northvolts-pengar-nu-vacks-kritik https://www.breakit.se/artikel/39737/skattebetalarna-star-fo...
- kaffekaka 2y ago
  The article says that 50B of those 88B are from Canada and Germany.
  - mikae1 2y ago
    Oh damn... Sorry Canadians and Germans.
  - 0points 2y ago
    Truly a joint fuckupery worse than the Nuon scandal or the Nya Karolinska hospital construction scandal. When I was born, Sweden had a state fund to last for another 200+ years of running the country. Today, Sweden has no fund left and is quickly accumulating debt.
belorn 2y ago
They were offered government loans, but they did not accept it. The government has also said that direct subsidizes are not on the table since they already gotten enough. Applying more subsidizes will decrease trust people have in the venture and increase the view that falling prices in batteries are from subsidies rather than advances in technology.

em500 2y ago

Self-reply, direct gtranslate link: https://old-reddit-com.translate.goog/r/sweden/comments/1g1xkmx/jag_%C3%A4r_ingenj%C3%B6r_p%C3%A5_northvolt_ama/?_x_tr_sl=sv&_x_tr_tl=en https://old-reddit-com.translate.goog/r/sweden/comments/1g1x...