Tesla Gigafactories, News and Conversation

[yesterday 2,022]

19 minutes ago, catjones said:

 

I don't know if that's true.  I've done systems in some large US companies (Levi, Sears, Pepsi, Toyota, etc.) and some state universities and from what I've seen, firing and hiring are far from whimsical.  Laws are very strict at both ends.  Instead of individual unions, they rely on general legislation that covers all.

 

I dont know much about American protection laws. Do you have any examples to back it up ?, nothing personal to you of course. I suppose I have been spoon feed stuff from America, like 10 days holiday a year and no comprehensive health service and other things that makes me think protections are low as well, but a,maybe I am wrong.  

 

But having lived in the UK and Germany, it seems to me that Germany has much better labour protection laws than the UK has. Thats why I think Tesla would of been happier there, if were not for Brexit, but still happier than Germany

 

I remember the discussions on Question time in the 1980's, about having lose labour laws, as it attracts business that may need to change things quick vs high labour laws to protect the workers. Each system has advantages and disadvantages in other situations.

 

To be honest I quite like it in the UK because there are less strikes, these days, and I laugh when I hear of so many strikes in Germany. It always a balance

 

But either way good governance is something I support , but its clear Tesla does not do that

 

 

[catjones 1,690]

1 hour ago, yesterday said:

But either way good governance is something I support , but its clear Tesla does not do that

 

You have to wonder why there are thousands of skilled applicants for so few jobs if the conditions at Tesla are so poor, especially those who left German auto companies.

Supporting good governance is like supporting good health, good dental hygiene, fair elections and honest politicians, et. al.  While my background is in IT, I realize the world is not binary.

[LeonG 14,810]

3 minutes ago, catjones said:

 

You have to wonder why there are thousands of skilled applicants for so few jobs if the conditions at Tesla are so poor, especially those who left German auto companies.

 

Left or were let go.  I worked in automotive on project basis for a few years.  When covid happened, work dried right up.  Even now, it's not recovered.  Few projects and many takers underbidding each other.  One client I worked for in the past cut a department of 8 employees down to 3.

[Krieg 15,027]

Elon Musk attitude will sooner or later bite him, the image damage he is doing to Tesla will come up one day, at least in some European countries that care about these kind of issues.   Tesla is riding now on the excellent times they are living, they are ahead of the competition by eons and then we have the market problems, supply chain issues, etc.   But in countries like France and Germany there are enough people who care about the social side of capitalism and plenty consider Musk very crappy.   When the other companies catch up to certain aceptable level (it does not need to be Tesla level) plenty of people will prefer to buy European brands, and I think this is happening already.    I think everyone by now knows at least one German (with the financial power to do it) who says they will never buy a Tesla, I know a few, and I am close to become one, even if Tesla brings next year the 25k EV I am waiting for, I will probably wait for VW.

 

If Elon Musk is still Tesla CEO in 5 years they won't dominate the market, they will become a niche product like Apple and rule certain categories, but they will lose in many of them, Ford will rule the pickup truck with the Lightning F150, the usual suspects will rule the luxurious SUV category, and the traditional brands will rule the entry level car. and the hot hatch, and the small utilitarian SUV, and the combi family car, and so on   Tesla will be the king of the semi-luxurious sedan and the Tesla 3 will be the $329 iPad of EVs.

[MikeMelga 7,312]

35 minutes ago, Krieg said:

If Elon Musk is still Tesla CEO in 5 years they won't dominate the market, they will become a niche product like Apple and rule certain categories, but they will lose in many of them, Ford will rule the pickup truck with the Lightning F150, the usual suspects will rule the luxurious SUV category, and the traditional brands will rule the entry level car. and the hot hatch, and the small utilitarian SUV, and the combi family car, and so on   Tesla will be the king of the semi-luxurious sedan and the Tesla 3 will be the $329 iPad of EVs.

How wrong you are... you don't understand that Tesla sells despite hate for Musk. Consumers are not stupid. The Model 3/Y are the best car in its segment by far.

https://thegate.boardingarea.com/the-most-loved-and-hated-car-brands-in-each-country-around-the-world/

 

Of course people buy for astethic reasons too, or other specific reasons, but on key metrics, including price, those cars are unbeatable and Tesla has enough margin to drop prices when "competition" comes.

This is no longer a race for technology, it's a race for production, and Tesla and the chinese will have the cheapest EVs. So your options will be between a European made Tesla, a chinese brand or a chinese-owned/manufactured BMW/Volvo/GM.

Do you really think people will prefer a chinese car to an european Tesla?

 

I think you're also wrong on Tesla going to be semi-luxurios. I actually think they will go the opposite way, they will target C-segment and let A-B for the chinese and perhaps VW.

The luxury segment will be flooded with old-auto brands like Mercedes. I still think there will be a "Tesla powered Mercedes", as I expect half of Tesla sales to be powertrain + battery + software for other OEM.

 

Let's see who survives until 2027. Many will switch to EVs, but most won't be able to make a profit out of it to survive.

[Krieg 15,027]

You fail to understand what motivates customers.  You can build the bestestest thing ever and plenty of people won't buy it for different reasons.  You can see what happened to Schlecker in Germany and why since then supermarkets pay decent salaries to their employees and make sure everyone knows it.  

[Keleth 9,315]

1 hour ago, MikeMelga said:

astethic reasons

That´s not something in Teslas´ favour because they´re as ugly as fuck.

1 hour ago, MikeMelga said:

Tesla has enough margin to drop prices when "competition" comes

This is what always makes me laugh when people say that Tesla and Musk are doing this for a better future, they´re doing it for profit no more no less and I have no problem with that but let´s not pretend Musk is an environment lover.

1 hour ago, MikeMelga said:

Do you really think people will prefer a chinese car to an european Tesla?

Price is the deciding factor in many car purchases. If the Chinese is cheaper and of the same quality, then most people will go for the cheaper every time.

[Keleth 9,315]

2 hours ago, MikeMelga said:

Let's see who survives until 2027. Many will switch to EVs,

You do realise that at the moment VW is outselling Tesla in the EV market.

 

[scook17 281]

4 hours ago, Krieg said:

You fail to understand what motivates customers.  You can build the bestestest thing ever and plenty of people won't buy it for different reasons.  You can see what happened to Schlecker in Germany and why since then supermarkets pay decent salaries to their employees and make sure everyone knows it.  

 

What happened to Schlecker? I remember them being around and then they all disappeared. I see something like 20,000 people lost their jobs. It seems from reading about it the government just let it fail, where as they could have stepped in and continued to run the business, ensuring continuality for the employees and those owed money. Alternatively, funding whilst the business was wound down and sold off to competitors.

[scook17 281]

3 hours ago, Keleth said:

You do realise that at the moment VW is outselling Tesla in the EV market.

 

 

And V.W. announced recently they had sold out of EVs in the US, Europe and China for 2022.

[Krieg 15,027]

5 minutes ago, scook17 said:

 

What happened to Schlecker? I remember them being around and then they all disappeared. I see something like 20,000 people lost their jobs. It seems from reading about it the government just let it fail, where as they could have stepped in and continued to run the business, ensuring continuality for the employees and those owed money. Alternatively, funding whilst the business was wound down and sold off to competitors.

 

They were having financial problems for long time but the last straw was their abusive behavior towards their employees, like one employee running the whole shop without toilet breaks, firing every employee every three months and rehiring them just to keep them under permanent probation, etc.  People decided to boycott them and they went out of business.

 

Jobs were lost but that's an inelastic market, people will continue buying the same amount of items so the shops were replaced with more DMs and Rossmans.

[PandaMunich 16,704]

1 hour ago, scook17 said:

What happened to Schlecker? I remember them being around and then they all disappeared. I see something like 20,000 people lost their jobs. It seems from reading about it the government just let it fail, where as they could have stepped in and continued to run the business, ensuring continuality for the employees and those owed money. Alternatively, funding whilst the business was wound down and sold off to competitors.

Schlecker was paying tariff wages, 13€ an hour 10 years ago, which was more than these ladies (who often didn't have an Ausbildung) were able to get elsewhere after they lost their Schlecker jobs:

• https://www-manager--magazin-de.translate.goog/politik/konjunktur/a-859072.html?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
• https://www-kontextwochenzeitung-de.translate.goog/wirtschaft/564/unbeschreibliche-existenznot-7960.html?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp

[Keleth 9,315]

20 minutes ago, PandaMunich said:

Schlecker was paying tariff wages, 13€ an hour 10 years ago, which was more than these ladies (who often didn't have an Ausbildung) were able to get elsewhere after they lost their Schlecker jobs:

It´s not always about the wages though.

[Krieg 15,027]

And that was only at the end when they were desperate and tried to fix their image.

[Fietsrad 412]

I remember Schlecker as a good no-nonsense retailer, not fancy like the two that dominate the market now.

 

But I did notice Schlecker stores in places with no food store, that did not seem right.

[PandaMunich 16,704]

2 hours ago, Fietsrad said:

I remember Schlecker as a good no-nonsense retailer, not fancy like the two that dominate the market now.

Neither of which have implemented the collective agreement (Tarifvertrag):

• dm: https://handel-nrw.verdi.de/einzelhandel/konzern-und-unternehmensdaten/++co++23e2e7ba-288d-11e6-b60a-52540059119e
• Rossmann: https://handel-nrw.verdi.de/einzelhandel/konzern-und-unternehmensdaten/++co++a9dd715a-288d-11e6-a0aa-525400ed87ba

Schlecker had implemented the collective agreement.

[arsenal21 401]

12 minutes ago, Fietsrad said:

I remember Schlecker as a good no-nonsense retailer, not fancy like the two that dominate the market now.

 

But I did notice Schlecker stores in places with no food store, that did not seem right.

Also to maximise usage of space, they made their aisles the bare minimum width, which was awkward for people with buggies.

I think they underinvested for a long time to maximise cash flow and it eventually caught up with them.

[arsenal21 401]

22 hours ago, yesterday said:

 

Sure Ireland would be a very good place to put a factory for many of the same reasons, but it does not reallly have that history of making cars behind.

The first Ford factory outside America was in Cork as far as I know. But you are right in general, there has been little or no auto manufacturing in Ireland in the last 40 years. 

[yesterday 2,022]

19 hours ago, catjones said:

 

You have to wonder why there are thousands of skilled applicants for so few jobs if the conditions at Tesla are so poor, especially those who left German auto companies.

 

The reason why is because of the brilliance of Musk, he has created exciting new products that most new grades and further up the age group really want to work on. During my earlier days, working on Concorde or the space shuttle seemed highly attractive. Musks products have the zeitgeist at the moment. Lets face would you rather want to work on these exciting  projects or working on a new wash machine program. ?. Lets see if he can continue to do thats, because if he cannot and other catch up, then the share price will return to fair value, if he can the share price is going to go up. 

 

Because he has such great products, people may well take a bit of shit and even less pay to be allowed to work on these projects, eventually the new grades will get pissed off with Musks style of management and leave, and thats where the good governance comes in.

 

But yes, you are right binary is not a good description,  but generally the more you piss people off the more chance they have to leave.

 

Quote

Supporting gCis like supporting good health, good dental hygiene, fair elections and honest politicians, et. al.  While my background is in IT, I realize the world is not binary.

My mother had here 90 birthday party last year, I have watched her, eat the most healthy diet I have ever seen a person eat, with some exceptions!.

My father died at the 64, he would smoke, drink too much and was fat from eating too much un healthy foods. 

Of course I love them both 

 

Good governance is like looking after your employees, Bad governance is like  not supporting good health, bad dental hygiene !. These things come back to bite you in the end

 

Although Musk is brilliant, he can piss off a lot of people too.

[Fietsrad 412]

Perhaps t****a shall go the way of concorde and be forgotten in a few years.