[whiteboardr]

It's not as simple as 100% of this is on the car manufacturers.

There's a lot at play, which in combination led to this "perfect" storm.

Energy policies and hence ever increasing energy prices, bureaucracy almost as bad as Italy, governements making technical decisions for unprepared manufacturers by setting goals of EV production numbers and above all phasing out the cornerstone of the countries engine, literally: ICE power units.

And yes, most management are of an era that truly doesn't understand the convergent challenges in a mixed market of ICE and EVs. Shortsighted decisions have been made, throwing out the baby with the bathwater - craftsmanship, vision and engineering prowess.

What was an engineering driven industry with a say in where all this is headed became a soulless marketing machine, merely scratching the surface of what needs to be done.

They created some very bad "sci-fi" by plastering screens everywhere in interiors while still treating software like some part you can outsource to the lowest bidding supplier, swapping these out every other model range or update.

Actual internal research and guidance got killed off around the early 2010s by outsourcing all of it externally.

Besides, the culture and politics within these corporations are the worst i ever encountered in my whole career.

It's a very grim picture we're looking at but there's nobody, neither in upper management across boards nor in politics actually being able to see the misery they're in, let alone doing something about it.

Glad i left almost 10 years ago but still sad, since all I had to witness is effecting society as a whole and not in a good way.

It's really just the beginning of what is to come.

[atmosx]

If you look at their stock performance and management compensation the last 25 years, much of the responsibility seems to lie with the manufacturers themselves.

They had roughly two decades to adapt, but instead they often relied on strategies like pressuring German workers with the possibility of relocating production to Poland to keep wages down, while investing little in research and development during a period when sales were strong and new markets, such as China, were opening up.

[throwaway_20357]

There must be more to it. German automakers did belong to the top 10 (for some periods even top 5) R&D spenders world-wide. It seems they just did not spend it wisely. Similarly, the claim they "kept wages down" seems to require some nuance. VW workers are known to be very well paid. From the outside it seems like these companies became large behemoths who were not able to spend their R&D money wisely and their outsized pay packages forcing them to offer their products at uncompetitive prices.

[riedel]

As a university computer scientist, I saw our graduates hardly getting job in automotive directly while mechanical engineers got all the good jobs for years. Then about 10 years ago the opposite happened: people quit their PhDs because industry was hiring as many CS /AI people they could get. Industry understood that they needed to invest (even it was already a bit late). However, they IMHO failed to turn scale that talent into sustainable innovation. Many people I know left again automotive. I think industry struggled quite a bit to translate engineering leadership to a digital age in many parts. I think it was easier for pure EV manufacturers to embrace also other digital innovations.

[raxxorraxor]

Software need to interface almost all parts and electronics in a vehicle. Since car makers outsourced these parts, interfacing them took a lot of work. Here manufacturers like Tesla were clearly at an advantage since they controlled all components.

That is a nightmare situation for software that already started later in the development process.

[pas]

There's not much more to it.

The internal EU market is bad (demand is low), the export markets are sensitive and competitive, and traditional Western companies are inefficient. (Which was okay as we were coasting on the post-WW2 globalization economic miracles.

But the inability and unwillingness to let the failing (uncompetitive) companies and industries go (France has a huge problem with this too) led to being stuck between a rock and an eventual hard place.

[pimeys]

I'm not working in this industry, but I am living in Germany. I'm lucky enough to take remote jobs all around the world, but I'm a bit scared on what it means politically in Germany when the sh*t really hits the fan.

This might be one of the reasons I should not buy an apartment and settle in Germany...

[reactordev]

No where is safe from this kind of fuckery though. Greed is in human nature because education is gamified, sports are gamified, business is gamified, your attention is even gamified. You’re forced to run a race you never signed up for in a manner which you disagree with for an audience that gives nothing in return but laughs as they watch you spin the wheel for them.

Literary aside, there used to be a time when you could count on a company and they could count on you. Now it’s a culture cult. This makes whistleblowing and doing what’s right virtually impossible. Who wants to sacrifice everything? Only the scorned and mistreated or it has to be egregious enough to solicit public outcry.

[kspacewalk2]

Shouldn't whistle-blowing be much easier in a more transactional work culture where everyone knows you can't count on the company and they'll fuck you over next Thursday on a whim of some consultant or an ambitious upper manager?

[gadflyinyoureye]

Sadly no. The world is litigious. The expection is that a wealthy corporation will crush anyone who holds it accountable.

[reactordev]

That entirely depends on the current economy. If they know they might have opportunities elsewhere, toot that whistle..

[meindnoch]

Weimar 2.0 Electric Boogaloo

[flakeoil]

The fact that Angela Merkel closed down all nuclear power plants was probably a big part of the lower interest in EVs in recent year. Although they invested a lot in solar and wind, the solid base of electricity generation disappeared and thus the trust in electricity for transport disappeared amongst automotive management and the population at large.

[jhbruhn]

Good luck modulating nuclear power plants when there is a lot of cheap renewable energy available.

[nkmnz]

There's no technical need to do that, because someone who can always deliver electricity would be able to struck contracts with those that always need it, i.e. heavy industry, esp. aluminum and chemistry. The reason why downregulation was necessary in the 2000s and 2010s was regulation ("Einspeisevorrang"), not technology.

[jhbruhn]

If someone takes it near the power plant, and all the infrastructure is there for it. You don't build a (large) nuclear power plant just for these customers though. Generally, with a high amount of renewable but fluctuating supply, we have to get away from the base load model, towards a residual load model.

[nkmnz]

The burden of buffering the fluctuation is on those creating the fluctuation, not on those not doing so.

[jhbruhn]

Says who? We can design the markets like that if we want to, but that won't help us reach our climate targets.

[adrianN]

Power is essentially free when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, why would people buy more expensive nuclear power during that time?

[nkmnz]

>Power is essentially free when…

This is not true, since you still need to pay for capex and depreciation. The reason it appears to be free is not because its production doesn’t cost anything, but because at times of a glut there‘s just no one willing to pay much for it. Please make some good will effort to acknowledge the difference between cost and price.

Now, about your question, why people should buy „expensive“ nuclear power: for the same reason that people buy health insurance for: volatility increases risk, and you’re willing to pay an ongoing premium to reduce systemic risks. Over- and undersupply of electricity are risks for a lot of businesses and lots of them spend a lot of money on capex to avoid them, e.g. hospitals that have diesel generators. Generators are for a different failure mode (rare, longer duration outages), but for the high frequency, short time interruptions and/or price spikes caused by unbalanced generation volatility, contracts with a nuclear power company are similar; the capex is just shifted to the power company, and the customer might pay a premium during those times that other sources would deliver energy „for free“.

That said, this is not a black-and-white scenario. Of course we can benefit a lot from solar and wind. I’m not very positive about large scale batteries and lean more towards having flexible consumers, e.g. H2 production for the chemical industry. But right now, we don’t have the choice of nuclear vs. renewables, it’s (renewables + nuclear) vs. (renewables + turbines run with Russian gas or LNG from the US and Qatar). My choice here is clear, and it should not be muddied by the Russian propaganda of nuclear power clogging our electricity grids.

[sazz]

...because you don't have to modulate renewable energy?

[patall]

Ideally, you have 300% renewable energy available and then modulate actual production based on demand.

[brnt]

Renewable is cheap, but not that cheap.

Also, solar production and heating needs are anticyclical.

Also, the European grid is big (the biggest!), but not so big it can deal with seasons and weather patterns. Yet. Or ever.

The idea was that gas would fill in the gaps, until energy storage at scale becomes a thing (no, it is still nowhere near scale, only gas reserves can fill that role right now). Germany is investing heavily in hydrogen to fill this gap, but barring fundamental breakthroughs, I think it's a pipe dream. A 90% (roughly) total efficiency loss means 1000% oveprovisioning of generation capacity. That's expensive, even when cheap.

[jonp888]

"the solid base of electricity generation disappeared and thus the trust in electricity for transport disappeared"

I'm sorry, but WTF?

This is the most unhinged drivel about German nuclear I have ever read on HN, and that's saying something.

There no problem with "trust in electricity", whatsoever, nor is there any lack of a "solid base". There has been no electricity grid collapse in Germany for decades(in stark contrast to the US, or f.e. Spain). Any problems with electrcity have been due to terrorism or building errors.

Even with that, in case you haven't noticed, EV cars run on batteries and don't need constant power. Perhaps for "preppers" or people living in remote areas it would be a factor, but I have never in my life heard anyone connect the use of EV power with the power station the charging comes from or how reliable the grid is.

[sazz]

WTF about your understanding of the German power grid, I would say.

Germany is not in a position to continuously meet its own electricity needs, but is dependent on daily aid deliveries of electricity from abroad. The electricity needs of industry cannot be met in a market-oriented manner, but taxpayers have to spend additional money so that industry can continue to produce at all.

The absurdly high prices for electricity in Germany prevent any competitiveness. Ignoring all of this can only be described as WTF – what country do you actually live in?

[jhbruhn]

Energy scientist in Germany here. Germany could fully supply it's national grid with German energy production. We just don't do it because it's cheaper to buy i.e. heavily subsidized nuclear power from France, or other sources. In the end, it's all markets across the whole EU - by design. Why should it not be, the European energy grid is interconnected for a reason.

[watt]

In 2010 I was paying 10 cents per kWh. In 2025 I am paying 36 cents per kWh. What ever happened in these 15 years, it is an absolute death spiral.

[UltraSane]

As a Germany energy scientist you should be very angry that right now according to ElectricityMaps.com Germany is emitting about 17 times as much CO2 per watt as France is.

[jhbruhn]

waves fist

[flakeoil]

> Germany could fully supply it's national grid with German energy production.

With coal. And gas imported from Russia and by boat from the USA.

[rob74]

What you call "aid from abroad" is generally called a functioning wide area synchronous grid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_synchronous_grid) which covers most of the EU plus some Balkan states, Moldova, Ukraine, Turkey and the northwestern corner of Africa. So Germany can sell power to others when renewables are generating more than it needs (which is often), and import power, not necessarily because it couldn't produce it, but because importing it can be cheaper than e.g. starting up an additional backup plant. This is nothing special and has been working reliably for decades.

[sazz]

That's right, Germany sells electricity to other countries during the day and buys electricity in the evening because there is no sun then.

The problem is that other countries also have solar and wind power during the day and don't need this electricity at all. That's why Germany has to “sell” this surplus electricity, even though no one needs it. To ensure that the electricity is still "purchased", Germany has to pay money for it. In the evening, Germany has to pay money to buy back the missing electricity.

Paying money to have something purchased is generally referred to as garbage fees.

[patall]

That does not seem to be a long term problem. Wind and solar can be down regulated with ease (and within fractions of a second), a negative prices only happen because producers got a flat-fee per kWh which is pretty much phase-out now. The problem is rather that Germany (plus Luxembourg) is still a single price zone, i.e when wind is blowing in Hamburg, the per-kWh price in Passau is also nill. While this is nice for Bavaria (the main culprit, as usual), there is an enormous cost for this in the form of re-dispatch fees as long as the grid is not strengthened a lot.

[UltraSane]

I call buying French nuclear electricity after shutting down your own reactors hypocrisy.

[brnt]

I call it an opportunity. Let France built reactors on their borders (looking at you, Chooz) and earn money. What's the problem here? Everybody gets what they want.

[lejalv]

> The electricity needs of industry cannot be met in a market-oriented manner

Do you care to elaborate? AFAIK, the EU electricity market is... a market?

The design is debatable, as always with these things. Perhaps you wanted to say something precise about subsidies?

One important consideration is that Germany profited from cheap Russian gas, and continued building Nord Stream 2 post Russian operations in Ukraine in 2014. This is a bet that a huge geopolitical risk would not actualize, which it did in 2022.

[oytis]

> It's not as simple as 100% of this is on the car manufacturers.

Another big lobbyist is chemical industry. They are very reliant on gas.

[raxxorraxor]

The problem is that there wasn't a correction of these business policies. It still is the same as before, engineering talent gets outsourced and software and more frequently also hardware parts is something that Germany despises completely by now. You are in sales or legal, anything else is secondary.