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- Hacker News
- Rip German industry. Gerhard Schroeder was a good Chancellor.by lovegrenoble
- Schroeder lobbied for Germany to remain dependent on Russian gas. Huge net negative in the long run.by Tade0
- so sad to see Germany's fall right in front of our eyes.by m00dy
- Fall from what exactly?
As someone living here it’s still one of the most carefree and comfy countries I’ve lived in.
- As the brits would say, write off Germans at your own peril. They survived two world wars and still became the biggest economy in Europe, so time would tell if they would be able to turn the tide around for a 3rd time
- Apple giveth, Apple taketh away.by mproud
- Who's the Andy and who's the Bill in Apple now?by selimthegrim
- If this were a US company with better PR, I wonder if it would have read more like:
"Varta Boldy Undertakes Strategic Restructuring to Unlock Value and Sharpen Business Focus"
by gib444 - In a thread about Europe’s (lack of) competitiveness and you still manage to make fun of the US on something unrelated. You really need to work on your self reflection.by signatoremo
- Much like OpenAI yesterday: “our safety container for model testing failed completely… we have to ban open weight models so that we can corner the market” - win-win for everyone, especially openAIby Towaway69
- I only encountered this brand when trying to buy batteries for old cameras. It would be a shame if some of those less common varieties were no longer available.by Apreche
- I find it regularly when buying car batteries (the regular 12V ones), and in fact I bought one for a friend just a couple weeks ago.
They're kinda popular at least around Europe.
edit: I just remembered when I worked on TV production some years ago, and they bought big boxes of the "Industrial" variety of AA cells for the wireless mics and in ears.
by tecleandor - The sentiment seems to be that this is unique to Germany but is there any country that can rival China in manufacturing?by mertbio
- Definitely not the ones who spent the last two decades being anti-growth and high cost just to suddenly realize they do need to have their own domestic businesses.by dmix
- Varta has moved (outsourced?) pretty much all consumer batteries we get in Australia to China.by Incipient
- > is there any country that can rival China in "Government subsidized" manufacturing?
FIFY
by sleepyguy - There is "failing to compete with China" and then there is "hacking both of your feet off before the race even begins and being proud of it". The case of Germany falls squarely in the latter category.by tsss
- The US does surprisingly well - output $2.9 tr vs $4.8 tr for China. More for high tech stuff like Boeing and Tesla.
https://www.engineering.com/u-s-manufacturing-hit-2-91t-valu...
by tim333 - Many can, they just choose not to. They balance the economy different instead of going all in on manufacturing and export. They don't suppress domestic consumption, have strong labor protection laws etc.by ShinyLeftPad
- It's not that bad, they still make money on consumer- and micro batteries. Needs a bit of restructuring.by TheChaplain
- Yeah, they make some of the best low-self-discharge rechargeables. All of my AA and AAAs are Varta. They're extremely prominent in lots of stores in Europe. When I read the headline, I was like, "But how?" but the Apple angle makes sense.
- FTA - They lost Apple as their main customer. Apple is switching to Chinese battery manufactures.
- > Varta lost its key customer in the spring: Apple plans to source the rechargeable "CoinPower" button cells for its AirPods headphones from China in the future.
It's another tough loss for German and European industry. Battery tech requires a lot of electricity and German energy prices are simply not competitive. And EU regulations limit how much the German government can subsidize industrial electricity costs.
Lots of debt, expensive labor, expensive energy, and EU Battery Regulation and limits on subsidies all adds up to just losing the business completely to China.
by petcat - I think it's a self made crisis. They turned off their atomic power plants in the middle of an energy crisis (even the current German government admitted that it was a mistake: https://clashreport.com/world/articles/germanys-merz-admits-...) and now importing far expensive natural gas from middle east and USA
- The assumption that Europeans can just absorb high energy prices is crazy. Ought to be a national imperative to invest in infrastructure to lower prices.by philipwhiuk
- You forgot the new US tarrif because of "forced labor"! At least in China things are much better on labor side!
Sorry couldn't resist....
by gbil