factory

Micron has emulated TSMC and is spending $1.8 billion on a RAM factory. Don’t clap yet

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Taiwan is becoming one of the technological hotspots worldwide. If the country was already at the center of the technology sector because it is the home of TSMCwill now take on more prominence in the new era of AI. Your crown jewel is investing an astronomical sum in the United States and, now, the American Micron ends to close a $1.8 billion deal in Taiwan. And you can guess the goal. Keep feeding the data centers based on RAM memory. Micron. In recent weeks, Micron has been one of the big names in the technology sector. However, Crucial may sound more familiar to you. It is, or was, Micron’s brand for consumer RAM, but also for storage. Their products are very well regarded when it comes to assembling a PC in parts, but They turned off the tap at the end of last year and the last shipments will occur in February 2026. Now, Micron is shifting its focus to something much bigger and more lucrative: artificial intelligence. Specifically, supplying those same components, but to large companies that are setting up gigantic data centers. In the end, a data center It is made up of hundreds of “computers” that need both storage and RAM. The operation. Given the context, we come to the news. As the company itself has confirmedhave just signed an operation worth $1.8 billion to take over the P5 factory of the Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation -PSMC- company in Tongluo, Taiwan. An operation like this must pass several filters, but the company’s intention is for the transaction to be closed by the second quarter of this same 2026. They have stepped on the accelerator, and as soon as they can, they will begin to do one thing: increase the production of DRAM memory. clean room. Micron has confirmed that it is just one of the operations it is contemplating in a global expansion movement “to meet the long-term demand of its customers,” and acquiring a semiconductor factory makes perfect sense. Beyond the fact that the components and machines are different, there is something that factories of this type share: clean rooms. It is an extremely… well, clean facility stripped of any external elements. Suspended particles are kept at extraordinarily low levels, temperature, humidity and pressure are highly controlled parameters and the air is filtered numerous times per hour. Static electricity is reduced as much as possible and, ultimately, it is a clinical space so that no impurities interfere with something as sensitive as the manufacturing of semiconductors. It is, in short, like an operating room (or stricter if possible). Example of a clean room “All in one hour“Creating something like this requires a considerable investment (which is why new companies are entering to compete in the RAM segment, as rumored with Asusit is tremendously complicated), and that is why Micron has taken over existing facilities that they will only have to adapt to their activity. Besides, take the example of TSMC. In Taiwan, all components TSMC needs are “an hour” away. This allows the assembly line to be efficient, minimizing time, maximizing production and saving money. The new Micron factory will be very close to the one they already have in Taichung, being able to emulate that way of working that has led TSMC to excellence. Consumption RAM for when. Micron is expected to begin optimizing the manufacturing process in the new plant by the second half of 2027, but thanks to the context we gave before, we know that these “customers” are not those who want to assemble a PC in parts or even assemblers such as Asus, MSI, Lenovo or Gigabyte: they are the ‘Big Tech’ that are setting up data centers. In a recent interview, Christopher Moore, vice president of marketing for Micron’s client and mobile business, said the problem and the RAM bottleneck is elsewherebut also stated that this growth in data centers has gone from representing 30% of its market to 60%. He also stated that, although Crucial has disappeared, Micron will continue to supply memory to OEM manufacturers, but it is evident that the bottleneck is affecting, that prices are through the roof and that things are not looking good if you had to renew PC.E And, according to Micron’s vice president, it will continue until 2028. At least. Images | Maxence Pira, Hunter Trick In Xataka | Google doesn’t have rockets, but it is going to install data centers in space. SpaceX and Blue Origin rub their hands

A Chinese tire company decided to take its factory to Serbia. And now it cannot export to the US

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USA ordered last thursday the immediate seizure of all shipments of tires manufactured by Linglong in Serbia. The decision by the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) service affects all US ports and is based on ‘reasonable indications’ of forced labor at the Zrenjanin plant, in the north of the Balkan country. “The message is clear: the United States will not tolerate forced labor in supply chains,” said CBP Commissioner Rodney S. Scott. Linglong, a Chinese manufacturer specializing in tires, has been operating in Europe since 2022, when its first tires went into production from the Zrenjanin plant. Why Washington is acting now. The measure comes three years after the European Parliament ask for investigations about trafficking of Vietnamese workers in this same factory. The CBP says it has based its order on workers’ testimonies, documents, photographs, NGO reports, press articles and academic research. According to the agency, the evidence demonstrates nine indicators of forced labor established by the International Labor Organization: withholding of identity documents, intimidation and threats, isolation, excessive overtime, non-payment of wages, debt bondage, abusive working conditions, deception and abuse of vulnerability. Questionable track record. The Linglong plant was the subject of great controversy in 2021, when hundreds of Vietnamese workers went on strike during the construction phase. The complaints spoke of deceptive practices in recruiting employees. Just like account According to L’Automobile, in February 2024, Serbian civil society organizations reported the case of 14 additional Indian workers allegedly subjected to forced labor. Each time, Serbian authorities rejected the accusations. The Chinese company declined all responsibility, arguing that the workers had been hired by one of its subcontractors. The underlying problem in Serbia. The Balkan country, a candidate for accession to the European Union, has multiplied its contracts with large Chinese companies in recent years. The European Parliament express already in 2021 its “concern about China’s growing influence in Serbia and the Western Balkans”, calling on the country to strengthen “its rules on regulatory compliance for Chinese business activities”. The European resolution stated that Serbian labor legislation should also apply to Chinese companies operating in the country, something that everything indicates has not happened. Beijing and Belgrade. Serbia signed a free trade agreement with China in July 2024. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić called the Linglong factory “the largest foreign direct investment in the history of Serbia” during the opening ceremony in September 2024, noting that the plant employs more than 1,200 workers. However, the US State Department pointed out in its report on human trafficking that the Serbian government “has made little progress in the ongoing investigation into allegations of forced labor at this factory.” What happens to retained tires?. As can be read in the CBP noteimporters of seized shipments now have three options: destroy the merchandise, re-export it, or prove that the products were not manufactured using forced labor. The agency reiterates that it is the fifth detention order issued by CBP in 2025 and the second in fiscal year 2026. Cover image | Robert Laursoo In Xataka | The US bans Chinese drones and turns DJI into the new Huawei. It’s an absolutely crazy idea.

close a factory in Germany

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The history of Volkswagen goes a long way. So much so that Its origins must be sought in Nazi Germany when the State commissioned Ferdinand Porsche to create a Volkswagen. That is, a car for the people. It was 1934 but with all the state machinery working overtime, in 1938 the first stone of the Wolfsburg factory, taking as an example Ford factory in Dearborn, United States. Since then Volkswagen has not stopped growing. With its good moments and also his bad momentsthe truth is that the company has established itself as the second largest producer of cars in the world, only surpassed by Toyota and in a comfortable position compared to Hyundai-Kia, which remains in third position. In these ideas and comings, the company has maintained a recipe: the German industry is not touched. Until now. In the midst of the reconversion of the European automotive industry, Volkswagen seems to have crossed a red line. Why does an electric car have less autonomy than advertised? for the first time It was 2018 when in Xataka we went for the first time to the Volkswagen glass plant in Dresden. There, the company had been producing its Volkswagen Phaeton, a luxury sedan that It ended up being a million-dollar hole. and, above all, a resounding sales failure. The company had converted the space into a laboratory to produce the first e-Golfone of the first steps that the company took in the purely electric car market. Its productive volume was almost ridiculous If we compare it with any current plant: 72 cars a day. In 2022, we had the opportunity to return. The factory had changed completely. At least in his spirit. It was still producing electric Golfs… more or less. And that’s where their ID.3Volkswagen’s first big bet that had been born with the spirit of being its first best-seller and position itself as the new electric Golf. Production had already fallen by half, to about 35 cars a day. Now, Volkswagen has shelved the plant. The glass space is converted into a university center. The movement has much more to say in the symbolic field than in the practical one. The 230 workers have three options on the table: dismissal with negotiated compensation, retirement or transfer to another factory. But the closure of the German plant goes much further. For the first time, Volkswagen has to cease production at a plant in Germany. Its production, as we have seen, was very low and the center was intended more for development and innovation than for nourishing the German fleet. However, the move is important because it demonstrates the extent to which the company is struggling. Dresden wasn’t just a car plant, it was status. It was a declaration of intent, the confirmation open to the world that Volkswagen invested in cars that were not profitable in the short term but from which they could extract knowledge in the future. Thomas Schäfer, CEO of Volkswagen, has indicated that the closure of the factory “it was essential from an economic perspective”. A little over a year ago, Volkswagen already announced that it intended to cut its production in Germany, to the point that it assured that “all factories in Germany are in danger”. They were the first blows of a savings plan of 10,000 million euros three years ahead. The company had decided to bet heavily on the electric car but European demand It does not seem to have been enough until it grew very recently. In Europe, Tesla has swept with force until last year but, above all, customers They didn’t seem interested. in the most affordable Volkswagen electric cars like the ID.3. Not even in the most expensive ones, like the Audi e-tron which ended with the closure of a plant in Brussels. Porsche is already retracing its path of electric car investments. Volkswagen has encountered a perfect storm with three open fronts. In Europe, as we said, the customer is not buying the expected electric cars, which puts the amortization of investments at serious risk. In the United States, the tariffs applied by Donald Trump’s Government have caused losses of 1.5 billion dollars in the last quarter alone, it reported. The New York Times. And in China the client has turned his back to the European product. That has put too much pressure on cash flow, forcing Volkswagen to get rid of space that went far beyond a car plant by renting it out to the local university. The problem is that when financial difficulties force us to think about readjustments in the short term, what suffers are long-term investments (just what was being studied in Dresden), which implies less competitiveness in the future. A wheel from which it is only possible to escape if, once again, it is possible to sell what the public asks for, with sufficient profit margins to reinvest in the future. And so, believe in germanyimplies taking steps back in electrification. Photo | Volkswagen In Xataka | In 2017, the owner of an electric car installed a charger with his neighborhood community against him. The Supreme Court has spoken

China does not want to give up ground as the world’s factory. Their plan involves deploying a legion of industrial robots with AI

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For years, looking at the label of any device, garment or charger has been almost a formality. The answer used to be the same: “Made in China“. That phrase became silent proof that the Asian giant had managed to establish itself as the factory of the world. From American brand mobile phones to small components of European appliances, much of what we use every day has come from Chinese production lines. But that reality is beginning to change. China’s industrial leadership is no longer sustained solely by abundant labor and low costs, and the model that dominated the last decades needs to be transformed. The shift is not only economic, but also social. Fewer and fewer young Chinese want to work in factoriesa phenomenon that in the United States follows similar patterns: physical jobs, long hours and little professional projection. In both cases, the industry is no longer synonymous with progress for many and is perceived more as a destiny from which one tries to escape. Even so, both China and the United States consider that manufacturing remains strategic, either to maintain global influence or to reduce dependence on foreign countries. Everything indicates that none of them are trying to recover the model of the past, but rather to build a new one based on automation and artificial intelligence. Robots and factories to avoid losing “Made in China” When the Chinese Vice Minister of Industry, Zhang Yunming, said that Adopting artificial intelligence is a necessary and not optional task, I was not speaking only in technological terms. He was referring to protecting one of the country’s great assets: its manufacturing industry, which represents around 25% of the national economy, well above the world average. China remains the world’s largest producer, but it can no longer rely solely on volume or labor. The challenge now is to maintain that leadership by manufacturing with fewer people and more artificial intelligence. In this context, China is responding decisively. The pace at which it is deploying industrial robots is unmatched. Last year alone it installed 295,000 units, almost nine times more than the United States and more than the rest of the world combined. according to the International Federation of Robotics. In some facilities there is already talk of “dark factories”, operations so automated that the plants can operate with minimal human intervention. The Wall Street Journal mentions the Baosteel caseone of the largest steel plants in the country, where workers only intervene every half hour, when before they did so every three minutes. Automation no longer consists only of mechanical arms that repeat movements, but of connected plants, capable of making decisions. The aforementioned newspaper points out how Midea uses an AI system that coordinates robots, sensors and virtual agents to detect failures, assign tasks and adjust processes without human intervention. In the textile industry, Bosideng uses AI models developed with Zhejiang University to conceptualize and design garments, reduce development times and cut costs. This type of solutions not only speeds up production, it also generates a competitive advantage over Western manufacturers that implement changes more slowly. Where China’s industrial ambition is also clearly seen is in the ports. In Tianjin, a fleet of autonomous trucks moves containers without visible human presencewhile artificial intelligence optimizes variables such as ship arrival times and crane capacity. The system, called OptVerse AI Solver, has compressed planning tasks that previously took 24 hours to about ten minutes. PortGPT, a system developed together with Huawei to analyze images and monitor security operations, has also been deployed. The American discourse is based on the idea of ​​sovereignty: manufacturing more within the country to depend less on the outside. The Trump administration has raised that strategy through tariffs on China, Vietnam and other Asian economieswith the aim of attract factories and rebuild supply chains. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick maintains that automation is not incompatible with employmentbut it can generate better-paid technical professions. In an interview he stated that “it is time to train people for the jobs of the future, not for those of the past,” and defended that these factories could support families for several generations. One of the differences between the two models is clearly seen in the ports. While China has deployed autonomous trucks, AI-based planning systems, and tools like PortGPT without significant union opposition, in the United States automation is subject to collective bargaining. The International Longshoremen’s Association and port operators they agreed to veto new automated terminals until the end of 2030, also limiting the use of artificial intelligence in administrative tasks. For unions, automation means losing jobs and bargaining power. For China, it is a national strategy. China wants to continue being the world’s factory, but not exactly the same. It is no longer about cheap labor, but about factories capable of producing more with fewer people and with more artificial intelligence. The United States seeks its own path, with more work conditions and a different rhythmbut with the same objective of not depending on the outside. What is at stake is not just where it is manufactured, but how. And it is possible that, in a few years, the label we find will not only be “Made in China”, but a different form of manufacturing where robots will no longer be accessories, but protagonists. Images | Homa Appliances | Xataka with Gemini 3 In Xataka | Nexperia China has been trying to contact the Dutch headquarters for days. The only response has been absolute silence

BYD pours cold water on its hypothetical factory in Spain

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BYD does not have a plan on the table to open a factory in our country. At least, that is what Alberto de Aza, general director of BYD for Spain and Portugal, maintains, who in an interview with EFE has stated that the company is focused on its Hungarian factory. According to De Aza, there are neither production problems nor are there intentions to open a plant in Spain. BYD is interested in Spain. Spain has sounded strong on two occasions to be the home of a BYD car production plant for Europe. He did it first in 2023 when it was learned that the company was touring Europe looking for a location to a factory. Before the end of that same year, we knew that Hungary had been chosen. Now, information has suggested that BYD is once again studying the opening of a factory. And, according to ReutersSpain was once again one of the first candidates. Its operating costs and good performance in the country seemed to be two incentives to take into account for the future. There are no plans. That is what Alberto de Aza, general director of BYD for Spain and Portugal, answered in an interview with EFE. The head of the company in our country has indicated that “there is no specific plan at this time to implement a production center in Spain.” The response is a bucket of cold water to the information that indicated that Spain was the first on the starting line of this new race. In fact, just a few days ago the Generalitat of Catalonia confirmed that they had held conversations with company representatives. And shortly before, in October, the De Aza spoke of Spain as “an ideal place” to expand the company’s European manufacturing. For now, Hungary. At the moment, BYD seems to be focused on opening its plant in Hungary. Everything indicates that “you’ll see later.” And the company has started very strongly in our country but a good part of the European market is resisting. The commitment to plug-in hybrids at attractive prices, such as the BYD Atto 2 DM-i It is confirmation that they try to find solutions and alternatives. To this we must add that the company has faced some complications related to its Hungarian plant. The first is whether you are using enough local employees. The second is whether it is going to create a sufficiently dense industrial network around it. complicated lace. BYD is not the only company that is in the eye of the European Union for how they manufacture (in this case, hope to manufacture) their cars on European soil. At the moment, electric cars coming from China are taxed with specific tariffs for each company but not so with plug-in hybrids. To avoid this specific and general tariff (10% on imports arriving from China), Chinese manufacturers talk about producing in Europe. However, the European Union closely monitors how these cars are manufactured. And there is talk of producing vehicles using almost assembled kits that arrive in Europe by boat and are given the finishing touches on European soil. Something like if a puzzle of 1,000 pieces arrived assembled without joining four large groups of them. This, European regulators assure, might not be enough to skip tariffs. It is a practice that already has delayed the arrival of the electric Omoda 5 to the Barcelona factory, for example. Spain, why? To the above we must add a detail: Spain has moved into a complicated game of balance with China. In addition to the fact that our country offers lower operating costs (labor or energy) to manufacturers compared to other European nations, the truth is that there is another point of view. In the final approval of tariffs on Chinese electric cars, Spain veered from a resounding “yes” to abstention. Shortly after its application, it was leaked that the Chinese State had ordered its manufacturers stop all investments in the countries that supported those tariffs. Italy, for example, would have been one of the most affected countries. Since then, it has been leaked that BYD was interested in Spain to house a new European factory. But also CATL reached an agreement with Stellantis to launch a battery production plant in Aragon. It is no coincidence that Spain has pampered its relations with China lately. Photo | Mercedes and Xataka In Xataka | “They assemble Chinese cars with Chinese components and Chinese personnel”: the EU is beginning to suspect the manufacturers’ plants

BYD has built a megafactory in record time. And it’s not just a car factory: it’s a city

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The chinese automotive industry has one goal: flood the west with their cars. BYD is one of the companies that, while wanting to take over the national market, wants a good slice of the international pie. For this you have as many employees as a small countryand to carry out its vision it has the most beastly car factory you can imagine. This is the Zhengzhou plant, and more than a factory, it is a city. Gigafactory? Best Uberfactory. Everything that surrounds the Zhengzhou plant It is imposing. Starting with the times, BYD and the Henan government they signed the project in September 2021, in just one month the works began and less than two years later the factory began production. His ability It is imposing and, already in its first operational phase in April 2023, it demonstrated that it could have a ability 400,000 vehicles annually. Not only did they get it up and running in record time: its dimensions are also impressive. The plant is estimated to have an area of ​​10.68 square kilometers in factories alone, but when the project comes to completion, it will occupy about 130 km². Context. Ten times more than Tesla Gigafactory in Nevadawith its 12 km², and larger than the area of ​​the city of San Francisco (it is approximately 120 km²). It is not unusual for large technology companies to have “cities” under their control and, without leaving China, Huawei has a similar campus (and another that copy different European cities). But BYD is overwhelming. More than cars. The factory is a “living” project of which four phases have been completed so far. The first two have focused on the production of cars, but as we said, we are talking about a factory that goes beyond vehicles. The third phase launched a plant for the battery manufacturing and the fourth has the necessary facilities for the production of semiconductors. They are underway new phases to expand production to two million vehicles annually and it is estimated that the facility generates a complete vehicle every 50 seconds. Technology. This is achieved thanks to an automation rate of 98%, one of the highest in the automotive industry worldwide. For example, the welding process is carried out with 91% robot labor and there are hundreds of them operating in other sectors, such as assembly or logistics. It is not due to a lack of human work, since the factory currently employs about 60,000 people, 90% of them coming from Zhengzhou or its surroundings and there are plans to reach up to 200,000 employees in 2026. Imagine all of Salamanca working in the same factory. Independent Republic of BYD. That is why we are not just talking about a factory: it also has housing and everything necessary is being built to make it a full-fledged city. Apart from housing blocks for employees, the megafactory has canteens, commercial areas, recreational facilities such as soccer fields and other areas for playing sports, as well as an internal transportation system. It also has additional facilities to carry out tests on their vehicles, such as a 1,758 meter circuit with nine curves, sand dunes to carry out off-road tests, a 70 meter pool (this is where you can see the Yangwang U8 in action) and multifunctional areas to carry out braking, acceleration and other more specific tests, such as autonomous parking. Apart from testing, it is like an amusement park for those who want to see the benefits of the brand’s EV cars. International connection. In the end, it is a mix between ambition and space (something that is abundant in China), which gives rise to a city focused on a single task: producing new energy cars with which China is setting the standard globally. In addition, it is an economic engine for the region and such a strategic element that, in 2024, Zhengzhou inaugurated the International Land Port with a one kilometer railway line to the BYD base. In this way, BYD can produce cars and instantly send them by train to the international market. It is also easier to load them into RO-RO boats with capacity for reach Europe in three or four weeks. Such is the importance of Zhengzhou for the company that its seventh ship car carrier was named after the city. Images | BYD In Xataka | Volkswagen is determined to copy China to make its electric cars attractive in Europe: put a gasoline engine in them

A factory in Ireland made a fortune selling baby formula to China. Until the Chinese stopped having children

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If China’s demographic crisis is not reversed, if the world’s factories shrink and nothing stops the bleeding, its decline will drag and have effects throughout the world: from cost increases in consumer goods (telephones, footwear, electric vehicles) to inflationary pressures due to lower manufacturing efficiency. As an example, a “button”: thousands of kilometers from China, an entire population is already suffering from the lack of babies in Beijing. In Ireland, no one imagined a situation like this. Industrial mirage. For years, the small Irish town of Askeatonin County Limerick, found his redemption in a factory that produced gold dust. It wasn’t a metaphor. Infant milk was produced on Nestlé production lines for the chinese marketa product so profitable that some workers nicknamed it “the white cocaine” of the town. Overnight, that business transformed a town forgotten by modernization into a prosperous enclave, where credit flowed easily and employment was synonymous with stability. But when the Swiss managers arrived two years ago with the closure announcementdisbelief took over everyone. Nobody could conceive that such a modern plant, the result of a million-dollar investment, would simply be closed. Rely on China. Nestlé attributed the decision to a macroeconomic reason: he birth rate crash in China. The number of births had fallen from 18 million in 2016 to just nine million in 2023, and demand for foreign infant formula was sinking. However, The New York Times said that among the 1,100 inhabitants of Askeaton the official version did not convince. There were those who suspected that the multinational was simply responding to a Chinese demand: to move production to Asian territory itself. The argument made sense. For years, Nestlé had closed markets in Europe and the Middle East to concentrate exclusively in China. “We put all our eggs in one basket.” remember the diary Oliver Scanlon, one of the veterans of the place. And although the business experienced its golden age with that turn, everyone understood too late what it meant: China was not only buying the product, it was also learning how to manufacture it. Silent learning. The workers recount how every year Chinese auditors arrived, curious to the extreme, writing down every technical detail of the industrial process. Sometimes they even visited neighboring farms, taking an interest in dairy production methods. “They came to learn,” counted rancher Tim Hanley. “They can produce everything, and their goal is self-sufficiency.” Ultimately, what happened at Askeaton was the consequence of a repeated pattern: the initial enthusiasm for the Chinese market ended with the transfer of knowledge and the relocation of production. In November 2023, just a month after announcing the Irish closure, Nestlé obtained authorization to open a twin plant in Suzhoueast of China. While justifying the closure due to the drop in birth rates, the company proclaimed that the Chinese market “continued to be the largest in the world by absolute number of newborns.” Jobless. The Times remembered that the closure of the plant has left a visible scar. The machines stopped last month and, unless someone purchases the facilities for the 22 million euros at which Nestlé has valued them, the doors will close permanently in March. Layoffs, severance packages and outplacement programs have not compensated for the sense of loss. The factory was the invisible engine that made local businesses run, from Seán Moran’s hardware store to the credit union, which for years granted loans with only a payroll as collateral. “It was a good salary and the town prospered,” admits Patrick Ranahan, head of the entity. “But we knew it could disappear from one day to the next.” From globalization to dependency. He Askeaton’s case It is an example of the vulnerability of local economies in the era of globalization. The sudden success, sustained by Chinese demand, masked the fragility of a model based on a single customer and a single market. What began as a story of international cooperation ended up being technology transfer disguised as prosperity. In the process, China not only bought the product, but also the knowledge, and when it was ready to replicate it, it simply cut the tie. For Askeaton, the “crown jewel” has become a symbol of a bitter lesson: in global commerce, the shine of success can fade as quickly as the foam on the powdered milk that fed them for half a century. Image | Nestle In Xataka | The great paradox of China’s demographic crisis: its origin is due to a policy that worked too well In Xataka | China knows that its population is going to collapse but it already has a long-term plan to solve it. Of course, thanks to AI

The most pacifist city in Germany lived off its legendary train factory. Now they will make it from a gigantic tank factory

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Görlitz was known for its neat historic center, its post-war memory and a practical inclination towards pacifism. For decades, the city on the eastern border fit on the German map as a haven of caution and resigned industrial melancholy, a place where work and tradition maneuvered away from military power. But that calm is beginning to show cracks that force its inhabitants to rethink what it means to maintain peace when the world seems to want just the opposite. From the steel of peace to that of war. For more than a century and a half, the town of Görlitz, on Germany’s eastern border, lived off the rhythmic sound of trains. The wagon and locomotive factories They provided work for entire generations and defined the identity of this working-class region of the former East. But that era is coming to an end. After 176 years of railway production, the historic Alstom industrial complex is being converted by the arms consortium KNDS to manufacture components Leopard II tanks and Puma armored vehicles. What was once a symbol of civil mobility and reconstruction, today is transformed in gear of the German military machine. This metamorphosis does not arise from nowhere, of course: it responds to the country’s strategic shift towards rearmamentmotivated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, fear of a withdrawal of American security guarantees and a economy in decline desperately looking for new sources of employment. Between pacifism and necessity. I was counting last week the new york times that, in Görlitz, industrial reconversion divide feelings. The population, aging and punished by decades of deindustrialization since reunification, sees the production of tanks as a lesser evil. In this area where the far-right AfD party (openly pro-Russian and opposed to helping Ukraine) concentrates almost half the voteseven its local leaders have accepted the change with resignation. “It is not a cause for celebration, but we cannot oppose having work either,” recognizeaware that the loss of employment would be even more devastating than the moral dilemma of manufacturing weapons. Reconversion. The factory, which once had more than 2,000 employeesbarely kept 700 before the sale, and KNDS agrees to keep half of them and plans to multiply it in the future. In fact, the unions, led by IG Metall, were the ones who promoted the idea of ​​reorienting the plant towards the defense sector to avoid its definitive closure. In a territory marked by youth exodus and economic frustration, the arms industry has ended up offering something similar to a second chance. German military reindustrialization. The Görlitz case reflects a broader phenomenon: German rearmament as a driver of a new industrial reconversion. Since 2020, Berlin’s defense spending has increased about 80%exceeding 90,000 million euros, and the demand for specialized labor has skyrocketed. Companies such as Rheinmetall, Diehl Defense, Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems or MBDA have added more than 16,000 workers since the start of the war of Ukraine and plan to hire 12,000 more before 2026. The sector’s profits are so high that its managers increase dividends while exploring the purchase of automobile plants in decline, as that of Volkswagen in Osnabrück. The “logic”. The message from its CEO, Armin Papperger, summarize the logic of the new defense economy: if taxpayers’ money finances national security, jobs must stay in Germany. In this context, the factory conversion like Görlitz, it is perceived as an industrial policy with a dual purpose: to sustain the productive fabric and strengthen the country’s strategic autonomy. The moral dilemma. Despite the economic relief that the renaissance of the arms sector represents, it persists in German society a deep tension between the pacifism inherited from the post-war and the need to guarantee European defense. For many East Germans, who already experienced a first deindustrialization after the fall of the Wall and now suffer the loss of energy and manufacturing jobs, manufacturing tanks is a bitter way of survival. Some fear that the weapons produced will end up on the Ukrainian front, others that the rise of the business depends on the continuity of the war. “Will it be sustainable to manufacture tanks? I hope not. I hope the wars end soon,” admitted to the Financial Times a union representative. However, the reality of the market and geopolitics point in another direction: defense has become the new industrial hub European, and Germany (due to history, technological capacity and allied pressure) leads that transition. Goodbye train, hello tank. Thus, the old Görlitz factory, with its warehouses blackened by decades of metallurgical work, symbolizes the change of era that crosses Europe. Where wagons were previously welded to transport passengers, steel shells will be assembled for combat vehicles. What began as a strategy to save jobs threatens to redefine the industrial soul of the country: from civil ingenuity to military power, from the steel that united continents to that which now armors them. And a profound paradox: in a fractured political landscape, where the fear of war coexists with the need to prosper, the workers of Eastern Germany are once again the involuntary protagonists of history. Its destiny, between nostalgia for trains and the pragmatic acceptance of tanks or battle tanks, summarizes the dilemma of a nation that tries to reconcile its pacifist past with a present that pushes it, once again, to manufacture weapons to ensure its future. Image | Norwegian Armed Forces, State Ministry for Economic Affairs, Labor, Energy and Climate Protection In Xataka | The US no longer has to worry about Spain or the rearmament bill in Europe. Germany had a plan B In Xataka | The “rearmament” of Europe has begun at a Volkswagen factory in Germany: instead of cars they will produce tanks

Ford had 20,000 workers in the Colonia factory. Ten years later they are 7,600 because their electric cars are not bought

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Three years ago, Ford presented its short and medium -term road map for Europe. Then they announced seven new completely electric modelsof which they were commercial vehicles. Of the other three, only one was a Ford. And, in fact, it has ended up becoming the electric variant of a combustion car. We talk about Ford Pumaan electric car in which they have had to juggle to put an electric motor train. A car limited to the city because platform restrictions Combustion barely leave space for a 43 kWh battery. With its more than 34,000 euros of departure, it has become a difficult car taking into account that it moves on the highway between 200 and the 250 real kilometers of autonomy. The other two, as we said, are not Ford cars. The Ford Explorer and Ford Capri They are electric cars mounted on the Volkswagen platform. In both cases we have stressed that, dynamically, cars have a slightly more interesting tuning than that of the Germans, with more hard suspensions and a slightly more direct direction. However, if you mount one and another it is easy to verify that both models are mounted on the Volkswagen MEB platform. That is disguised with the vertical displaceable screen in depth and a speaker arranged as if it were a sound bar. But that’s it. The interface of a good part of the menus is Purely Volkswagen And, specifically, it is evident that it is a hardware and software mounted on the MEB platform. And that is bad news. For your touch controls or for your usability decisions. And they are also bad news for Ford. So much that it will fire a thousand German employees because their electric cars are not buying. The results of a failed strategy A thousand employees. That is the number that Ford will say goodbye to its neighborhood plant (Germany). They argue that “in Europe, the demand for electric cars is still well below the forecasts of the sector” and that, therefore, the plant will pass to a single shift in 2026, reducing its productive capacity, in words collected by Motorpasion. They explain in the middle that so far this year, Ford has sold 19,000 Ford Explorer units and Capri is still below. In fact, you have to go down to the fourteenth place between best -selling electric cars in Europe in the first half of the year to find the Americans. Cupra, Byd or Peugeot were above them. We could talk about bad results but Ford invested 1,000 million euros in Colonia to modernize the plant and get its electric cars out of there. With a productive capacity of 250,000 vehicles per year, the factory works at half a gas. Nor is it a good time to receive this news since The company is losing money this year and suffering with American tariffs. So much so that last year he earned 1.8 billion dollars and this year plays in red numbers. The result is also the consequence of a risky strategy: to offer two clearly differentiated products. In October 2024, Jim Farley, his CEO, said that the company was “leaving the market of boring cars to enter the market of iconic cars” to the magazine Car. The statements They coincided over time with the abandonment of classic vehicles in the European market such as party, Mondeo or Focus. And it continued: “We are good making a quick car (about Ford and the bronco sub -jack) and authentic SUVs. Look at the Raptor, we brought it from Mexican competitions and turned it into a car that can be used in the street. It is a great example of where I think our passenger cars should go (…) We can face Porsche with the Mustang, it is the best -selling sports coupe in the world. and be stronger and stronger “ In those words, Ford’s strategy was hidden. European emission regulations They aimed at 2025 of Milmillonarias fines. Finally, the sanctions were delayed to 2027 but, if applied, Ford needs to sell many more electric and few cars like the ones Farley mentioned since they exceed the maximum proposed emissions of 93 gr/km of CO2. The answer was the hug to the Volkswagen MEB platform. This has been criticized harshly by critics and the public. In their eagerness to reduce costs, decisions have been made as a profusion of tactile controls They bother in place of adding. And cars have not highlighted precisely for good autonomy or a groundbreaking price. But, in return, Ford has obtained two electric cars in the market with a minimum investment. The risk is almost limited to the modernization of the colony plant. So, There are two clearly differentiated business lines In Ford: Cheap cars (developed on the work of others) and expensive and representative cars that do not even refer to Ford. It is no accident that the Mustang, Bronco or Raptor have lost the Ford logo on their front. They are, in themselves, as families that work almost independently. The problem is that the public has not bought Ford’s bet. The Ford Explorer or Capri are not bad electric cars but you have to assume the youth errors of the MEB platform paid, in addition, at a high price. In what we have been, in Spain, 649 units have been bought between the sum of these two models. 649 units of the almost 21,000 registrations that Ford is registered at the end of August. The damage is especially bleeding in more powerful markets. In Germany, Volkswagen has managed to overcome with the ID.3a car that seemed dead but is the best selling in the electricity market. He is followed ID.7which also uses the MEB platform. The Volkswagen ID.4 and ID.5 They are positioned in the fourth position (add up to the same bag because ID.5 is only the Coupé variant of ID.4). You have to go down to the twelfth position to find the Ford Explorer. Capri is not among … Read more

China’s last US hint threatens a TSMC chip factory ahead

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On December 31, it will be a very important day for semiconductor manufacturers that have plants in China. From that date they will not be able Its facilities in this Asian country. And they cannot do it because The US does not want chips manufacturing equipment that resort to American technologies and innovations They arrive in China. Not even integrated circuit factories that do not belong to Chinese companies. In 2022 the US Department of Commerce granted a temporary exemption to several manufacturers of foreign semicondators who have plants in China so that they could equip their facilities with the machines they needed. But this permissive period is about to expire. From now on any chips manufacturer who has plants in China will have to request a license from the US Commerce Department to be able to install in its factories machines with US components or technologies. Intel has sold Your Dalian plant (China), so this measure no longer affects it. However, there are three foreign companies of enormous relevance in the semiconductor industry that will be affected by this measure of the US government: South Korean Samsung and Sk Hynixand the TSMC Taiwanese. The latter has a chips factory in Nankín, in the province of Jiangsu (China), in which as of December 31 it will not be able to install advanced lithography equipment. The US and TSMC strip and loosen The semiconductor production plant that TSMC has in Nankín is important for this company, but it is not a toe. In fact, it manufactures mostly chips in its 16 and 28 nm nodes. This installation currently represents only 3% of TSMC’s total production capacity, but this does not mean that it is not relevant within the manufacturing infrastructure of this Taiwanese company. In fact, in 2021 announced an investment plan of 2,870 million dollars that in 2023 allowed expanding the manufacturing capacity of the plant to about 40,000 wafers per month. These presumably “restrictions” will condemn “in the short and medium term to this factory to the production only of mature chips During the last weeks, the TSMC Directive dome has met with the US Department of Commerce in an attempt to protect the interests of its Nankín plant, But it has not been successful. These presumably “restrictions” will condemn “in the short and medium term to this factory to Production only with ripe chipsalready long term will probably lose its relevance in the Integrated Circuite Production Infrastructure of TSMC. Whatever this is only One more episode in the awkward relationship that support the US and TSMC government for years. For this chips manufacturer the country led by Donald Trump is very important because a good part of his best clients is American. Nvidia, Apple, AMD, Broadcom or Qualcomm, among other companies, get the chips they design in TSMC’s lithographic nodes. However, this currency has a second face. And it is currently the USA cannot do without TSMC. Intel is American, and It has advanced lithography nodesbut the competitiveness of his Taiwanese rival is difficult to match. TSMC has cemented its leadership on the tuning of a range of Very advanced high integration technologiesand, at the same time, On a colossal production capacity which is only possible reaching a very high wafer performance. The US government knows very well the strength of this company. And also how important it is for US companies that I have mentioned in the previous paragraph. Image | TSMC More information | SCMP In Xataka | Intel was about to snatch Apple as a client from TSMC. Having achieved its story would be another

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