Tag: Factories

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Green2V: Non Existence Solar Company To Build Big Ass Factory In Rio Rancho

http://www.krqe.com/video/videoplayer.swf?dppversion=7267

Governor Richardson was with Mayor Tom Swisstack of Rio Rancho today to announce that Green2V will build a million square-foot factory and headquarters in Rio Rancho. With Advent Solar and Schott AG building solar factories in Albuquerque, I wondered when one would build in Rio Rancho.

I have a number of concerns about this company, primarily that the company doesn’t seem to exist. As far as I can tell the privately owned Green2V doesn’t have any buildings or even a website and Wikipedia doesn’t have a page for them. The companies CEO, Bill Sheppard, is a former Intel New Mexico manager. Convenient since I suspect a large number of Green2V employees will come from the Intel New Mexico site. I don’t know where they are getting their money to build this company, what experience they have or what their business plan is.

The only thing I know is that their ambitious plan involves building in downtown Rio Rancho and that they want to start shipping in 2011. I hope this works out.

Update: Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting this is some sort of scam. I really want this to work out and I may even want to work for Green2V. I’m suggesting it’s a little early to get excited. It could turn out like Tesla, Lions Gate or Signet Solar, all established companies that planned to build in the Albuquerque area and didn’t for one reason or another.

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ArsTechnica On Intel Making Batteries

I love ArsTechnica, but I have to question part of an article that Jon Stokes wrote today about Intel making car batteries.

I bring this up because Intel doesn’t actually make as many chips over here as they used to. Most of the company’s sales are overseas (Asia is the biggest market), so that’s where a large and growing percentage of its workforce is, as well. The company’s pronounced shift in moving jobs abroad has been a sore spot for American Intel employees over the past decade, but I hear that, internally, the Intel top brass makes no bones about the fact that they have no qualms about moving the plants closer to the customers.

I am employed by Intel in the manufacturing side of their business. I don’t pretend that I know everything that is going on but I’m pretty sure this part of the article is incorrect. Most of Intel’s manufacturing is in the United States with the rest in Ireland and Israel. The only Asian capacity is in China and it hasn’t finished construction.

I also don’t know anything about Intel replacing manufacturing capacity in the US with factories outside of the US. My opinion: It costs billions of dollars to build a factory, Intel isn’t about to move capacity from existing locations to overseas unless there’s economic reasons to do so and highly skilled worker base. Just because the customers are there doesn’t seem like a good enough reason.

As far as Intel making batteries? I have to agree with the rest of the article. It’s better if Intel invest in battery tech R&D rather than try it themselves. Not that I wouldn’t love to see Intel broaden out in other ventures. Intel has failed at every attempt to make non microchip businesses (see LCOS and the watches they made that I can’t find a link to) as profitable as chips and top management knows that.