Definitely gone from the US. Not sure that’s the case everywhere. I deal with suppliers from all over the world in battery energy storage systems (BESS) and we’ve just had a US company (Powin) more or less commit suicide through a design that looked obviously stupid. I deal with Chinese suppliers where definitely there is a “cut whatever corner you’re able” attitude, and they are generally competing on price. But the German, Finnish, and Spanish suppliers I’ve dealt with seem to have a better long term track record at doing real engineering. There are also some Chinese firms that are surprisingly good.
As Tesla is also in this world, it’s fun that if you extrapolated the kinds of “disruptor” actions that Tesla car and SpaceX make, you’d have a pretty good idea of their approach here also… Let’s just say that people I work with didn’t want me to dig into their fire systems because of their possible litigiousness.
