US electric car pioneer Tesla opened its first European factory on the outskirts of Berlin, promising to deliver a shock to the heart of Germany’s mighty automotive market. As Tesla chief Elon Musk delivered the first Model Y cars “made in Germany” to their new owners, here are five things to know about Tesla’s much-talked-about “gigafactory”.
Just 30 cars made at the new factory in Gruenheide, in Germany’s eastern state of Brandenburg, were presented to their new owners at a special ceremony on Tuesday.
But the plant will eventually churn out around 500,000 Model Ys annually — a significant leap for Tesla, which last year produced just under a million vehicles in total.
The factory is being touted as the company’s “most advanced”, surpassing existing sites in Texas, Shanghai and Fremont in technological prowess. Tesla’s production model “is a very effective attack on German car manufacturers”, said Dudenhoeffer.
Volkswagen chief Herbert Diess pointed out recently that Tesla could manufacture a car in Gruenheide in 10 hours, while the same process takes the German giant’s main electric factory more than 30 hours.
The Gruenheide factory is the largest industrial project to have been built in the former East Germany since reunification. Tesla has turned the spotlight on Brandenburg and East Germany,” said Dietmar Woidke, the state premier of Brandenburg.
This could be the start of “a reversal of the trend” of the former East lagging behind the West in terms of economic development, he said. The plant’s massive demand for water was also a sore point for residents in an area that has been hit by summer droughts in the last three years.
These problems led to construction being suspended several times and considerably delayed, with approval finally granted earlier this month.
Musk himself was closely involved in the construction of the factory, meeting regularly with local officials and often lamenting the slow pace of German bureaucracy.
In April last year, Tesla said it was “irritated” by the administrative delays it had faced in the country. Tesla has experienced first hand how obstacles in German authorisation procedures slow down industrial transformation,” the company wrote in a letter to Berlin’s highest administrative court.
Source: eNCA
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