Giga Berlin

History

2022

Tesla launches "giant factory" in Europe

On March 4, 2022, German authorities gave Tesla permission to begin production of electric vehicles and batteries at its first large assembly plant in Europe. The construction of the plant worth $7 billion began in 2020, without waiting for the German bureaucracy, which threatened the risk of demolition of the plant if permission had not been obtained.

Brandenberg Governor Dietmar Voidke, where the enterprises are located, said Tesla has set a deadline of the end of March 2022 to complete the last steps before production begins. The company's management expects the plant to expand Tesla's revenues in Europe, where its cars are already the leaders in sales among electric vehicles. The plant will be Tesla's third assembly facility, along with plants in Fremont, California, and Shanghai. By 2023, another plant is expected to open in Austin, Texas.

On March 4, 2022, German authorities gave Tesla permission to begin production of electric vehicles and batteries at its first large assembly plant in Europe

Tesla is located 161 km east of Wolfsburg, where the company's largest German competitor in the electric car market, Volkswagen, is located. For a long time dominated the domestic market for German cars with internal combustion engines, the traditional automaker is already trying to catch up with its competitor by planning to build its own electric car factory.

Representatives of Tesla said it plans to produce 500 thousand cars at an enterprise in Brandenberg, known as Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg. It took just over two years for construction to be completed to such an extent as to begin production, which is a record time for a large plant in Germany, but slower than Tesla CEO Elon Musk hoped.

The Tesla plant in Germany is already collecting prototypes and on January 10, 2022, the authorities issued permission to the company to produce 2 thousand prototypes, after the company said that the initial launch of 250 test cars was insufficient to bring the plant into full working condition. As of March 5, 2022, Tesla does not have the right to sell test cars, and it is not yet clear when the first Model Y intended for sale will come off the assembly line of the plant.^[1]

Tesla bought a section of the railway in Germany to carry Giga Berlin employees along it

On January 31, 2022, it became known that Tesla bought an existing railway line in one of the suburbs of Germany, along which it plans to run a shuttle train to the Giga Berlin plant.

Despite the fact that the Giga Berlin production complex has not yet been fully completed by the end of January 2022, Tesla will ensure that as soon as they get the opportunity to start production, its employees can easily get to the plant.

Construction Giga Berlin

The deal was confirmed in the second half of January 2022 by a spokesman for the Ministry of Infrastructure and Regional Planning of Brandenburg. The representative said that the automaker acquired the existing railway from the German regional railway group DRE. Tesla will pay for and will be responsible for the planning, construction and operation of the shuttle for its workers.

According to Märkische Oderzeitung, the company plans to use this path to launch a shuttle train from the nearby city of Erkner to a new stop south of Giga Berlin. Tesla will also build a new railway station at the plant and synchronize the shuttle train with the shift time at the plant.

Giga Berlin was supposed to begin production at the end of 2021, but the plant has not yet received final permission to begin production of cars for customers. The reason was a considerable number of objections from local environmental groups. However, according to the Ministry of Environment, the approval of the Giga Berlin project is already at the final stage. Tesla, for its part, has not yet received permission, the plant is engaged in the production of test cars.

Giga Berlin will begin operations with the production of the Tesla Model Y. Similarly to the Model Y manufactured at the Fremont plant in California, fully electric crossovers that will be produced in Grunheid will be equipped with 2170 batteries. This is very different from the Model Y, which will be manufactured at Giga Texas, which will instead be equipped with 4680 company batteries.^[2]

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