Is Germany finally ready for Giga Berlin and Tesla? Well, it's complicated.

Posted on
15 March 2022
By
Charles Morris

It took some time, but German officials recently gave Tesla conditional environmental clearance to begin vehicle production at the Gigafactory Berlin, clearing the way for German-made Model 3s and Ys to start hitting the Autobahns. The plant has already assembled about 2,000 prototypes, while Tesla’s official delivery “celebration” event is currently scheduled for March 22.

Above: A look at the design of the Giga Berlin (Source: Tesla)

Nothing is ever fixed in a democracy, especially one who loves paperwork. Tesla has received a 536-page “Conditional Manufacturing Permit,” which contains 400 conditions that Tesla needs to meet in order to begin production (application documents reportedly run up to 23,700 pages across 66 files). The company says it expects to deal with all situations in the next few weeks. There will also be a one-month public comment period in which interested parties can file objections, and a local environmental group is prosecuting the use of the water, but none of these issues are expected to delay production.

Construction of the Gigafactory Berlin took a little over two years to complete – a record time for a major factory in Germany, if slightly slower than Tesla’s time. The automaker plans to produce 500,000 vehicles per year at the plant, as well as 50 GWh worth of battery cells.

Tesla has already hired about 3,000 employees on site, and Tesla is in talks with a number of parts suppliers in the region. The company says the workforce will eventually reach around 12,000. There are hundreds of jobs open for engineers, equipment operators and managers.

The Gigafactory Berlin is about 100 miles east of Wolfsburg, the home base for the Volkswagen Group, Tesla’s biggest rival in Europe, and Herbert Diess & Co. is not looking idly. VW recently announced plans to invest two billion euros in a new EV plant in Wolfsburg that will be dedicated to the company’s new mass-market Trinity EV platform. Construction of the new factory will begin “in the early spring of 2023”, and production is scheduled for 2026.

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This article originally appeared in Charged. Author: Charles Morris. Sources: Reuters, New York Times, Electrek, Barron’s, InsideEVS

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