Is the hypothesis of a Tesla factory in France still relevant? The American manufacturer of electric cars plans in any case in the short term to double the production capacity of its only European factory to date, and has submitted a request for this purpose to expand the site, located near Berlin, the company and local authorities said on Tuesday. Elon Musk’s group confirmed to AFP that it had “filed a modification request for the gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg with the Regional Office for the Environment”.
The Grünheide plant, south of the German capital, can currently produce up to 500,000 vehicles per year. The group wants to increase this capacity to one million and also increase the production of electric batteries, the total storage capacity of which should increase from 50 to 100 gigawatt hours per year. If Tesla’s plans are approved, the site would become Germany’s largest car factory, according to the financial daily Handelsblatt, ahead of Volkswagen’s historic Wolfsburg stronghold, which has a production capacity of 800,000 vehicles a year.
Currently, however, the American electric vehicle manufacturer is still far from running its German factory, which opened in March 2022, at full capacity. It only produces 5,000 units per week – which would make a total of around 260,000 per year. A public consultation on the extension of the gigafactory is launched online from Wednesday, said the authorities of the Land of Brandenburg, where the Tesla factory is located. Citizens have two months to comment on the project. The extension of the gigafactory must be done gradually, three requests for partial authorization are planned for this purpose.
“It must be ensured that the effects of the construction and operation of the plant are compatible with the environment,” a spokeswoman for the Brandenburg environment ministry told AFP. The opening, several times postponed, of the factory had aroused the mistrust of part of the local population, in particular because of its water consumption. Tesla now wants to “optimize” the process of recovering and purifying the water used so as not to increase the quantities of fresh water needed, a spokesperson told AFP.
Tesla is waging a price war in Europe by offering discounts on its models and is gradually grabbing market share from historic German manufacturers. Currently, “more than 10,000 employees” work at Grünheide and the number of 22,500 employees is foreseeable in the future,” Tesla said. Germany’s powerful IG Metall union has welcomed Tesla’s commitment to creating new jobs but is concerned about the “contradiction” between the announcements made and recent job cuts on the site, despite the pace to be kept.