New details on Tesla Gigafactory 4 near Berlin

According to German media, Tesla plans to invest up to four billion euros to build Gigafactory 4 close to Berlin. The Grünheide site is to produce up to 150,000 electric cars a year once opened.

The four billion euros must be taken as a whole, though, meaning Tesla is planning to build in stages. How much the Californians are ready to invest initially is unknown at this time. Yet it appears certain that Tesla can count on EU funding of up to 300 million euros. Brandenburg’s Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke also hinted as much at an earlier date when saying “we are operating within the framework of EU state aid law”.

To start construction as planned in early 2020, the industrial site in near the town of Grünheide has to be readied, however. This requires Tesla to cut up to 70 hectares of forest. The company promised to reforest an area three times the size nearby. Naturally, environmentalists have already expressed concerns about rare animal species on the site, other voices take a less critical view, saying the area is a pine monoculture anyway rather than a healthy forest.

Once production at the Gigafactory 4 is up and running, predominantly Model Y will roll off the lines. In the first stage, the government in Brandenburg is hoping for 3,000 jobs to be created with this number potentially rising to 8,000 to 10,000 Tesla employees. These include plans for a design and engineering centre as well.

Tesla had posted job listings even before the surprise announcement last week. Elon Musk took the award ceremony of the ‘Golden Steering Wheel’ as the occasion to publish the decision to build the Euro-Gigafactory 4 near Berlin as reported.

Tesla intends to finish construction and start building in electric cars in Europe in 2021 – given Germany grants all necessary approvals in a timely manner.

tagesspiegel.de (in German)