Germany: Tesla may have to suspend production until the end of next week

It means that Tesla will probably be forced to take a break of almost two weeks at its production facility in Grünheide due to the incident on 5 March. As reported, an arson attack on an electricity infrastructure around ten kilometres from the Tesla site early Tuesday morning caused a power outage at the Gigafactory and in six surrounding communities. Production has been at a standstill since, and employees were sent home.

Just hours after the attack, the self-proclaimed “Volcano Group,” a left-wing extremist network, claimed responsibility for the attack. The police have since confirmed the authenticity of their letter of confession. Further details can be found here. While the power supply in the communities was restored after just a few hours, this is not the case for the 12,000-employee factory.

Meanwhile, Tesla has published a list of facts regarding the factory’s environmental impact. Among other things, the manufacturer states that production in Grünheide uses no more than 2.28 cubic metres of water per vehicle, allegedly a third below the industry average. Other points include the generation of solar power, reforestation and employee mobility.

Tesla obviously wants to contribute to the public discourse, which has recently become increasingly aggressive in connection with the factory’s expansion plans. Around 100 environmental activists have occupied part of the forest near the Tesla plant since Thursday last week. Their camp will be cleared in the event of an expansion of the plant area. Tesla has been facing increasing criticism since mid-February when the citizens of Grünheide rejected expansion plans in a referendum.

Tesla wants to build a freight depot, warehouses and a company daycare centre on an additional 170 hectares alongside the existing 300-hectare factory site. The plans were made public in 2022. The referendum focussed on these new areas, but Tesla also wants to expand the plant on the existing factory site. However, the latter was explicitly not put to the vote.

In February, precisely what would happen after the vote was still unclear. According to media reports, the vote is not legally binding, but Grünheide’s mayor, Arne Christiani, said that the rejected development plan would no longer be presented to the municipal representatives in its current form. City representatives will again meet on 14 March and 16 May. In addition, the state parliament’s finance committee would have to approve the sale of the land by Brandenburg’s state forestry organisation.

But back to the current situation. Tesla is suffering economic damage in the high nine-figure range due to the production stop. Around 6,000 cars currently roll off the production line in Grünheide every week. If one only uses the base price for a Model Y of approximately 45,000 euros as a benchmark, Tesla could lose 270 million euros in sales – per week. The disruption to the supply chain will also result in additional costs. According to a report yesterday in Manager Magazin, trucks are already queuing outside the factory.

Several people have commented on the events since Tuesday. These include Tesla CEO Elon Musk, plant manager André Thierig and state and federal politicians. We summarised their statements here.

reuters.com, twitter.com (list of the factory’s environmental impact)