Tesla to finally electrify shuttle train service to Brandenburg factory

In September 2023, Tesla launched a shuttle train service to and from the premises of its German factory in Grünheide, which can be used by anyone - but runs on diesel. This earned the manufacturer a lot of malice. Now the switch to battery-powered trains is on the horizon.

According to the Berliner Zeitung newspaper, Tesla’s shuttle service will soon be travelling electrically. The background to this is that the contract between Tesla and the Niederbarnimer Eisenbahn (NEB), which operates the shuttle service on behalf of Tesla, is due to end this month and the NEB needs the diesel railcars elsewhere. The plan is to resume Tesla’s shuttle train service after a brief interruption, probably from July, but then with other vehicles, it is said. In future, battery-electric railcars from Siemens will run on the line.

The Tesla shuttle journeys will be non-stop and take around twelve minutes. The train covers a distance of around five kilometres between the ‘Erkner Bahnhof’ stop and the ‘Fangschleuse, Tesla Süd Bahnhof’ stop. The shuttle train will replace the shuttle buses that were previously in use in September 2023. According to an earlier report by ‘RBB 24’, the train commutes almost 60 times a day from Monday to Friday. This means that ‘more than 1,500 employees are brought directly to the plant site at shift changeover’ by rail.

berliner-zeitung.de (paywall, in German)