Almost 19 years after its founding, Tesla Inc has a vehicle factory network that spans the globe.
The leading electric vehicle (EV) maker on Tuesday opened its plant outside Berlin, handing over the first 30 Model Ys to customers in front of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Chief executive officer Elon Musk followed through on his promise to dance as he did when Tesla opened its Shanghai factory two years ago.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Musk later posted a comment on Twitter thanking Germany with the words: “Danke Deutschland,” surrounded by German national flags.
Tesla shares on Tuesday rose for a sixth consecutive day, increasing as much as 6.8 percent to US$984 and pushing the firm’s market capitalization back above US$1 trillion.
The 5 billion euro (US$5.5 billion) facility — first announced in late 2019 — increases Tesla’s capacity to make electric sport utility vehicles as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drives up fuel costs and adds momentum to soaring EV demand.
The question for Musk, 50, is how quickly the company can ramp up output in the midst of industrywide supply-chain challenges, including shortages of semiconductors and battery metals.
“The start of production is nice, but volume production is the hard part,” Musk said during a visit to the plant construction site in October last year.
He said that Tesla would target making 5,000 to 10,000 vehicles per week by the end of this year.
Tesla’s plant in Gruenheide is essential to Musk capturing more of Europe’s expanding EV market.
He wrote on Twitter last week that he is working on a new “master plan” for the automaker and on Monday wrote that “scaling to extreme size” would be a main subject.
The start of Model Y deliveries at the factory is the culmination of a surprise announcement that Musk made while accepting an award more than two years ago at an event attended by the heads of BMW AG, Volkswagen AG and Audi.
Vehicles are now rolling off the production line in Germany’s automotive heartland, where Tesla has hired more than 3,000 workers.
That number is set to grow by a few thousand over the coming months, Tesla said in an e-mailed statement.
The company expects to eventually employ 12,000 people once full vehicle production is underway, alongside a 50 gigawatt-hour battery-making operation.
“We have to get behind progress that’s driving new technologies, because that’s how we’ll get new jobs,” Scholz said in remarks prepared for a speech at the facility.
German Minister of Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck said the opening of the factory is “a nice symbol” that gasoline-powered vehicles can be replaced with EVs at a time when Germany and other European nations are trying to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and wean themselves off Russian oil.
Although Tesla moved quickly to construct the facility, it was beset by months-long permitting delays that at times exasperated the world’s richest person.
Concerns at the site centered around its environmental impact, with environmentalists opposing the tree-clearing that preceded construction, and the effects the facility is to have on wildlife and the water supply.
The water supply issue could linger and factor into Musk’s expansion plans, with the local water authority saying last week that further development would not be possible without additional extraction permits.
Additional reporting by AP
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