Musk personally delivered the first electric car released by Gigafactory in Berlin
Tesla’s fourth and first plant in Europe, named Giga Berlin — Brandenburg, has officially started operating. The first 30 customers watched their Model Y crossovers drive out of the neon – lit tunnel to music, while Elon Musk danced and joked with fans.
“This is a big day for the plant,” the Tesla CEO said, “another step towards a sustainable future.”
He also said that Tesla is likely to release a test version of the full self-Driving autonomous driving program in Europe. This will probably happen next year. The exact timing depends on the actions of regulators, writes Reuters. “It is quite difficult to engage in autonomous transport in Europe,” he complained to the workers of the new factory. Each country has its own road conditions and the roads themselves.
Tesla plans to produce about 30 thousand cars at Giga Berlin-Brandenburg in the first half of 2022, and then increase the figures to half a million cars and 50 GWh of batteries per year. The plant already employs more than 3,000 people from the planned staff of 12,000.
Environmentalists and activists who opposed the construction of a car factory near Berlin, delayed the process of obtaining permits and even once staged sabotage on a construction site, continue to besiege the factory. In addition to the traditional group with posters and slogans, two activists blocked traffic in the factory area for several hours immediately after the event.
Recall that Musk expected to launch a German factory eight months ago, but did not take into account the bureaucratic difficulties and protests of local greens. All this time, the Shanghai factory had to fulfill orders from European residents, which increased the company’s logistics costs.
Musk is preparing to publish the third part of the “Tesla Master Plan”. In the coming years, the automaker is going to scale its business to “extreme proportions”. First, we are talking about expanding production enterprises and research centers.
