The site of the Tesla battery plant for electric cars in Gruenheide near Berlin. — AP
BERLIN: Elon Musk says Tesla’s new Model S Plaid is “crazy fast” — and various videos circulating on social media suggest he’s right.
The same can’t be said for progress in Germany, where Tesla is building its first European car factory and has just asked authorities for permission to make major changes to the project on the fly.
To spare you the task of combing through Tesla’s updated construction plans — they amount to some 11,000 pages — here’s what you need to know.
The key change is the addition of a facility to make 50 gigawatt-hours of battery cells a year. That’s only half the capacity Elon teased in November, but it would be roughly enough to supply the 500,000 cars Tesla aims to churn out yearly at the site near Berlin.
Tesla had originally planned to add the battery plant after the car factory is operational, but Germany’s cumbersome permitting process and the urgency with which its rivals are pushing their own projects may have convinced Musk to move things forward.
Porsche said Monday it will make battery cells for its electric sports cars in a new venture with a German lithium-ion specialist as early as 2024.
The same day, Volvo Car Group said it’s teaming up with Sweden’s Northvolt, a company founded by former Tesla executives, to build a battery factory that will be operational in 2026. In the coming weeks, Renault and Stellantis will host EV events similar to VW’s “Power Day” in March.
Aside from batteries, Tesla filed some more changes to the German plant. They include:
> An expansion of the body shop, which will require an additional 1,180 foundation pillars to be hammered into the sandy ground
> An overhaul of the plant’s foundry design
> Measures to reduce water consumption
> Setting up a waste-water treatment facility
While Musk is known for a tendency to change his mind (especially among those who ordered a Model S Plaid+), the tweaks to the factory in the small town of Gruenheide still came somewhat as a surprise.
The extent of the changes means another public consultation process is required, which is expected to delay the opening of the factory by several months and offer yet another another forum to locals who have raised concerns about the plant’s impact on the region.
Musk’s problems with German bureaucracy could get worse before they get better.
Local authorities had hoped to green-light the factory as early as last summer, but lawsuits from environmental groups anxious about water use and threats to local wildlife have slowed the process. The pandemic also deferred the project by several months.
Tesla still aims to start production at the site before the year is over, and much of the factory is already built.
But don’t be shocked if Musk encounters more setbacks. Other high-profile projects have dealt blows to Germany’s reputation for punctuality recently, perhaps none more embarrassing than Berlin’s US$7 billion airport that opened eight years late.
