Tesla announces European factory
New Tesla Gigafactory outside Berlin to open 2021Tesla has announced its first ‘Gigafactory’ in Europe will be built in Germany’s capital.
The EV manufacturer’s chief executive Elon Musk delivered the news this week at The Golden Steering Wheel Awards in Berlin, where he accepted a prize for the Model 3.
Integral to the US car-maker’s plan to produce 500,000 vehicles annually, the new Tesla Gigafactory will be the fourth of its kind, with Tesla already operating giant manufacturing plants in Nevada, New York and China.
Details surrounding the new plant are few and far, but Musk says it’ll be based on the outskirts of Berlin and make batteries, powertrains and vehicles, including the recently unveiled Model Y small SUV.
Although it was initially thought a European manufacturing facility would likely be built somewhere in the UK, Musk told AutoExpress that “Brexit made it too risky to put a Gigafactory in the UK”.
Musk also reportedly outlined plans to create an engineering and design centre in Berlin in the future.
How many jobs the new site will generate is unknown, but Tesla says it plans to have the German facility in operation by 2021.
Tesla broke ground on its first Gigafactory outside Sparks, Nevada in June 2014 and it now houses approximately 492,000 square meters of operational space across several floors, but remains only 30 per cent complete.
Once finished, Tesla expects Gigafactory 1 (pictured here in a rendering) to be the biggest building in the world – and entirely powered by renewable energy sources.
In mid-2018, battery production there reached an annualised rate of about 20GWh. Tesla says that makes it the highest-volume battery plant in the world and that it produces more batteries in terms of kWh than all other car-makers combined.
Tesla’s main vehicle production facility (also pictured) is at Fremont, California, which houses more than 10,000 employees and produced the first Tesla Model S in 2012. Purchased by Tesla in 2010, the factory was owned by General Motors between 1962 and 1982, before becoming GM and Toyota’s New United Motor Manufacturing plant between 1984 and 2009.
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