Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted a render of Tesla’s upcoming Gigafactory in Berlin today and from the looks of it, we can say it is stunning. The massive structure is located on the outskirts of Berlin in the municipality of Grünheide, the whole site sprawls over a massive area of 300 hectares, the exact date of completion of a factory is not yet revealed. The construction of the factory had commenced earlier this year, this is Tesla’s first Gigafactory in Europe and the second facility to be constructed, the first one is located in Shanghai and is already operational.
Elon Musk releases render of Tesla Gigafactory Berlin and it looks stunning
Overview of Gigafactory Berlin
From the picture tweeted by Mr. Musk, it is safe to say that the factory looks nothing but futuristic in true Tesla fashion, we can also assume that the GigaBerlin will feature state of the art technologies for making the high tech cars sold by Tesla. The visionary tech billionaire had made plans for global expansion in this decade and this is already underway as Tesla has already begun scouting for sites for the Gigafactory in the United States. It is possible that the US Gigafactory might be situated in Austin, Texas and a second factory in Asia that may not be in China.
Giga Berlin pic.twitter.com/UXQMUVTWXf
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2020
Operations
The factory in Berlin like the one in China is being constructed in an open land area. It is reported that initially only the company’s entry-level SUV – Tesla Model Y will be manufactured here. The other striking feature of this facility is a vast array of solar panels placed for powering the factory. Tesla is making sure that even the manufacturing process is as eco friendly as possible, not just their products.
According to plans, GigaBerlin will give extreme importance to the efficiency of its operations, as such the facility features loading bays all around for logistics. Tesla’s official statement on the factory was that they intended to maximize the benefits of the location’s excellent passenger and freight rail connection, for this purpose they are building an on-site rail freight yard, these are to be used for the movement of goods to and from the factory and also for the employees of the factory to commute to work by rail.
Impact on other German Auto Brands
Tesla says that once the factory is operational, in the first phase they expect 12,000 engineers, production leaders, associates and technicians to be employed at this facility. Tesla is offering huge employment opportunities for talented and qualified people and the German economy is expected to reap benefits from this on a large scale, as Tesla is pushing other manufacturers to switch to electric vehicle production, this will result in a large scale boost because Germany is one of the global leaders when it comes to vehicle manufacturing.
German car brands like Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen, Porsche and many more are known worldwide for their engineering and high-quality automobiles, when these manufacturers start producing EVs, their vehicles will have global demand. Most of these brands have already started production of their EVs like the Mercedes EQC, Audi e-tron and the Porsche Taycan. Recently the Bavarian PM Markus Söder had spoken about the urgency to shift to electric vehicles. Elon Musk recently tweeted about an idea of making a Tesla hatchback for the European market, if this plan goes through it will most probably be made in the Berlin factory and will be priced below the Model 3.
It hasn’t been all smooth sailing for Tesla during the construction of this plant as many local residents where the factory is situated are protesting against the construction of this factory because for construction of the 300-hectare site many trees were reportedly felled in order to make space, this angered the local residents, however, it seems that Tesla has managed to build a bridge with the residents.
