The State Environment Agency has issued an initial environmental permit, as the Brandenburg Ministry of the Environment announced. “Among other things, another large hall is to be built to accommodate the additional production units.” In addition, changes and optimization of systems that have already been built are planned.
No more forest needs to be cleared for this. It’s about an expansion on the current site of the only electric car factory Elon Musk in Europe.
Tesla wants to double production in Grünheide from the planned 500,000 cars per year – which has not yet been achieved – to one million per year. The storage capacity of battery cell production is also expected to increase.
Tesla submitted an application in three parts for the expansion. However, a lot has changed on the market since then. In view of the growing competition from Chinese manufacturers, several car manufacturers cut their forecasts, pushed savings plans and even discussed plant closures.
Tesla, for its part, had made it clear that it wanted to stick to its expansion plans, but the schedule was unclear due to the difficult market situation. Almost 12,000 employees work in Grünheide.