The US electric car makerTeslaplans construction costs of around EUR 1.065 billion for its first factory in Europe. This comes from an updated application for environmental approval, which was published on Thursday.
The construction work is expected to last until March 2021. Production in Grünheide near Berlin, which is scheduled to start in July 2021, is therefore scheduled to run in three shifts, 24 hours a day. The forecast for the level of noise at the company shows that Tesla assumes 2100 employees per shift.
It is already the second public participation in the approval process under the Federal Immission Control Act. Citizens have until 3 September 2020 to submit objections. Conservationists and residents fear that the factory will have negative consequences for the environment, including groundwater. So far, the country has received more than 370 objections to the project.
The project is regarded as an internationally recognized test as to whether large industrial settlements in Germany are still possible. In addition, the symbolic meaning is considerable: Tesla boss Elon Musk (49) places his factory in the middle of the home market of the German premium car manufacturers – his most important competitors.
Factory uses less water, but more forest
For example, according to the Ministry, Tesla’s amended application for environmental approval of the factory shows that the US automaker has applied to clear an additional 39 hectares of forest. The targeted water consumption was reduced and a plant fire brigade was planned. The battery production originally envisaged on site is also the same disappeared from the plans like the production of plastics, on the other hand the capacity of the foundry is increased. The production building is only 15 meters high instead of 24 meters. The plans also only speak of an annual capacity of 100,000 cars. The Brandenburg state government assures, however, that nothing will change in the announced rapid ramp-up of production to 500,000 vehicles annually and thus in the prospective jobs.
Tesla has already cleared 90 hectares of pine forest on the 300 hectare site and leveled the ground for the construction site. The final environmental approval for the factory is pending, so Tesla is doing current work at its own risk.
The citizens’ initiative against the planned factory sees the submission of the changes as “trickery and legal defeat”. Tesla knew that, for example, the pile foundation that had just been applied for was necessary, said Steffen Schorcht, a representative of the initiative, the German Press Agency. The factory building needs piles anchored deep in the ground on the sandy ground to stand stable. The US carmaker deliberately did not submit these complex buildings when the first documents were filed in order to obtain an early building permit.