There’s a report going around in Germany about Tesla having a “massive delay” at Gigafactory Berlin, which is critical to the automaker’s growth in Europe, but the report is pretty weak.
Tesla Gigafactory Berlin
Tesla Gigafactory Berlin is arguably the automaker’s most important project of 2021.
The company is not launching the Model Y in Europe until the vehicle is produced at the new factory.
On top of launching the Model Y in the important market, Gigafactory Berlin is also going to produce 4680 battery cells, and it’s going to be the first production vehicle to use Tesla’s new structural battery pack architecture.
Therefore, there are a lot of eyes on Tesla keeping to its schedule to start production at Gigafactory Shanghai.
Tesla has previously indicated that the company could start production at the plant in mid-2021.
Tesla facing a “massive delay”?
Automobilwoche, a German auto publication, reported through sister publication Automotive News Europe that Tesla was facing “massive delays” based on unnamed sources.
However, the report was fairly sparse with information:
Critical buildings have not yet been erected on the site in Gruenheide near Berlin, five months before the planned opening of the factory, sources close to the company said. Tesla also has not yet submitted a building application to the local government once for a battery plant that the company plans to build at the site, they said.
While it’s true that not all buildings are completed, Tesla has been able to erect new buildings extremely fast at Gigafactory Berlin, thanks to new advanced building methods by local contractors
Earlier this month, Tesla CEO Elon Musk shared stunning drone footage showing progress at Tesla Gigafactory Berlin.
It showed several large buildings already erected that could house significant production capacity.
As for the building permits, Tesla has been operating with partial temporary permits since the beginning of the project.
Last month, the automaker said that the project is going as planned:
Buildout of our Berlin factory continues as planned, and we have already started to move machinery into the building.
It is not to say that the project didn’t run into some issues.
We previously reported that Tesla fired “Mister Gigafactory,” the engineer in charge of Gigafactory Berlin project.
After several reports of issues around the project last year, Musk got involved and hired a team of 25 engineers, nicknamed the “25 guns,” to act as a special engineering task force to fix any issue at the factory.
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