It is a rumor that caused a small earthquake last week in a Europe in full energy transition. According to the Wall Street JournalTesla has reportedly halted plans for a battery factory in Berlin, next to the assembly site that began production of the Model Y SUV earlier this year.
A construction site still officially in progress
A project still at the heart of Tesla’s industrial development in Europe, which allows it to produce vehicles and batteries locally. But the American newspaper linked this decision to pause the construction of this new site in Berlin to the new US subsidies for the purchase of electric cars, which condition their payment to the production in North America, both of the vehicles and of the batteries. Clearly, Tesla would now have more interest in exporting batteries from the United States, rather than producing them in Europe.
In a tweet published this Wednesday, September 21, the Minister of Economy, Labor and Energy of the Land of Brandenburg, where the European Tesla factory is located, however, denied this rumor.
Jörg Steinbach explains that he spoke “with Tesla in Washington”, adding that “the commitment to Grünheide (the exact location of the Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg, editor’s note) remains unchanged, particularly with regard to the expansion plans of automobile manufacturing”.
“The battery factory will be finished. Changes in internal processes and prioritization are pending. But the factory will come out of the ground well,” he concludes.
Earlier in the week, Grünheide’s husband, Arne Cristiani, had already confirmed to Reuters that the battery factory project in Berlin was still relevant.
The future “world’s largest battery production plant”
Until now, Tesla had not really given a start date for battery production in Berlin. On a dedicated page of its official website, the American brand mentions “a launch planned for this year”, but then mentions both the assembly of vehicles, already started, and the production of battery cells, implicit in a second.
During a visit to the Berlin factory site in late 2020, Elon Musk showed big ambitions, evoking that the site would be established as “the largest battery cell factory in the world”. In detail, he had indicated that production would start with a capacity of 100 gigawatt hours (GWh) per year, before increasing to 200 or even 250 GWh per year.
Contacted, Tesla had no comment to make, nor further details on the expected start date for battery production.
Source: BFM TV
