Researched together with colleagues star-Author Tina Kaiser has been describing the catastrophic conditions in Elon Musk’s German factory for more than ten months. She remembers one appointment as particularly revealing.
Making-of is the name of our new format. We want to give you a personal look behind the scenes, tell you about our everyday journalistic life and our research. We’re starting a little series looking back at our moments in 2023.
Imagine trying to find out what happens behind the walls of a factory and almost everyone who might tell you seems afraid. There are employees who not only fear for their jobs, but who are even threatened with personal bankruptcy because of draconian confidentiality clauses in their employment contracts. There are government employees who are afraid of being sent to the basement archives if they share their concerns about what is happening in the factory with journalists. And even trade unionists are afraid to discuss the problems openly. One of them will say in the course of the research: With normal corporations you can rely on the fact that the jobs are initially secure once a factory has been newly built and billions have been invested. But you are not dealing with a rational opponent here. “If he gets angry, who knows, he’ll just close the plant and we’ll be left here with an industrial ruin and 11,000 unemployed.”
We’re talking about Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, and his first European Tesla “Gigafactory” just outside Berlin, in Grünheide, Brandenburg. At the opening party in March 2022, Musk described the electric car factory as a “jewel for the region.” But a few months later he got it star Information about the price at which Tesla electric cars are produced behind the facade.
Tesla factory in Grünheide: Danger for employees, the environment and residents
Together with a large team of other investigative reporters, I researched what was going on in Grünheide for more than ten months. In the end, we were able to prove what a danger the plant is for employees, residents and the environment. Why it took so long has a lot to do with the cartel of silence that Tesla has set up. The billion-dollar company has a rule that is drummed into employees from day one: Nobody at Tesla talks to the press. Except Elon Musk.
It was all the more exciting when Tesla’s zero transparency policy collided with German administrative law last summer. The US car manufacturer wants to double its production capacity in Grünheide to one million vehicles a year and to expand the electric car factory, i.e. even more industry in a drinking water protection area. In order to obtain the necessary environmental approval, the company must inform the public and answer questions from citizens and journalists.
Tesla wants to ram 81,200 piles into the drinking water protection area
But the timing of the “information event” suggested that Tesla wasn’t really interested in too many questions. The car manufacturer invited people to the citizen dialogue on July 18, 2023. The summer holidays had started in Brandenburg just five days earlier. Many citizens simply couldn’t take part – because they were on vacation. Tesla, however, only published the actual expansion plans the day after, on July 19th. So no one had the chance to read up on it before the event and discover possible exciting topics. Like the fact that Tesla is seriously planning to drive 81,200 concrete piles into the ground in the drinking water protection area beneath the factory.
But on that hot holiday day, none of the more than a hundred citizens who came with me to the Müggelspreehalle, a multi-purpose hall around ten kilometers from the Tesla factory, knew about this. We have to realize that the event is not taking place in the hall and that no one from Tesla is sitting on a stage, who the well-informed representatives of environmental associations can pester with critical questions in front of an audience. Because that could have been unpleasant.
Instead, Tesla has set up a very lavish and appetizing cake buffet outside the hall. And to the right and left of it there are small stands, each with a Tesla employee dressed in black in front of themed signs: from water protection to pollution control, hazard prevention, infrastructure to building law and occupational safety.
Donuts with the lettering “Tesla” at the US electric car manufacturer’s information event
© Jens Kalaene / DPA
The Tesla employee waves it off: I don’t know, sorry
I first try my luck at the “Hazard Safety” stand; the very friendly lady there immediately puts a tablet in my hand and suggests that I watch a presentation on the expansion plans. When I wanted to ask questions about it, she waved me off: She didn’t know anything, sorry.
Second attempt at the “infrastructure” stand next door, the Tesla employee there smiles winningly and says he’s there for me. I ask him about the letter from Brandenburg’s Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke wrote to Elon Musk in March 2023. There, Woidke assured the Tesla boss that he was aware of Tesla’s problems with the water and energy supply in Grünheide. He wants to support the group in finding a solution. I tell the Tesla employee that the water shortage in the region has been widely reported on anyway, but what problems are there with electricity and gas? The man says: none at all. Tesla has no energy supply bottlenecks. Why did Woidke claim that? He doesn’t know, says the Tesla employee. The next day you can read in the application documents that Tesla wants to build a gas power plant and an LNG terminal.
Potemkin village with information facades
So it goes on, apparently we are not at an information event, but in a Potemkin village with information facades. At the “Occupational Health and Safety” stand, a Tesla woman explained to me that Tesla’s occupational health and safety representative unfortunately didn’t have time to be there today. By this time, our research team had long since discovered that accidents occurred almost every day at the Tesla factory, some of which were serious and extremely serious. It’s about burns, chemical burns, broken and amputated limbs and carcinogenic dust in the air. But the woman says she is not aware of any serious accidents.
As I stroll from stand to stand, I notice a very tall, young man in Tesla clothing who keeps looking over the visitors’ heads at me. Then he finally comes towards me. I’m sure I’m a journalist, right? He introduces himself with his name, which I am not allowed to publish. I later find out that he is listed as a “Communication Specialist” in Tesla’s internal system. Apparently his specialty is to clearly explain to me and the other journalists on site that we are not allowed to quote any of the Tesla employees present verbatim. Instructions from Elon Musk, sorry. I find that almost a bit funny now. Because: What should I want to quote from all these non-conversations?
The summer holidays had begun in Brandenburg just five days before the Tesla information event
© Jens Kalaene / DPA
But it’s not funny, that’s what we found out in our months of research. Accordingly, it is sometimes life-threatening to work in the Tesla factory. In addition to the serious accidents, there is sometimes negligent handling of toxic substances, oils and diesel, which seep into the soil of a drinking water protection area beneath the factory. Experts tell us that the entire region’s drinking water supply is at risk for decades. And Tesla, as I realized that day in front of the Müggelspreehalle, does not seem to take the fears of the people in the area seriously.
“They’re all lies”
The supposed “information event” apparently leaves many citizens just as perplexed as I was. Some put a “Tesla” donut in their mouth and leave. Others insult Tesla employees. A resident finally starts to cry at the “Water Protection” stand and says in a shaky voice: “These are all lies you’re telling us.” She later said that she had little hope that her children could grow up in the region.
The first issue of “stern Investigativ.”, which you on the streaming portal RTL+ can see. Also the serial one “stern Investigativ.” podcast “Inside Tesla” deals with the electric car company in Grünheide:
Editor’s note: Stern is part of RTL Deutschland.