Tesla is preparing to start production in Grünheide
In the last few meters
Gigafactory Nevada
© press-inform – the press office
Tesla wants to open its new Gigafactory in Grünheide, Brandenburg, this year. But it will take some time before the mass production of Tesla models really begins.
With its new production facility in Grünheide south of Berlin, Tesla is opening its next plant, where the electric cars of the coming decades will be built. After production in the main plant in Fremont / California and Chinese production in the greater Shanghai area, Grünheide is the next important element in the Americans’ expansion plans. The new production facility in Brandenburg is not Tesla’s first vehicle production in Europe. Vehicles have already been manufactured in Tilburg, the Netherlands, for the past six years. However, this did not happen as part of a complete production, because the various vehicles, but especially the larger models Tesla Model X and Model S, were only adapted in Tilburg for the European market; the prefabricated vehicles (SKD / CKD) came from the factory in Fremont, south of San Francisco.
Now, at a large public day in Grünheide, Tesla CEO announced that production of the Model Y in the new Gigafactory will begin in December. However, he made no secret of the fact that it was just a matter of starting production. In a first step, 50,000 to 100,000 vehicles per year are to be built in Grünheide. It starts with the Tesla Model Y; after that, Model 3 will also be created here, which will be manufactured on the same platform. At full capacity, however, the completely newly built plant should be able to handle up to 500,000 vehicles. The ramp-up of production is known to be one of the major problems facing the American electrical manufacturer, because the other factories in Fremont and Shanghai were already having a hard time getting into normal normal operation, where German and Japanese manufacturers are considered to be the measure of all things. The component plants in the US states of Nevada and New York also had problems ramping up production.
If the Brandenburg plant is running at full capacity in a few years, significantly more than 10,000 people should work in Grünheide. The search for employees is currently more difficult than expected. This applies both to the workers on the assembly line and to the individual management levels. At least Tesla under Elon Musk benefits from the fact that many German carmakers are currently having early retirement and severance problems and that one or the other experienced automotive expert is quite inclined to change camp with a generous severance payment in their pockets. Here, however, the location of the plant in Grünheide turns out to be quite problematic, because people from the middle and higher management of companies such as BMW, Daimler or the Volkswagen group are moving from Munich, Stuttgart or Ingolstadt to Berlin or even in not to inspire the Brandenburg province. There are almost only manufacturers like Volkswagen in Wolfsburg or Opel in Rüsselsheim who are seriously considering moving eastwards.
The new plant in Grünheide will be completed after around two years of construction, although the attached battery factory will be some time in coming before it can be put into operation. However, it is urgently necessary so that the battery packs do not have to be laboriously delivered by truck to the Brandenburg car production facility. But at the end of 2022, when the Gigafactory is running at full capacity in the first expansion stage, the batteries from next door are to be brought over short distances with maximum efficiency. The total investment of the Tesla production and battery factory should be between four and six billion euros. But time is of the essence, because even if the production of the production plant is now in the final spurt, there is still no final approval for the operation of Grünheide. However, the Tesla executives expect this by mid-November 2021 at the latest.
Even if the new Tesla production facility was celebrating a big party with several thousand people on the site, the plant itself is still a topic of local conversation. In addition to the repeated lack of partial permits, it is not least about the groundwater and the adjacent nature reserve, which should be severely affected by the massive construction. However, local and regional politicians are well aware of the special importance of manufacturing. The region itself is structurally weak and the unemployment rate is high. A plant that has sprung up out of the ground with several thousand new direct jobs and a similar number of secondary positions comes in handy. The Tesla plant seems to be the only chance that younger people will come back to Grünheide. In addition, Tesla, in combination with its proximity to the greater Berlin area, is a magnet that job seekers from Germany and abroad find their way into rural areas, which are dominated by forests and sandy soils, but otherwise hardly has anything to offer. Meanwhile, the official job offers on the Tesla website are limitless. From shift supervisors to company doctors to quality inspectors, painters and electricians, we are looking for almost everything. Time is running out.