Elon Musk, 50, multi-entrepreneur from California, received important visitors on Friday. Whereby one can argue about who is actually the senior visitor here: The Tesla boss who is currently visiting his Gigafactory construction site at the gates of Berlin? Or the Union Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet, 60, who wanted to drop by for election campaign purposes anyway and was only informed by SMS the evening before that there was nothing standing in the way of a personal meeting.
Laschet looked more impressed by the encounter. He said in perfect English: “This is the future”, this is the future. The CDU boss thanked Musk for his risky investment in Germany.
He wanted to promote the “green revolution” here, announced Musk. The factory, which he says will be the most modern production facility for electromobility in the world, is still being built at the moment. “But when she’s done she’ll be beautiful,” Musk promised. If everything goes well, the first cars could be manufactured here as early as October. Tesla is building a factory in Grünheide, Brandenburg, in which around 500,000 electric cars are to be built each year. Production was originally scheduled to start in July. However, the construction of the connected battery cell factory was delayed due to approval procedures. So far, Musk has relied on provisional approvals.
Under a government led by him, according to Laschet, there should be significantly fewer bureaucratic hurdles to implement such large-scale projects: “The shackles that are currently hampering must be removed so that we can achieve the energy transition,” said Laschet. That is why the election campaign with political competitors will turn in the coming weeks. When Elon Musk was asked what he thought of Armin Laschet, he said they hardly know each other, but “he seems to be a great guy.”