Germany to Build 25k Tesla
It’s official: Tesla’s new, next-generation car will be produced in their facility in Germany.
On November 3rd, Tesla CEO Elon Musk visited the GigaBerlin factory to deliver the good news in the midst of public debate about the next construction phase of the facility.
Just last week we covered the first few open forum discussions with local residents and regulatory groups where the water intake of the massive factory was discussed and ultimately approved. GigaBerlin’s huge expansion has been slowly simmering in the background of Tesla projects all this year, but once these public debates are over, construction can begin.
A large portion of this expansion project will see floor space in the vehicle production area almost double - as well as an entirely new battery production facility built on the property. Most of the buzz around this expansion has been directed at the increase in regular vehicle production it will accommodate - but now we know there’s another reason for the increase in production area, as well as why it’s happening right now.
Announced back at the Investors Day event in March, Tesla’s next-generation vehicle platform has been marketed at a cheap, utilitarian option - being priced at roughly 25 thousand dollars. This vehicle will not only allow Tesla to corner the market on affordable EVs, but it’ll give the company an opportunity to finally develop their long-awaited robo-taxi idea - a completely automated, self-driving taxi.
Originally, the idea was to start production of this new platform at GigaMexico - but some snags with local infrastructure and some wariness with global interest rates have forced Tesla executives to slow down on their completion of that particular facility - and move the project to GigaTexas, where most of the company’s best engineers and design personnel are currently stationed for the Cybertruck project.
The announcement from Elon doesn’t mean that the vehicle will be moving again - by all accounts it looks like design, prototyping and initial production at least will still be taking place at GigaTexas - but it makes a lot of sense to have another facility ready to build these cars, and Tesla seems to have chosen Germany.
That’s a little bit of an odd choice, considering how well a smaller, cheaper compact care would do in a place like Shanghai - but that facility is already the busiest facility in Tesla’s roster, so maybe the company is considering importing vehicles to their factory in China - which would be a novel change of pace for them, as Shanghai usually exports parts and vehicles to the other facilities.
This could also be another way to justify investing more money into the European market - where a smaller EV would also perform well. It’s anyone’s guess as to why Tesla made this choice specifically, but it looks like the Germany crew is going to have the next five or more years packed with a factory expansion, the start of battery production, and now the creation of a whole new vehicle production line. Now that’s job security.