Tesla Preps for GigaBerlin Upgrades
On October 24th, local news publication RBB 24 reported that Tesla is hoping to begin factory expansions to their GIgafactory in Brandenburg, Germany in the first half of 2024.
This announcement comes only a day after discussions with municipal authorities, local residents, and Tesla spokespeople - as they gathered to allow the public to raise concerns about the planned expansion.
This is the usual process just about everywhere - as large industrial construction can affect residents, and so those people are often given the right to speak up about any objections before allowing a company to proceed with something the locals may not want happening in their backyards.
Germany in particular has always been a tougher nut to crack in this regard - with many residents being more active with environmental advocacy than people tend to be in North America. Lucky for Tesla, the factory in Germany is one of the cleanest running facilities in their roster.
This particular discussion was one of several planned - each covering a specific aspect of the plant. The session on the 24th was concerning water use and pollution from the facility - and over 1000 complaints were raised. It’s important to remember that in this context, a “complaint” is the formal definition for any question or comment - so it’s very unlikely that all 1000 remarks were negative, and most were likely made to seek clarification.
However, there were of course concerns about the use of water at the Gigafactory. Making vehicles is normally water intensive - and as one of the planned upgrades for the facility is an increased capacity for battery production, local authorities were quick to raise concerns about the amount of water that would be used by the factory once these upgrades were completed.
But as we just said, the Berlin Gigafactory is one of the cleanest running facilities Tesla owns.
Just a few days before these discussions took place, a report was published in German language news about the amount of water actually used at the plant. GigaBerlin is reportedly approved to use about 1.8 million cubic meters of water per year - but during its first year it only used about 300,000 cubic meters. That’s quite a bit less than their allotment.
As one user over on X.com pointed out, a Model Y produced at GigaBerlin uses about 582 gallons of water, while the average pair of jeans needs about 18 hundred gallons during its manufacture process.
And this is why, despite the concerns raised by residents and local advocacy groups - Brandenburg authorities from the State Office for the Environment concluded that the points raised were not enough to block this expansion, and have formally closed the discussion on water consumption at the plant.
To be fair, most concerns seemed to stem from some late changes Tesla had made to their documentation - but those changes were found to have only been made to clarify the company’s intentions with the new build.
And speaking of, Tesla has a lot in store for this expansion.
The plans for this project were submitted to authorities for approval way back in July - and center around simply expanding the capacity of the site to be able to produce 1 million cars, and to achieve 100 gigawatt hours of battery production per year - a huge leap from the roughly 250,000 cars produced right now.
Included in the documentation are a new battery testing lab, adjustments to the main press and paint production areas, and a larger water recycling facility - that last one is likely the reason Tesla believes they can build this expansion without needing to apply for more water capacity at the site.
The company plans on reusing water from their rinsing stations, and even capturing rainwater for use in their cooling applications.
The next round of discussions will reportedly center around noise pollution from the site, but that is also not likely to hold up the proceedings, as the facility is located in a fairly industrialised area. The remaining discussions should continue into the new year - but once those are finished the approval should follow soon afterwards, and then it’s on Tesla for the build schedule.
And as we’ve seen from other factory builds, Tesla doesn’t like to wait around when it comes to construction.