Telsa’ to build cars in Germany

Elon Musk announced that Tesla would build its first European production plant in Grünheide, a small town south-east of Berlin, near its new international airport, prompted Peter Altmaier, economics minister to say “further proof of how attractive Germany is as a place to make cars”, and was a “milestone” on Germany’s path towards electro-mobility.

The upstart entrepreneur effectively threw down the gauntlet to some of Germany’s most successful and long-established car companies on their home turf. Jan Burgard, a former manager at carmaker Audi said this amounts to “challenging Germany’s automakers to a duel right in front of their own castle gates. You have to respect the guy, he really is fearless”.

Mr Musk had chosen to locate the giga-factory in Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin, which does not have much car-making tradition and hundreds of miles from Baden-Württemberg, home to Daimler, Bosch and Porsche and from Wolfsburg, where Volkswagen has its headquarters. Moreover, according to Mr Musk, Berlin which attracts tech entrepreneurs and software developers and has a huge pool of technical talent.

Daimler and BMW announced last year they would locate their new mobility services joint venture in Berlin, while Volkswagen launched “WeShare”, its first fully electric car-sharing service, in the city this year.

Berlin’s economy minister Jŏrg Steinbach said “We have more installed wind turbines per head population than any other region in Germany and at Branden burg Tesla can achieve its goal of CO2-neutral production.

This month, VW after a battering from the diesel scandal, they plan to invest €44bn in electric cars, autonomous driving and mobility services and began production of its first mass market battery-powered car, the ID3 hatchback in the city of Zwickau, while China’s CATL is building a battery plant an hour and half’s drive away in Erfurt which will produce more than 22m battery-powered cars by 2028.