Tesla sent back to drawing board for German expansion
Not binding
Residents of the town of Grünheide, population 9,152, near Tesla’s Giga Berlin battery manufacturing plant have voted against the expansion of the facility due the need to raze parts of the surrounding forest.
The vote is not binding, but the mayor of the town about one hour’s drive south east of Berlin and officials from the gigafactory said the vote result would “prompt them to return to the drawing board,” according to press reports.
Tesla wants to double output of its soda-can sized 4680 cells at Giga Berlin, home of the bestselling Model Y, from the current 50 GWh per year.
Nominally, nameplate capacity of 100 GWh would be enough to build more than 1.2 million vehicles based on Adamas data of the Texas-based company’s sales-weighted average battery capacity.
Model Ys sold in Europe in 2023 captured 12% of the regional passenger EV market (including plug-in and conventional hybrids) in terms of battery capacity deployed.
New drivers of the compact SUV steered a combined 19 GWh onto European and UK roads last year. Tesla’s Model 3, which had a long overdue styling refresh late last year, was second with nearly 7 GWh hitting roads on the continent.
Rounding out the top 5 were three vehicles in the Volkswagen stable: the Skoda Enyaq Coupe iV, which contrary to its moniker is much more SUV than coupe, the eponymous ID.4 and the more upmarket Audi Q4 –etron.
In total more than 156 GWh of battery power were added to Europe’s electric car parc in 2023, 32% more than the year before.
