In front of a Model Y with GIGA 001 printed on a license plate, Tesla CEO Musk copied the dance he did when the Shanghai Giga Factory opened in January 2020, and this time what excited him so much was Tesla's second overseas giga Berlin-Brandenburg.
On March 22, Local time in Germany, at the German Gigafactory site, Musk personally delivered the first high-performance version of the Model Y to 30 local customers and their families. The move marks the official start of operation of the German Gigafactory, which has been built for more than two years, and Musk has finally achieved his goal of producing Tesla cars in the center of the European market.
Europe's first gigafactory is the largest investment in Germany's recent history. From the start of construction to the time the first new car rolled off the production line, Tesla invested a huge amount of 5 billion euros in the factory. German Chancellor Olaf Schultz also accompanied Musk to the event and praised the plant as a sign of progress in the automotive industry and the future of the industry.
Musk defined the moment as a great day for the factory and reiterated that the opening of the Gigafactory in Berlin is an important step towards a sustainable energy future for Tesla.
However, not everyone believes Musk and supports his Tesla.
Alleviate export pressure from Shanghai plant
Local environmental groups gathered outside the factory on Tuesday to express their concerns with banners and pots and pans, Reuters reported. They worry that the massive felling of trees and the high water consumption at the start of production at Tesla's Construction of the Berlin Gigafactory will have an impact on the environmentally friendly lives of nearby residents.
The Berlin Gigafactory is located in the German state of Brandenburg, where the per capita green power generation rate is the highest in Germany, and the local residents attach great importance to environmental issues. This is also the reason why the construction schedule of the factory has been delayed.
Construction of the Berlin Gigafactory began in November 2019, and Musk hoped to be completed and commissioned in July 2021 to replicate Shanghai's speed. It took only one year for the Shanghai Gigafactory to lay the first stake to deliver the first production car. But what happened later showed that China's speed is not so easy to reproduce elsewhere.
Although production was delayed by 8 months, the local government said that although the plan was delayed, it was completed relatively quickly.
Tesla received a production license from the local government on March 4 this year, but it had to meet several conditions before starting production, including issues such as water use and air pollution control.
Tesla CEO Musk and German Chancellor Olaf Schultz | Image source: Reuters
Musk seemed to respond to the concerns of local Germans at the delivery site, saying: "Sometimes people are sad about the future, they may not believe that we can solve sustainable energy, but I can really assure you that you can have hope for the future, you should have hope for the future." This issue will be solved and this plant is an important step in that direction. ”
Although many Germans oppose Tesla's construction of factories in Germany, they are very happy for European customers who love Tesla. Because Tesla's production of cars in Europe saves them 10% on import duties. The Model Y High Performance Edition, which is currently exported from Shanghai to Europe, sells for up to 64,000 euros locally.
Moreover, for Chinese customers, the opening of the Berlin Gigafactory can ease the export pressure of the Shanghai plant, thereby freeing up more capacity for Chinese customers, which allows them to receive their Tesla cars as soon as possible.
At present, Chinese users place an order on a Model Y, and the pick-up time is as little as 2 months and as long as 5 months. This is because most of the capacity of the Shanghai plant is used for export. In the full year of 2021, more than 160,000 of the more than 480,000 vehicles produced at the Shanghai plant were exported to Various Regions such as Europe. And from the second half of 2021, the proportion of export capacity is increasing. In February this year, according to the data of the Federation of Automobile Associations, the Shanghai plant delivered 56,515 new cars, of which as many as 33,315 were used for export, with an export ratio of nearly 60%.
Therefore, the opening of the Berlin factory can alleviate the export pressure of the Shanghai factory. But how much domestic production capacity can be released depends on the production beat of the Berlin factory.
It is reported that the Design Annual Production Capacity of the Berlin plant is 500,000 vehicles, but at present there is only a weekly production capacity of 200 vehicles, and the target weekly production capacity is 5,000 vehicles by the end of the year. JPMorgan expects the Berlin plant to produce about 54,000 vehicles in 2022, 280,000 by 2023 and 500,000 by 2025.
Therefore, at least for now, the export pressure of the Shanghai factory will be slightly alleviated, and the pick-up time of Chinese users can only be slightly advanced.
Volkswagen races against Tesla
Tesla's Berlin Gigafactory also has a production line that complements the production of 50 gigawatt-hours (GWh) batteries, which is more than all other factories in Europe. Tesla will compete directly with Volkswagen in Europe.
At present, Volkswagen is the leader in the European new energy vehicle market, with a local market share of 25% and Tesla's 13%. Moreover, Volkswagen said it has received orders for 95,000 electric vehicles in the European market this year, while Musk has previously said that it will take more than two years to increase production capacity than it takes to build a factory.
Tesla's new plant in Brandenburg, Germany, is just a few hours' drive from Wolfsburg, the headquarters of the Volkswagen Group, and as the European gigafactory begins to enter production, it strengthens the competitive relationship between Tesla and Volkswagen.
Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Dies told reporters at the 2022 annual media briefing that volkswagen group will spend 2 billion euros to build a brand new factory next to the existing Wolfsburg plant to produce trinity, the first Volkswagen brand model based on the SSP platform, "This is also an important move for us to compete with Tesla's factory in Brandenburg, and we also hope to get government support to ensure that we can complete on time to maintain a competitive advantage." Dees emphasized.
Volkswagen will also invest 800 million euros in the construction of a new R&D center, the Sandkamp campus in Wolfsburg, which will be the base for the development of the SSP platform and Trinity models. Volkswagen's goal is to make it the world's most advanced R&D center, and its mission is to shorten the vehicle development cycle by 25% by focusing on the vehicle's systems and functions, as well as the decoupling of software and hardware, and to shorten the vehicle project cycle from 54 months to 40 months.
But Volkswagen's timeline is slightly behind Tesla's, with its new plant set to open in 2026 and its first battery plant completed and commissioned in 2023.
In the United States, where Tesla is headquartered, Volkswagen's reputation and influence are also increasing.
According to the previously released financial report, the Volkswagen brand reversed the situation of many years of non-profitability in the North American market in 2021. It can be seen that Volkswagen is rising strongly in the US market. Its sales of new energy vehicles have ranked second in the US market, and sales of pure electric vehicles have ranked fourth.
Moreover, not long ago ID.Buzz made its global debut in Hamburg, and as the most affectionate MEMBER of the ID. family to date, ID.Buzz caused a sensation after the release. Volkswagen CEO Herbert Dies parachuted into Austin and gave a live show on a roadside ID.Buzz. He said that when ID.Buzz appear in the United States, passing viewers will immediately pull out their mobile phones to take pictures after seeing it, and he said that ID.Buzz is the key for mass brands to re-establish emotional resonance with consumers in the American market.
Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess expressed joy next to the ID.Buzz
This makes the market prospects of the ID.Buzz full of imagination, and Volkswagen hopes to sell the car 120,000 units a year.
Volkswagen aims to become a global market leader in electric vehicles by 2025. It can be seen that in the next few years, the competitive relationship between Volkswagen and Tesla will become more and more intense.
Che Yun Summary:
The Berlin Gigafactory opened, and Musk danced excitedly. His expansion ambitions are so ambitious that his 2022 delivery target for Tesla of 1.4 million units looks so easy that his previous rhetoric that Tesla will deliver 20 million vehicles a year by 2030 no longer seems so unrealistic, although some say it is a fantasy.
But Musk's expanding pace and increasingly popular Tesla cars are really changing the rules of the automotive industry, and Musk and his Tesla have also made the traditional giants feel a tense atmosphere, and they have to seriously think about how to catch up with Tesla.
With the acceleration of the transformation of traditional car companies, an era of chaos with intelligent electric vehicles as the main track is coming.