On March 22, 2022 local time, Tesla's Berlin factory was officially opened, and Musk delivered the first Berlin-made Model Y to 30 users. Although it was 8 months later than expected, the excited old horse danced.
Back in November 2019, Musk announced the construction of a factory in Berlin at the Adlon Hotel in Berlin, and planned to start construction early that year. The new plant broke ground without getting all the permits, which also laid the ground for the subsequent twists and turns.
What happened next, we also know, the new crown epidemic ravaged the world, in March Tesla urgently withdrew American employees working in the Berlin factory. After the resumption of work and production, the construction of the project was delayed again and again under the restrictions of the Nature Conservancy and the lengthy approval process, and it was not until the beginning of March this year that Tesla received a 536-page final environmental approval document.
The Berlin plant is Tesla's second factory overseas and by far the largest electric car factory in Germany. Regarding the factory, which goes directly into the heartland of the world's automotive industry manufacturing, Musk said: "Tesla will ensure that the Berlin factory is a gem of the region, Germany, Europe and the world." ”
The German side also gave Tesla enough face, federal chancellor Scholz and economy minister Habeck appeared at the opening ceremony. Scholz believes that all of eastern Germany will benefit from the new car plant. At the same time, electric vehicles will profoundly affect the future of mobility and support global economic exchanges. "Germany needs global competition, not de-globalization."
The Berlin plant and its supporting battery factories can provide a total of 12,000 jobs a month, but there are only 3,500 employees in the factory at present, and Tesla said it will hire thousands more in the coming months.
However, the recruitment of talents is as difficult as the previous construction progress. Although Musk bought a railway to attract foreign workers, Tesla, which encourages overtime and high-pressure work, comes to Europe and has to face "difficult" unions, and how to integrate into the local work culture is a fundamental problem of Tesla's production capacity climb in the future.
Therefore, Tesla did not give too clear an answer to the future capacity plan of the Berlin factory, but only planned to reach 30,000 vehicles in the first six months, and only delivered the black and white Model Y Performance in the early stage. The much-anticipated 4680 battery and CTC technology did not appear in the first Berlin-made Model Y.
At the beginning of this year, Musk waved a big hand and drew a sales pie that increased by more than 50% year-on-year. The successive production of the Berlin and Texas factories will provide more solid support for this pie.
The annual production capacity of the California plant has reached 600,000 units; the Shanghai plant has more than 450,000 units last year, and the expansion project has been launched; Berlin has started construction of 500,000 units; and The annual production capacity of The Texas will also reach 500,000 units next month.
Conservatively not counting the expansion rate of the Shanghai factory, optimistically counting the full production of the European and American factories, Musk's 1.5 million sales seem to be on track.