What Happened
The Austin, Texas-based electric vehicle maker does not have a final greenlight from the local authorities for the official start of production at the Giga Berlin as all requested documents have not been submitted.“In order to be able to implement this in a legally secure manner, it is also necessary that appropriate reports are available, and it is regrettable that not all reports are available in this quality yet,” the report noted in German, citing Brandenburg Environment Minister Axel Vogel.
Why It Matters
A regional environmental ministry in Germany had last month repeated an online consultation with local citizens to review objections to Tesla’s Berlin manufacturing facility.The third round of public consultation was open to those who expressed an objection in previous rounds but were not satisfied with the response from Tesla or the environmental ministry.
Musk had earlier said Tesla could start rolling off cars from the production lines at its new Giga Berlin in November or December though achieving volume production at the Berlin factory would take much longer than it took to build the factory.
Musk has previously blamed German bureaucracy for the delay in starting production at the Berlin Gigafactory.
Musk announced the plans to build the Berlin gigafactory in 2019 but construction began last year. The factory could eventually clock a 500,000 annual electric vehicle capacity.