(Newswire.net — November 15, 2019) — Berlin, Germany – Elon Mask plans to build a new super-factory near Berlin. For German carmakers the plans have come just at the right time, says Deutche Welle business editor Henrik Böhme. However, this might not be that easy.
In a world of Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Porche, BMW and Volkswagen, a brand like Tesla does not seem to be in right company, but not quite so if you ask Elon Musk. The Tesla founder eyeballed a region for his new super-factory near Berlin. It is in a place that hosts a Berlin’s airport which would be vacated once a new airport becomes fully operational. However, opening of a new airport has been delayed for years, which has also reached the top of the Tesla concern.
The plan was that this Tesla super-factory emerges in the town of Greenhide, on the southeastern outskirts of Berlin. So far, few have heard of the town that is not actually in the territory of Berlin, but in the federal province of Brandenburg, which surrounds Berlin. The taxes will therefore not flow into the chronically empty budget of the capital, but to the Branderburg region.
Under concerns that the German car industry giants are pushing into the electric car market, Elon Musk don’t believe the Berliners can get the project done fast enough. In one hand there are serious delays of launching a Tesla factory in Germany but German automotive giants, on the other hand, are picking up the pace and investing rapidly into electric vehicles.
Elon Musk certainly did not miss the fact that a week ago Volkswagen started building an electric car factory in Zwickau in the East German province of Saxony. The plant will by 2021 become the largest automotive concern in the world and will assemble 330,000 electrically driven cars annually.
Volkswagen doesn’t stop there. In two other plants in Germany, as well as in factories in the US and China, the Wolfsburg concern is beginning to refocus on electric cars. Things are changing: German car giants initially looked at Tesla with a sneer, which, in their view, was pushed among the big ones – where it doesn’t belong.
Musk, however, is eager to prove that Tesla is a serious competition.
Now things are turning around again, as Tesla is still plagued by mass production and, in addition, has been carrying a huge amount of debt. That’s why now that Volkswagen and Toyota – as the largest mass-produced car makers in the world – are, though admittedly late, making their way into the electric vehicles market, still pose a serious threat to Tesla. That is why Mask’s announcement of the construction of a factory in Germany can be seen as a call to a battle.
The premium sector of the car industry, which includes Tesla’s vehicles, is slowly but surely penetrating competition from Germany: Porsche (Taycan), Audi (E-Tron series) or Daimler (Mercedes EQC). And in China, where Tesla also opened its third super-factory in just ten months, the competition doesn’t sleep. With Tesla’s decision to build just another factory in Germany, the official race for dominance in the e-car sector moves to the country where the internal combustion engine car was invented.
Ignoring many of the issues that are still open, Mask’s announcement is, above all, good news for many residents of the German region: the creation of thousands of new jobs at the right time, according to Deutche Welle business editor Henrik Bohme. Reportedly, just to the south of the site where the plant is supposed to be built is the region of Lusatia, in which many people have lost their jobs recently due to the closure of a nearby mine.