Tesla Is Finally Producing Cars in Europe: Elon Musk Opens First Manufacturing Plant

Tesla will now produce electric vehicles in Europe as Elon Musk opens their first factory just outside Berlin. After almost 20 years in the auto industry, Tesla is now expanding throughout the globe.

Tesla's Elon Musk in Europe

Tesla CEO Elon Musk opened their first manufacturing facility inviting the public to their new Tesla plant.

In the opening of the Tesla Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg, Musk was accompanied by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other government officials on a tour of the massive factory.

Olaf Scholz stated after the tour that "Electromobility will shape the mobility of the future."

As reported by The New York Times, Robert Habeck, the German vice chancellor said, "A special day for the region, a special day also for Germany and a special day for the mobility transformation in Germany." In addition, Tesla boasts that it was built in just a little more than two years, which left German officials and commentators amazed at the speed of construction.

Grünheide, a coal town in Brandenburg, Germany, about an hour's drive from Berlin, is where the new Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg manufacturing plant is located. According to Bloomberg, the recent Tesla Gigafactory outside Berlin costs about $5.5 billion to $7 billion.

Tesla opened the factory yesterday, March, 22, and has officially begun producing its electric vehicles. Elon Musk stated that he hopes to contribute to Tesla's goal to produce 500,000 electric vehicles per year

Tesla Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg

Tesla CEO Elon Musk visited the Gigafactory plant construction site last October and stated that "the start of production is nice, but volume production is the hard part". Following the start of commercial production in June, according to Troy Teslike, an independent Tesla researcher, the company hopes to reach 1,000 vehicles per week at the six-week mark, and then 5,000 vehicles per week by the end of 2022.

Teslike stated at the time that Tesla hoped to produce 5,000 to 10,000 vehicles per week by the end of this year, and he was correct. Tesla is experiencing increasing demand for its electric vehicles as the EV industry continues to grow.

Tesla Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg is significant to Elon Musk for meeting the electric vehicle demands in Europe's expanding EV industry.

Musk previously tweeted his master plans for Tesla, and a major part of that master plan is expansion focused on "scaling to extreme size". Tesla has already employed 3,000 employees in the factory, the EV company plans to hire up to 12,000 employees. Tesla stated in an emailed statement that this number is expected to increase by a few thousand over the next few months.

Tesla Meeting European Demand

The electric vehicle manufacturer in the United States has been struggling to keep up with demand. Unfortunately, Tesla has received multiple complaints and reports of lengthy delays for Model Ys and certain Model 3s in various parts of the world.

One of Tesla's factories, Giga Shanghai, is experiencing production delays due to the worsening COVID-19 situation in China. Numerous businesses were forced to suspend work because of the widespread Omicron variant.

According to CNBC, when Tesla Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg was not yet constructed, Tesla has been exporting cars from China to customers in Europe in recent quarters.

This is due to the skyrocketing demand for electric vehicles (EVs) in Europe, and now Tesla can rely on some of its production taking place on the continent rather than solely being shipped from China.