Of the Tesla-Chef comes to the open house in the Gigafactory in Grünheide.
(Photo: Reuters)
Berlin Tesla is promoting its new electric car factory in Grünheide, Brandenburg, with an unusual campaign. On October 9th, the US electric car manufacturer is celebrating a “Giga-Fest” on the factory premises. Also there: CEO Elon Musk. He wrote on Friday on a corresponding question on Twitter: “Yes.”
Tesla invites citizens from Brandenburg and Berlin to the first open day. At the “County Fair”, the guests should be able to experience the factory “up close”, as the car manufacturer reports on the website specially set up for the event.
“In addition to numerous stands relating to Tesla, its mission and products, as well as a varied supporting program, guests can take an extraordinary look behind the facade of the factory and discover the inside of the factory during a factory tour.” Register to pre-register. “Due to capacity restrictions, tickets are not guaranteed,” said the company.
Usually Tesla is cautious about its public relations. Social media, especially Twitter, play a major role in the Group’s communication. “This is a structural phenomenon that Elon Musk has mastered like hardly anyone else,” said Lutz Frühbrodt, professor of specialist journalism and corporate communications at the Würzburg University of Applied Sciences, of “Die Zeit”. Communication can be controlled much better via social media, Elon Musk directly determines which information gets out, without having to go through journalists.
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In the case of the new Gigafactory, Tesla now seems to be pursuing a different strategy. The group seeks proximity to the citizens – probably also to convince the last critics of the settlement in Grünheide.
At the moment, Tesla is still building at its own risk. The environmental approval from the state of Brandenburg is still pending. If there is no final okay for the Gigafactory, Tesla would have to restore the site to its original state at its own expense.
Yes
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 17, 2021
The electric car manufacturer originally wanted to start production in July, but then Tesla expanded the building application to include the construction and operation of a battery factory in June. This meant that the application had to be publicly interpreted again. The Brandenburg State Office for the Environment (LfU) has received more than 800 objections from citizens and organizations. The discussion of the objections should take place online due to the corona – according to the Potsdam state government, on September 23 at the earliest.
Brandenburg’s Economics Minister Jörg Steinbach does not believe that the resistance to the factory can stop the approval process. The SPD politician recently put the probability that the project will be approved as a whole at “95 percent”.
He considers residents’ fear of accidents to be exaggerated. This risk is “comparable to the probability of a jumbo crash,” Steinbach told the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”. “We are discussing a minimum risk here.”
The fact that Tesla can count on state funding for the battery factory planned on the factory site in Grünheide also speaks for a positive outcome of the proceedings. The electrical manufacturer will receive 120 million euros from Brandenburg, as the responsible state parliament committees have already decided.
The final decision on additional federal funding is still pending. According to reports, however, it is only a matter of form that Tesla should receive around one billion euros from the Federal Ministry of Economics’ second European battery cell program (IPCEI).
More: The contractors of the Tesla factory: “No client in this country surfs on as much money as Elon Musk”