Tesla Giga Berlin Applied to Construct a Building that May House a New Battery Plant

Photo: @gigafactory_4/Twitter

It seems that Tesla has begun preparations for the construction of a battery plant at Giga Berlin, as hinted at by documents filed with the Oder-Spree District Construction Authority. According to the application, at first, the building will be temporarily used as a warehouse.

Tesla intends to build a plant for the production of batteries on the territory of Giga Berlin, as told by the CEO of the company, Elon Musk. However, until now there has been no news of this, and it was unknown whether the manufacturer's plans remained in effect.

At the time being, Tesla is piloting its new battery cell production at Fremont. But the company plans to ultimately move this production to Giga Berlin, where it will continue to scale a new cell production technology. Musk said that 100 GWh of annual cell production is possible for the German battery plant, but that is not the limit. “I can even imagine expanding to 200 to 250 GWh,” he said. "I'm pretty sure that that would make it the largest battery factory in the world."

While no applications have yet been submitted for the construction of a battery manufacturing plant, Tesla's preparations for this are now clearly moving forward. According to Tagesspiegel, Tesla has filed a construction application with the Oder-Spree District Construction Authority to build another large facility on the initial 300 hectares. The application states that the premises will be temporarily used for other purposes, but Tagesspiegel said that later, the production of battery cells for Tesla will begin there. A district government official confirmed that Tesla submitted an application to build a warehouse building shortly before Christmas.

According to Tagesspiegel, the dimensions of the building indicate that it should be larger than just a warehouse. The documents indicate that its area will be almost 22,000 square meters. Tesla's battery project near Berlin is part of a European battery subsidy, and is also supported by the Federal Ministry of Economics.

Formerly, Musk stressed that residents of Brandenburg do not need to worry about the location or environmental impact of a new battery manufacturing plant. As Musk explained, the company is incorporating new methods that will eliminate environmentally harmful aspects of production. “You can live close to a battery plant and not worry about toxic substances,” he said.

Tesla's pilot plant is located in the San Francisco Bay Area, which has the most stringent environmental regulations in the United States. So if Tesla's battery cell manufacturing was polluting, it wouldn't be allowed to be operational.

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Article edited by @SmokeyShorts, you can follow him on Twitter

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