By
Bena Ilyas
April 23rd, 2024
The arrival and reception for the opening event will take place from 9 am to 10 am. Registration will start from 10 am to 11 am. Further, attendees will enjoy a factory tour of Giga Berlin. At 1:30 pm, the Model Y handover and the delivery event are scheduled.
Tesla Gigafactory Berlin, Tesla’s first manufacturing location in Europe and its most advanced, sustainable, and efficient facility yet, has finally announced its opening ceremony that will take place today, March 22. To celebrate the opening, Tesla Gigafactory Berlin will start the delivery of its first Model Y vehicles. Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO Elon Musk will attend the event.
Excited to hand over the first production cars made by Giga Berlin-Brandenburg tomorrow!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 21, 2022
According to the schedule released by Tesla, the arrival and reception will take place from 9 am to 10 am. Registration will start from 10 am to 11 am. Further, attendees will enjoy a factory tour of Giga Berlin. At 1:30 pm, the Model Y handover and the delivery event are scheduled.
Tesla said:
“Whenever you want, we will drive your vehicle off the premises and leave the steering to you. Unfortunately, for safety reasons, it is not permitted to drive yourself on the site. Please report to the First Owners Tent and one of our Tesla Advisors will be happy to chauffeur you to the exit.”
Notably, it took a long time for Tesla Gigafactory Berlin to get approval for Model Y production. The process took longer because Tesla added the 4680 cell production building to their application in addition to the Model Y factory. Notably, the documents of the final Giga Berlin approval by the government consist of as many as 23,727 pages in 66 folders. Such an astonishing amount of documentation results from the challenges Tesla had to overcome because of public participation, concerns by the environmentalist organizations, and the German bureaucracy.
About Tesla Giga Berlin
Elon Musk first announced plans to build a new gigafactory in Germany back in November 2019. The construction work on the factory at the site started in May 2020. It was intending to start production of vehicles by the early summer of 2021. However, the Covid-19 pandemic, supply chain complications, and disagreements with environmentalists led to the delay of the launch.
Notably, Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg is the first location in Europe that will produce not only electric vehicles but also cells in-house. The company is planning to directly employ as many as 12,000 people, which will allow it to reduce the current long delivery times as well as reduce exposure to the disproportionate logistics costs that the automotive sector is currently suffering. In the first six months, Tesla Gigafactory Berlin hopes to produce about 30,000 vehicles. At full capacity, it is estimated that its annual production will reach 500,000 cars. Besides, it will be able to top Volkswagen Group (ETR: VOW3) which is currently leading the European market with a 25% share. In 2021, Volkswagen sold more than 450,000 battery-electric vehicles globally. For comparison, Tesla has a 13% market share in Europe.