Tesla will have to keep Giga Berlin shut down until at least March 17, 2024 as repairs to restore electricity to the site will take longer than initially anticipated.
On Tuesday Tesla was forced to evacuate Giga Berlin and shut down all production after a terrorist attack on a nearby nearby electricity pylon. The attack was carried out by a group of extremists known as the Volcano Group, who are against the company’s expansion plans for the site.
The attack not only impacted the power supply for Giga Berlin, but also that of local residents, hospitals, police stations, and other critical facilities.
Tesla was initially hoping they would be able to restart production at Giga Berlin early next week, but now the factory will remain offline until at least March 17, 2024, according to a company spokesperson. The extended shutdown is because repairs to the damaged pylon are more complicated than initially anticipated, extending the amount of time it will take to restore power to the site.
If Tesla is able to restart production on March 18, that would mean the factory would have been dark for nearly two weeks. Based on the most recent production milestone at Giga Berlin, that would equate to approximately 12,000 Model Ys that should have rolled off the production lines during that time. According to Tesla, more than 1,000 units alone were left unfished on the production lines on Tuesday when the attack happened.
In terms of a financial impact, the extended shutdown will lead to more than $1 billion in damages for the company, according to an initial estimate from Tesla.
CEO Elon Musk has spoken out against the attack, calling the extremist group “extremely dumb” and “puppets of those who don’t have good environmental goals.”
In response to the attack, Tesla’s Vice President, Public Policy and Business Development, Rohan Patel, shared a long list of facts on outlining how the company focuses on building “the most sustainable factories along with a culture to do the right thing in our community.”
Our Giga Berlin-Brandenburg team sent me a long list of public facts, so I thought I’d share a few of them. The entire point of @Tesla is to create innovative zero emissions products and accelerate sustainable energy/transport. But in order to do that well, we also focus on…
— Rohan Patel (@rohanspatel) March 6, 2024
