Tesla to restart Gigafactory Berlin production next week

Tesla confirmed that it plans to restart production at Gigafactory Berlin next week after shutting it down due to supply issues.

Several manufacturing companies in Europe have seen their operations affected by issues with cargo in the Gulf of Aden and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait due to the civil war in Yemen.

Tesla is amongst those affected and announced a shutdown of its factory outside of Berlin as it waits for supplies to get through the blockade.

The automaker had recently achieved record production at Gigafactory Berlin – producing as many as 6,000 Model Ys in a week.

Today, André Thierig, Tesla’s plant manager, told German media that the automaker is getting ready to restart production on February 12th (via Oldenburger Onlinezeitung – translated from German):

“The supply chains are intact again,” he said. According to Thierig, Tesla has “the necessary security that all necessary production parts are available in sufficient quantities to be able to fully restart.”

While one of Tesla’s least-producing factories at this time, it is becoming critical to its operations in Europe and Asia.

It enables Tesla to keep more production from Gigafactory Shanghai, its most productive factory, in Asia while also reducing transit time for Model Y vehicles in Europe.

Electrek’s Take

It looks like it’s about 2 weeks without production, which should have a very small impact on Tesla’s overall production in Q1 as long it is able to ramp back up quickly.

Hopefully, Tesla was able to use some of the downtime for upgrades at the factory – though there’s no word from the company about that.