Workers have reportedly snuck with police in the middle of the night in the forest around Gigafactory Berlin to cut trees for Tesla’s expansion.
Tesla has been trying to expand its Gigafactory Berlin, but it has been facing some opposition.
Earlier this year, the local residents of Grünheide, the municipality where Tesla Gigafactory Berlin is located, have voted against the expansion of the plant, which requires more than 100 hectares of forest to be cleared.
Local officials have given their approval nonetheless.
Activists have occupied the forest to try to stop the expansion from happening. They call themselves ‘Stop Tesla’ and set up camp in the forest, a classic “treehugger” strategy.
However, the worst has been an actual attack on the grid that resulted in Tesla having to shut down the factory temporarily in March.
Since then, the main concerns have been ‘Stop Tesla’ and World War II bombs being found at the site and needing removal.
According to a local report from rbb24, Tesla has now managed to make some progress. They needed to cut some trees down for a construction road in preparation for the railway (translated from Gerrman):
Trees were felled around the Tesla protest camp in Grünheide early Tuesday morning. A three-kilometer-long construction road is to be built for this purpose. The police secured the felling.
About three thousand trees were taken down.
‘Stop Tesla’ says that they came in the middle of the night under police protection:
According to members of the “Stop Tesla” initiative, the work started at around 2 a.m. In the middle of the night, railway employees in safety vests and police officers appeared. A spokeswoman for the initiative said: “They started fencing off the assembly area, setting up floodlights and construction machinery and clearing the first trees.
The group believes that the start in the middle of the night was “provocation” as the police presence and the heavy machinery moving around the camp in the middle of the night was scary.
However, the railway company Deutsche Bahn denied the allegation – saying that they needed to move in the middle of the night to have to site ready for workers the next day.
Tesla is looking to expand the plant to support the production of future vehicles at Gigafactory Berlin, which currently only produces Model Y.
CEO Elon Musk recently said that Tesla could build its Tesla Semi electric truck for European markets at the plant.
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