Tesla Berlin

Tesla announced today that it will invest almost $250 million more in battery cell production at its Grünheide factory outside Berlin, more than doubling planned capacity to 18 gigawatt hours per year and creating over 1,500 battery-related jobs.

The investment comes just two months after the automaker successfully scared workers away from IG Metall in a contentious works council election — a vote where CEO Elon Musk explicitly threatened to halt expansion if the union gained control.

Tesla filed a criminal complaint and called police to its Gigafactory Berlin after accusing an IG Metall union representative of secretly recording a closed works council meeting on Tuesday. Police seized the representative’s laptop. The incident comes just three weeks before roughly 11,000 employees vote in a works council election that could reshape the future of the plant.

The confrontation marks the latest, and most dramatic, escalation in the increasingly bitter fight between Tesla and Germany’s most powerful industrial union at the automaker’s only European factory.