Photo: Michele Tantussi/Reuters

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is now in Germany on a technical visit. He visited Giga Berlin today and said he hoped production there could start by the end of 2021.

Elon Musk visited the construction site of the Tesla plant near Berlin on Monday. He flew in on the evening of May 17 from London, where he spent several days. The visit to Germany is mainly technical in character and does not provide for political meetings with the Brandenburg government, said the Minister for Economic Affairs, Labor and Energy Jörg Steinbach in a tweet posted on May 16.

For several months Tesla has been awaiting the receipt of the final environmental building permit. In parallel with awaiting this approval, the company has almost completely finished the construction of the facility with preliminary permits. However, more recently, Tesla filed a revised construction proposal that now includes a battery factory. This in turn will delay the start of production as the new application will have to go through a new approval process. Steinbach expects this process to take about three months, which means that car production could begin as early as early autumn.

During Musk's visit to the Giga Berlin construction site, he was greeted by journalists and fans. Due to current delays, he was asked when the first car is planned to be built there. Musk replied that he hopes that this will happen before the end of 2021. "It's hard to predict with precision cause you can only make the cars when all of the pieces are here," he said. "It looks like we're able to start production end of this year," Musk added.

Elon in Berlin <3
Q: why are you here?
E(lon): Giga Berlin had a nice name to it
Q: Any Problems with the german [bureaucracy]
E: We´re making pretty good progress[...] so far so good
Q: When will we get the first car out[...]
A: hopefully end of this year pic.twitter.com/SjPtPJVA4j

— Tesla_Adri (@tesla_adri) May 17, 2021

The approval process for projects in Germany needs reform. Without a doubt, all projects must undergo an environmental assessment, but those aimed at improving the climate situation around the world should definitely receive more assistance than those that harm the environment. This issue was raised by Tesla in Germany, and given the great environmental importance, it should be incumbent on politicians to take immediate action.

H/T @4ndr1o/Twitter

Photo selection @alexcatrey/Twitter

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