Tesla Giga Berlin Construction Is Making Great Progress

Featured image: @Gf4Tesla / Twitter

Last week, Tesla received all the necessary permissions to start groundbreaking, so the construction crew got to work.

The German construction company Max Boegl is excavating a quarry for the planned factory of the Californian automaker Tesla. Last Wednesday, the State Environmental Protection Agency approved the start of foundation work on the site and, as the video from the drones show, has already achieved significant success. 

New videos and photos from drones show that there is a lot of heavy equipment on the site, and, in addition to the final preparation before the actual construction, some of the first concrete rectangles are being built. On June 5, additional units of cranes arrived, which are now actively engaged in the construction of Giga Berlin.

Source: @gigafactory_4 / Twitter

The foundation will be built by Max Boegl, cement is supplied from nearby Cemex, and steel from Sulzle, which has a branch in Berlin. Among other building materials, very large quantities of gravel are supplied to Tesla site. Even on weekends, after 5:30 pm, builders from Giga Berlin received delivery of a large batch of this material.

#GigaBerlin

06 June 2020

Ok guys, I promised not to tell you more about the gravel delivery by train, because it has already become routine, but today is Saturday at 17:30 !!!! 😳 And it will be unloaded.👍👷‍♂️

That's already worth a tweet.👍👷‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/NXdEnjRpfS

— @GF4Tesla..🏗️🏗️.build #GigaBerlin. (@Gf4Tesla) June 6, 2020

At the moment, the construction team is engaged in the construction of concrete footings. Under every building is a foundation, and under most foundations are cement footings.

The fact is, If you build on soft clay soil or if there's a soft zone under part of your foundation, there can be trouble. A footing that performs well in good soil may not do so well in weak bearing conditions. Given this fact and the fact that the Tesla plant will be very heavy, for the durability of the building, Giga Berlin was designed with cement footings. To this end, footings of the construction are very large, which can be seen in the photo.

Source: @gigafactory_4 / Twitter

2 days ago in the North of the construction site i the Californian manufacturer Tesla poured a first base plate for its planned factory. It is part of the so-called flat foundation, which does not reach the groundwater. In other sections of the factory, the foundation will likely have to be supported with underground piles that extend into the groundwater. 

Tesla Giga Berlin Starts To Flat Foundation In The Construction Site https://t.co/0JX9SiuJzn pic.twitter.com/8iKMzBTZG6

— Tesmanian.com (@Tesmanian_com) June 4, 2020

The progress we see indicates that Giga Berlin is being built ahead of schedule. At the moment, the automaker will redesign its Giga Berlin plans to meet all environmental requirements and ensure that its first European factorycan begin production of cars in about a year.

According to Jörg Steinbach, Brandenburg’s Minister of Economics, the new projects that will be presented by Tesla this or next week will solve some of these problems by reducing the amount of water needed and the waste water generated. He said that after the public considers the new projects for 8 weeks, open hearings will be held by early September.

"We expect a proposal that in sum will be more environmentally acceptable and thereby even more approvable," Steinbach said in an interview.

The new Tesla plant is expected to employ 12,000 people who will assembly 500,000 cars a year. The Minister said that he expects that the first cars from the assembly line Giga Berlin will roll out in the first half of 2021.

"I assume that within the first half of next year cars will be rolling off the conveyor belt there."

Brandenburg government officials say they are well aware that time is of the essence because Tesla has a technological advantage over German competitors that he wants to use quickly. The California automaker wants to finish the factory in less time than it took to build a new factory in China, and at the moment, everything is going according to its plan.