The US electric car manufacturer Tesla wants to manufacture the batteries it needs for its planned factory in Grünheide near Berlin. “There will be a local cell production that will meet the needs of the Berlin factory,” said Tesla boss Elon Musk according to the company on Friday at an online conference on the figures for the second quarter.
Tesla plans to produce electric cars in Grünheide in Brandenburg from summer 2021 and will achieve its target of around 500,000 a year as quickly as possible. So far it was not clear whether there would also be a local battery cell production, we were only talking about modules.
The question of whether it is worth building your own cell production has been moving the auto and supplier industry for several years. The project is extremely expensive. Those who manufacture themselves reduce the dependency on the large Asian cell producers and the risk of delivery bottlenecks.
The politicians in particular are warning of this, having launched several initiatives to set up cell production in Germany and – across borders – in Europe. The Federal Ministry of Economics supports large projects for battery cell innovation. The corporations themselves usually see this much more relaxed and refer to long-term supply contracts.
