Tesla’s German Operation Has Been Suspended

(CTN News) – On Tuesday, Tesla’s European gigafactory near Berlin was left without power following an “extremely dumb” suspected arson attack nearby.

In the attack southeast of the German capital, an electricity pylon close to the Tesla plant was set ablaze, but the fire did not spread to the plant, which is the U.S. electric vehicle maker’s first European manufacturing location.

Despite this, the company has announced that it has halted production for at least one week.
Tesla estimates that it will lose hundreds of millions of euros due to the outage, with 1,000 vehicles left unfinished on Tuesday alone.

Officials at the company declined to comment on whether this would affect plans to double capacity at the site, but condemned what they considered to be negative sentiments.

It has been reported that the fire has been extinguished by emergency services, and that power has been restored to most of the surrounding communities.

According to Joerg Steinbach, the economy minister of Brandenburg, the state in which Tesla has its plant, tens of thousands of people were affected by this suspected terrorist attack.

At a briefing outside the factory, he stated that this applies to hospitals, nursing homes, and other facilities that rely on oxygen supplies or similar, which are electrical in nature.

The Tesla site, which employs approximately 12,500 people, has been evacuated and the majority of employees have been sent home. The share price of Tesla was down 3% at 1522 GMT.

The local media published a letter allegedly written by an activist group called the Volcano Group claiming responsibility for the incident in a 2,500-word attack on Tesla and its billionaire CEO Musk.

The police confirmed that they were aware of the letter, signed “Agua De Pau”, which refers to a volcano in the Azores, and that they were checking its authenticity.

According to Musk, either these eco-terrorists are the dumbest on Earth or they are puppets of those who have no interest in preserving the environment.

He stated, “Stopping production of electric vehicles rather than fossil fuel vehicles is extremely stupid.”.

As a result of the attack, Tesla has suffered another setback in Europe, having faced union pressure in the Nordics for collective bargaining agreements and supply disruptions caused by attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.

Despite Europe’s largest economy facing recession and higher inflation and weaker foreign demand, Germany has championed new large-scale foreign investments.

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