25 miles east of Berlin City, in Germany, is the new Tesla factory, referred to as Giga Berlin-Brandenburg. Elon Musk officially opened the new Giga factory in a ceremony where he handed over 30 new Tesla Model Y’s made at the German plant to their owners.

The ecstatic CEO literally danced as he personally gave the cars delivered with custom plates ranging from “GIGA 001” to “GIGA 030.” The 30 SUV’s produced were the performance version which have a range of 320 miles and sell for €63,990. Further orders from the German Gigafactory would begin arriving in April.

It has been 2 years after Elon Musk did the ground breaking ceremony of the Giga Berlin-Brandenburg, but he warned that it would take a longer amount of time to ramp up the factory to the full 500,000 cars per year capacity. JP Morgan estimates the facility will produce 54,000 cars in 2022, ramping up to 280,000 in 2023 and 500,000 by 2025. The plant will also generate 50 GWh of battery power, surpassing all other similar plants in the country.

At the moment, it has hired 3,000 members of staff, which represents a quarter of its 12,000 eventual members at the vehicle assembly factory and adjacent battery plant in Grünheide.

Giga Berlin marks a great milestone for the EV company, it is their first factory in Europe. Even after it cost the automaker $5.5 billion, it will be a relief in their bottom line. Previously, Tesla had to import cars from other continents to its European customers. As Musk put it, the Giga Factory offers a “huge difference to capital efficiency to localize production within a continent.”  

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