Get Busy Logging, German Court Tells Tesla

Tesla won its day in German court Thursday, with the Berlin-Brandenburg judiciary brushing aside an injunction that halted the clearing of 92 hectares (227 acres) of forest. The electric automaker needed those woods gone in order to build a new assembly plant serving European customers.

Unfortunately for Tesla, opposition came in the form of environmentalists who, for some reason, didn’t like the idea of paving paradise to build an electric car factory. While the logging can now continue, Tesla still doesn’t have the go-ahead to built the massive Gigafactory itself.

As reported by The Guardian, logging at the Brandenburg site came to a halt this past weekend after eco types protested, causing the court to issue an injunction, despite earlier allowing the clearing to commence.

It’s not just the forest haircut the environmentalists take issue with; the future factory’s hefty water consumption has also come under fire. For its part, Tesla has promised it will plant three times the number of trees it clears off the property.

With one hurdle cleared, Tesla next needs to secure approval for the facility’s construction. The plan is for the factory to come online in the middle of 2021, starting off with an annual capacity of 150,000 vehicles. It expects that annual tally to reach 500,000 vehicles before long.

The European Union’s stringent emissions standards makes the region a ripe market for Tesla to pluck, so long as it can manage enough output. European customers purchased over 111,000 Tesla vehicles in 2019, with the brand’s still-modest market share rising exponentially from 0.19 percent to 0.71 percent. Germany alone accounted for nearly one-tenth of that volume.

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