Tesla CEO Elon Musk is firing all cylinders. Musk on Wednesday announced that Tesla will be coming up with a new producing facility in the German capital Berlin. This will be the electric carmaker's second production facility outside the United States and the first in Europe. Tesla already has two production facilities in the United States.
Making the announcement via a tweet, Musk said that the new facility will produce vehicles, batteries and powertrains, starting with the production of Model Y. The Berlin facility will be called Gigafactory 4. The announcement comes less than a month after the company started the trail production of its Made-in-China Model 3 from it Shanghai plant named Gigafactory 3.
The Berlin facility will be called Gigafactory four and will focus more on the production of Model Y. However, it will also make Model 3, the company's highest selling model.
Although the company set a specific date for the Berlin operations to start, it has already poster jobs for construction, operations, manufacturing workers and engineering for the Berlin factory. Tesla's Shanghai plant, its first Gigafactory outside the United States, broke ground only in January and started production in a record time in November.
Berlin an obvious choice
Tesla has been trying to stand back on its feet after several quarters of poor show both on revenues and production. The electric carmaker finally registered profit in the last quarter, which it considers the beginning of a new journey. The Berlin plant will take Tesla to the land of some of the world's biggest carmakers namely Volkswagen, Daimler Chrysler and BMW.
Musk said: "Everyone knows that German engineering is outstanding, for sure. That's part of the reason why we are locating our Gigafactory Europe in Germany." He also said that the company will also be creating an engineering and design center in Berlin, because "Berlin has some of the best art in the world."
That said, Musk also put part of the blame on the U.K. for its decision to come up with a factory in Berlin. He said that the uncertainty of U.K.'s decision to withdraw from Brexit made it too risky for his company to come up with a facility in London.
A day earlier, on Tuesday Musk shared the stage with his German rival Volkswagen's CEO Herbert Diess at an awards ceremony in Berlin. Diess praised Musk and Tesla during the event for showing the world that electric cars were capable of competing with vehicles powered by fossil fuels.
