Tesla waives billions in funding from the state

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Tesla new building in Grünheide near Berlin:

The US group waives German subsidies

Photo: Patrick Pleul / dpa

The US carmaker Tesla is foregoing possible government funding in the billions for the planned battery production in Grünheide near Berlin.

The Federal Ministry of Economics and Tesla announced this on Friday at the request of the German Press Agency.

Tesla has informed the Federal Ministry of Economics and the Brandenburg Ministry of Economics that it does not want to pursue participation in the second major European project for battery cell production (EuBatIn), the car manufacturer said. That is why the company withdrew the application for state funding for an IPCEI (transnational project of common European interest) for the battery factory in Grünheide. "However, Tesla is sticking to its plans for the battery and recycling factory in the Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg."

According to the Federal Ministry of Economics, this shows "that Germany is an attractive investment location and that foreign investors are investing in Germany and Brandenburg".

And: "The government funds not used by Tesla are now available for other projects."

The aid for the project in Grünheide had been approved by the EU Commission.

The Brandenburg Ministry of Economic Affairs said that Tesla's decision to build a state-of-the-art battery cell factory in Brandenburg would lead to additional value creation with jobs and structural developments and would be a gain for the state.

Background: Tesla is building a new vehicle production plant in Grünheide, which will also be connected to a battery production facility.

Tesla boss Elon Musk wants production of his first car factory in Europe to start this year.

Work on the factory is already well advanced, although the environmental approval for the project has still not been granted by the State of Brandenburg.

Another online discussion by critics of the project ended on Monday.

Investment in the Shanghai plant

However, the Americans who want to create more than 10,000 jobs in Brandenburg are getting a tailwind from politics. The state of Brandenburg had already announced that it wanted to fund the battery factory that Tesla wants to build in Grünheide with 120 million euros. The group had the prospect of further funding from the European battery cell program. The "Tagesspiegel" had rumored a funding amount of 1.1 billion euros in this context. Tesla now apparently wants to forego this money.

At the same time, the US electric car maker plans to invest up to 1.2 billion yuan (187.9 million US dollars) in expanding the production capacity of its plant in Shanghai.

This is reported by the state newspaper "Beijing Daily".

In the future, 4,000 more people are to be employed in the Tesla factory, so that the number of employees will rise to 19,000.

The newspaper claims to have found the information on a Shanghai government platform for corporate environmental disclosure.

Tesla has not yet responded to a Reuters request for comment.

cr / dpa-afx, Reuters