Elon Musk’s Tesla felled half a million trees in order to build his giant Berlin electric car factory, satellite analysis shows.
Imaging from environmental intelligence firm Kayrros suggested around 329 hectares of local woodland were felled between March 2020 and May 2023 to expand the plant. This is equivalent to around 500,000 trees.
Work on the plant, which has capacity to produce 500,000 electric vehicles each year, began in 2020 and it officially opened in 2022. It is Tesla’s only so-called “gigafactory” in Europe.
The extent to which Tesla has altered the local environment, according to satellite images shared with the Guardian, is likely to reignite controversy surrounding the factory.
The project has already attracted protests from Left-wing environmental groups, which have accused Mr Musk of destroying local wildlife and polluting the drinking water.
Dozens of protesters have occupied the forests outside the perimeter of Tesla’s site in Brandenburg for months.
The site was the subject of an arson attack in March that forced a halt in production, in which an electricity pylon was set ablaze.
Mr Musk branded the attackers, who called themselves Volcano Group, the “dumbest eco-terrorists”. At the time the billionaire said: “Stopping production of electric vehicles, rather than fossil fuel vehicles, ist extrem dumm [German for extremely stupid].”
In July, Tesla received permission from the German government to further expand the Gruenheide plant, on the outskirts of Berlin, doubling its production capacity to around a million vehicles per year.