Tesla hopes to expand Giga Berlin to 1 million units per year

Many of Tesla’s newer factories are being upgraded on a regular basis, especially those that are still ramping up production. A recent expansion update from Tesla’s Brandenburg, Germany factory shows that the automaker is looking to boost output capacity, even as the company is honing in on its initial production goals.

Above: A Tesla Model Y at a Supercharger (Image: Casey Murphy / EVANNEX).

Tesla submitted an environmental application with Germany to produce as many as one million units per year at its Grünheide plant, as detailed in a recent report from RBB (via electrek). While the factory is already approved to build 500,000 vehicles per year, the new application would let Tesla eventually ramp up production to a one-million-unit annual production.

“Tesla has applied for an increase in production capacity from the current 500,000 vehicles per year to one million vehicles per year in the future,” writes RBB, as translated from German and regarding a spokesperson from the State Office of the Environment (LfU). “The production facilities required for this are to be set up on the existing factory premises.”

At the time of writing, Tesla has just announced the achievement of its ramp-up target of 5,000 cars per week. The automaker finished 2022 reaching 3,000 Model Y units per week. Just last month, Tesla surpassed 4,000 vehicles per week.

The 5,000-per-week production goal equates roughly to 260,000 vehicles a year, so there’s still some room for growth before Tesla outpaces its current agreement with the German government.

Despite this, the expansion application would allow Tesla to double its production output. Currently, none of Tesla's vehicles have produced a million vehicles in a year, but gaining access to doing so could open this door for the automaker's German plant in the next several years. The automaker also eventually plans to produce one million vehicles at each of its Gigafactory locations.

Despite additional concerns early on of Tesla’s water use, the company has measures in place to help conserve water, and the filing says the expansion will include these initiatives.

More specifically, Tesla plans to reuse wastewater generated by the production process, after many community members in the past have expressed concerns about water use. The automaker says it will employ the same tactics with the expansion to reduce water.

In the filing, Tesla said that it has "optimized planning and production processes in such a way that the amounts of fresh water previously used as a basis and contractually agreed are also sufficient for this expansion."

It’s also noteworthy that Tesla has been producing vehicles at Giga Berlin for about a year now, with some of the company’s first production units rolling off the line last spring.

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