Tesla’s Gigafactory in Germany, the epicentre of all that the mega electric vehicle and clean energy company is doing in Western Europe, recently made headlines. Not because Elon Musk presented himself over a virtual meeting in unscrupulous German dialect. But that the supply of water at the Gigafactory had been turned off. Reason? Unpaid bills.
Really? Unpaid bills and billionaire chick-magnet, doer, achiever Elon Musk! Okay, so? That’s life anyway.
But hey, let’s not jump the gun here. No one’s broke.
In an age where it’s easy to presuppose that everything is always smooth and merry for mega corporations, it’s easy to ignore the fact that even the simplest or most basic of things can cause unwanted headlines for the biggies.
While it’s unclear as to what might have caused the mega electric car company to court headlines it would never have wanted to make in the first place, what’s known is that the water company- Wasserverband Strausberg-Erkner (WSE)- had repeatedly intimated Tesla’s Gigafactory in Berlin about the pending bills.
What’s more? Apparently, a 14-day notice period has already expired. For a company that’s revolutionising the world about how it treats the often underrated space called urban mobility by bringing out fantastic products, time and again, one’s not sure whether this is model behaviour.
On its part, the spokesperson of WSE, Sandra Ponesky, maintains that, “We can’t treat Tesla any differently than other customers.”
But let there be no misunderstanding about the fact that there’s some animosity now between the German water company and the American electric car giant. In fact, nothing could be further from it.
According to German news media, Ms. Ponesky says that the company will immediately open its taps the moment its unpaid bills are cleared. That being said, the outstanding amount, at this time, has not been made public- but obviously!
That being said, at the heart of Tesla’s Gigafactory in Germany is the hope to make the Germans ride the electric car revolution, which, in its truest form, can be gauged from exciting numbers in a United States, China, apart from other regions.
That being said, much is expected of this promising outcome, one which holds the might to reconfigure the German automobile industry. It’s not too hard to note as that of all the countries- Germany, home to some of the world’s most prominent names in the automobile sphere- hasn’t really played all that aggressively in the electric car space.
Meanwhile, DW.com reported the following in the matter of Tesla’s Gigafactory in Germany, that clearly explains the significance of Musk’s highly watched move in Deutschland:
The plant, based in Grünheide near the capital Berlin, is the company’s first Gigafactory in Europe. It is still being built and the manufacturer hopes to build 500,000 electric vehicles there per year.
Meanwhile, while nothing can be corroborated with facts as yet but local environmentalists and activists have already stated that the drinking water around the factory could be contaminated, and a nearby nature reserve might have got affected by now.
There’s more. How far might have the non-availability of water affected construction work at Tesla’s Gigafactory in Germany is also not clear at the moment.