Newsdesk Team
City of London Newsroom
The colourful ceo of electric vehicle firm Tesla, Elon Musk, has announced that they have chosen Berlin as the site for their first European factory as part of the carmaker's European expansion plans
adding that they will also be building an engineering and design centre in the German capital, making the announcement at a business awards ceremony in Germany yesterday [Tuesday, 12 Novermber 2019]
"Everyone knows that German engineering is outstanding and that's part of the reason we are locating our Gigafactory Europe in Germany"
Mr Musk said the facility would be located near the new Berlin airport and later turning to twitter to give further details on the factory´s planned production.
The focus on Europe comes amid rising appetite for electric cars in Europe with the biggest electric car production plants will be in Germany, France, Spain and Italy predicted by industry analysts over the coming years with some 16 large-scale lithium-ion battery cell plants are confirmed or due
to begin operations in Europe by 2023.
The moves come as the firm, which has also invested heavily in a Chinese factory, faces intensifying competition in the electric vehicle industry with plans to move ahead with a €1.86bn [$2bn] factory in Shanghai. The firm is planning to increase production in China as the world's biggest car market, where sales have been hurt by tariffs triggered by the US-China trade war.
