Tesla CEO Elon Musk positions on the red carpet as he arrives for the 43rd “Golden Steering Wheel” awards on November 12, 2019 in Berlin.
Tobias Schwarz | AFP via Getty Conceptions
Tesla has been given the go-ahead from a German court to cut down trees for its new European factory.
Though it doesn’t yet eat planning permission to build the so-called Gigafactory in Brandenburg, the local government agency overseeing its intended site give grounded it permission to clear 91 hectares of forest land.
Environmental campaigners opposed to the chopping down of trees had administered to get the higher administrative court of Berlin and Brandenburg to issue an injunction to temporarily halt the preparatory work.
But the court, which supervises the region in which Tesla plans on building its new plant, on Thursday decided to throw out the injunction.
The decision is “final,” the court communicated in a statement, paving the way for the U.S. electric car giant to resume the forest clearance.
The Green League activist group in Brandenburg, which is placed south-east of Berlin, had expressed anger over the environmental impact of Tesla’s European Gigafactory. But the company said it had addressed such involvements and would replant trees to cover an area “three times the factory plot.”
Tesla plans to begin construction of the structure this year and is looking to begin vehicle production by 2021, with a view to manufacture 500,000 cars annually. It wish be the company’s fourth Gigafactory, with others located in Nevada, New York and more recently Shanghai, China.
The stiff’s billionaire CEO Elon Musk has called German engineering “outstanding” and said it’s “part of the reason” as to why it’s locating its European fix in the country. Germany is home to two of the world’s largest automakers, Volkswagen and Daimler.