- CEO Musk announced plan for 25,000 euro car during on-site visit: Source
- The factory currently produces the Model Y and is due to be expanded
- Employees were given a 4% salary increase
BERLIN, Nov 6 (Portal) – Tesla (TSLA.O) plans to build a 25,000 euro ($26,838) car at its factory near Berlin, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday of electric vehicles, which is aiming for mass introduction of its cars.
The source, who did not want to be named, did not say when production would begin.
Tesla declined to comment.
Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk visited the Grünheide factory on Friday and thanked employees for their hard work, according to a video shown on the social media platform X.
At the same meeting, he informed staff of plans to build the €25,000 vehicle there, the source said.
The German factory currently produces the Model Y, Europe’s best-selling electric vehicle.
Musk had long planned to build a cheaper electric car, but said in 2022 that he had not yet mastered the technology and put the plan on hold.
A general view shows the Tesla logo at the Gigafactory in Gruenheide near Berlin, Germany, August 30, 2022. Portal/Annegret Hilse/File Photo Acquire License Rights
Still, sources told Portal in September that the automaker was moving closer to an innovation that would allow it to print almost the entire underbody of the electric vehicle in one piece – a breakthrough that would speed up production and reduce costs.
Expanding into the mass market is critical to achieving Tesla’s goal of increasing vehicle deliveries to 20 million by 2030, a 10-fold increase from current capacity.
But a weak economy and high interest rates have hurt demand for electric vehicles, prompting Tesla and others to cut prices in recent months to boost sales.
The automaker plans to double the German plant’s capacity to 1 million vehicles a year, but has not provided an update on how many since March, when it said it produced 5,000 vehicles in a week, or about 250,000 a year Cars he produces there.
Local authorities said in October they had asked the carmaker to provide more information about how its expansion plans would comply with conservation laws and would then decide whether to approve it, without giving a time frame.
Tesla also told workers on Friday that all employees would receive a 4% pay increase starting in November, with production workers receiving an additional 2,500 euros a year starting in February 2024 – representing an 18% pay increase in 1 1/2 years.
The German union IG Metall said in 2022 that Tesla wages were around 20% below those offered in collective bargaining agreements at other automakers.
($1 = 0.9315 euros)
Reporting by Victoria Waldersee, editing by Rachel More, Bernadette Baum and Emelia Sithole-Matarise
Our standards: The Trust Principles.
Acquire license rights, opens new tab