Following Tesla’s 3rd anniversary of the outlet of its plant in Grünheide, Germany, Tesla’s head of producing for the ability has replied to questions on Elon Musk’s contemporary political alignment with U.S. President Donald Trump, a possible business battle, suffering gross sales in Germany, and several other different subjects.
Andre Thierig, Senior Director of Tesla’s Gigafactory Berlin, spoke in an interview with German information outlet the Frankfurter Allgemeine this week, noting that the electrical automobile (EV) maker isn’t involved concerning the contemporary political local weather surrounding Musk and Trump. Slightly, Thierig echoes a purpose steadily mentioned by way of a few of Tesla’s best executives and architects—that the corporate is just hyper-focused on making nice cars.
“We as an organization and much more in order a manufacturing facility location have by no means located ourselves politically,” Thierig stated, as translated from German, when requested if the politicization of Musk used to be harming the logo or manufacturing facility. “We center of attention on what we do very best, particularly to construct automobiles, and excellent and really many. For us, that is about manufacturing on the website and no longer in politics. We will separate that smartly.”
The interviewer additionally requested concerning the arson assaults from environmental activists remaining March, whether or not or no longer Tesla is anticipating extra scenarios like that, and if the corporate has taken any measures to extend safety given the new uptick in vandalism and protests international.
Thierig notes that Giga Berlin has “additional progressed [its] community for sharing related knowledge so as so to in a position to reply extra briefly” to such assaults. He additionally says that staff on-site would take motion if essential.
Happy to peer Giga Berlin churning out the brand new Fashion Y.
The ramp is underway!
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— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) March 7, 2025
READ MORE ON TESLA GERMANY: Tesla Giga Berlin ramping to optimal manufacturing capability: plant supervisor
Relating to Tesla’s decline in February gross sales in Germany, Thierig issues to the shift to generating the brand new refreshed Fashion Y from the legacy model, which required the manufacturing facility to close down manufacturing for a couple of days. He additionally notes that he can’t without delay touch upon what number of pre-orders Tesla gained for the brand new Fashion Y, mentioning that his workforce and the manufacturing facility had been targeting manufacturing, as a substitute leaving gross sales as much as the gross sales department.
“We within the Gigafactory don’t promote, we produce,” Thierig explains. “The gross sales figures are the duty of our gross sales group. On the other hand, we all know our manufacturing figures and our manufacturing making plans, and we’re lately transferring manufacturing additional prime. Our supply places right here and at the airport website in Neuhardenberg are rather empty, so the automobiles are briefly getting into the marketplace.”
When requested if he used to be interested by incoming price lists from the Trump management, Thierig says that the manufacturing facility greater localization of providers with the new transfer to the brand new Fashion Y, including that 92 p.c of parts for the EV now come from someplace in Europe.
“This makes us much more resilient to disturbances in international business,” he provides. “As well as, we now have a prime degree of vertical integration on the website, which has already paid off lately. Neither the turbulence within the provide chains all through the corona pandemic nor the chip disaster or the battle in Ukraine have resulted in manufacturing disruptions in our nation.”
The interview additionally touches on Giga Berlin’s long-awaited enlargement plans, contemporary grievance from union IG Metall, what he expects from the incoming federal govt, and the way he believes that paperwork must be diminished within the nation, amongst many different subjects nonetheless.
Thierig has been with Tesla at Giga Berlin since August 2020, first operating as a paint supervisor, prior to being promoted to Production Director and therefore to Senior Director for the manufacturing facility basically. Previous to that, Thierig used to be a 19-year veteran with Ford’s German operations, basically operating in paint engineering.
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