Report: Tesla Will Shut Down Giga Berlin For Two Weeks In July

The plant needs upgrades to accelerate production and add a third shift in the near future.

By: Mark Kane

Jul 5, 2022 at 8:51am ET

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The Tesla Giga Berlin-Brandenburg plant in Grünheide near Berlin will have to halt production in July, just a few months after the official launch.

According to media reports, based on unofficial sources, Tesla has to stop the production of the Tesla Model Y in Germany to apply changes to refine production processes and cut the time at particular manufacturing stations.

The articles say that the pause will take two weeks (10 work days), between July 11 and July 22.

Automotive News reports after TeslaMag and Bild newspaper:

"The German site reported that Tesla aims to roughly double its production rate from August, citing an unidentified source."

"...part of the overhaul at the plant would concentrate on making sure car bodies only spend 30 seconds at each manufacturing station, instead of currently spending up to three minutes at each stage."

Let's note that the Tesla Giga Berlin-Brandenburg plant achieved a milestone of 1,000 Model Y cars produced per week in June, which represents about 50,000 units per year. However, that's about one-tenth of what it should be (10,000 per week and 500,000 per year) to utilize the full capacity of such a large plant.

Refinement of the production process is crucial to stop losing money on the plants running at limited capacity.

At a later point this year, it's expected that Tesla will also add a third production shift at the site. To encourage employees, the company is also increasing wages.

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Simultaneously, Tesla is upgrading its Chinese plant this month. The Model Y assembly line in Shanghai will be halted for the first two weeks of July, followed by the Model 3 line halted for 20 days.

Once the work is completed, Tesla is expected to significantly increase its production rate later this quarter, towards new all-time record levels. During the second quarter, the company delivered more than 250,000 electric cars (globally) and announced that June was the highest vehicle production month in Tesla’s history.