Tesla recently achieved a small victory for Gigafactory Berlin after a court in Germany rejected an injunction filed by two environmental groups against the facility.

The nature conservation associations Green League and Nabu have failed with an urgent application against early partial approval for the construction of the Tesla factory in Grünheide near Berlin. The Frankfurt (Oder) administrative court rejected the application, as it announced on Tuesday. This pre-approval involves testing the functionality of systems in the paint shop, foundry and body shop. In addition, the installation of tanks for wastewater treatment and the refueling system has been approved in advance.



Giga Berlin’s work is function test only - no trial operation.



The Ministry of the Environment had declared that it was not a trial run. In the function tests, only small amounts of substances that are hazardous to water and significant in the event of an accident are used, it said. Therefore, the knowledge gained from the incident report submitted does not conflict with this decision.



The court saw it the same way. In its reasoning, the court stated that it was not evident that the temporary functional tests would pose a risk within the meaning of the Major Accidents Ordinance that could no longer be accepted in the general interest.



The scope of the approval by the State Office for the Environment (LfU) only includes the short-term commissioning of individual system parts for test purposes and specifically no regular operational activities. An actual risk situation due to significant and irreversible disadvantages for the environment, mainly in the form of harmful emissions, is not to be expected with regard to the trial operation of the plant components.



The environmental associations had also argued that the pre-approval for the tests should not have been granted. Such approvals may only be granted if approval for the entire project is likely. The environmental associations argue that such a so-called "positive approval prognosis" is currently not available. After all, the US automaker has only just applied for extensive changes to the factory - such as an additional battery factory. These still have to be assessed.



A court spokesman told the rbb: "This is a complicated legal and factual issue that cannot be resolved in the urgent procedure." For the time being, Tesla's interest in enforcing the tests will prevail.



The managing director of the Green League, Michael Ganschow criticized the decision of the administrative court. The chamber did not go into legal and factual questions and only weighed up interests. "The court has surrendered to the complex legal and factual matter," he told the DPA news agency.


Further legal remedies are possible against Tesla Giga Berlin.


The conservationists can appeal against the decision to the Higher Administrative Court of Berlin-Brandenburg (OVG). (Decision of June 29, 2021, VG 5 L 224/2). So far, neither Tesla, nor the environmental associations, nor the State Environment Agency have commented on the decision.



Tesla plans to manufacture around 500,000 cars in the compact Model 3 and Model Y series in Grünheide every year. The final environmental permit is missing for the construction. Tesla is therefore building with early approvals. The timing of the final decision is unclear.



Gigafactory Berlin’s Phase 1 building is all but completed, and sightings from drone flyovers of the facility indicate that Tesla is now starting some tests of its vehicle production equipment. One of these flyovers sighted some primed Model Y bodies, which suggested that Tesla may now be looking to test Gigafactory Berlin’s paint shop. This bodes well for the upcoming facility, especially as CEO Elon Musk has noted in the past that Tesla’s next-generation paint technology would debut at the Germany-based electric car factory.

#GigaBerlin
#Tesla

This is Armen Hareyan from Torque News. Please follow us at https://twitter.com/torquenewsauto on Twitter and https://www.torquenews.com/ for daily automotive news.

Reference
https://www.rbb24.de/studiofrankfurt/wirtschaft/tesla/2021/06/tesla-gruenheide-justiz-verwaltungsgericht-frankfurtoder-eilantrag.html
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-giga-berlin-objections-rejected-german-court/