When Arne Christiani was re-elected mayor of the Brandenburg municipality of Grünheide in September last year, the place was not exactly a hotspot for employment. At that time there were almost 3,000 jobs subject to social security contributions in the entire district, most of them in trade, in the catering and service sectors. But now Christiani is mayor of a small community in the Löcknitz valley that is preparing to become the new Wolfsburg in the state.
As is well known, Tesla plans to have 500,000 cars roll off the production lines annually in the Gigafactory that is being built there from next summer. 12,000 people will work there. And now the “largest battery factory in the world” is to be set up in the cleared pine forest. Thousands more jobs can be expected. Grünheide becomes the Autostadt.
Mayor Christiani doesn't want to know anything about it. To him, Autostadt sounds like a high-rise estate, and he's not up for it. “I'll be in office until 2024,” says the 61-year-old. And as long as the community character will be preserved here. Even with a battery factory next to the car factory. Because Christiani has long since priced them in. Battery production was part of the plans from the start, he says. He would have been disappointed if things had turned out differently. In any case, there is enough space on the area. Because of the total of 300 hectares of Tesla land, the now almost finished car factory takes up just 90 hectares.
Batteries for several million Tesla vehicles
In fact, Tesla's battery strategy for Grünheide has so far been confused. In the first building application that the company submitted to the Brandenburg State Environment Agency at the beginning of January, the so-called packaging, the assembly of rechargeable cells into batteries, was listed as an integral part of the factory, but this part disappeared in the summer. In another application that Tesla made in July, the "Battery Pack" had been deleted. Packed batteries should be delivered, according to the statement, which only lasted a few days. A short time later, Tesla boss Elon Musk announced a “local cell production” that “meets the needs of the Berlin factory”. Now it should be the largest in the world. It's about a new generation of lithium-ion batteries - more powerful, more environmentally friendly and only half as expensive. So Tesla was always straightforward. Course corrections instead of confusion. Just very fast, unusually fast.
At the beginning of the week, the Tesla CEO announced the imminent expansion of the Grünheider Gigafactory in a tried and tested surprise manner and accurately during the European Battery Conference hosted by the Federal Ministry of Economics (there are millions in funding). Initially, the production of batteries with a total capacity of around one hundred gigawatt hours is planned. Later, production should grow to 250 gigawatt hours. So it's really about a lot. After all, enough batteries should be produced in Grünheide in the start-up phase alone to equip around 1.3 million Tesla Model 3s ready to drive.
Apart from the announcement, however, little is known. As the Brandenburg Ministry of the Environment found out on request on Friday, no building application has yet been submitted, and not even preliminary discussions have taken place. But that's nothing that speaks against the expansion in Grünheide. Ideally, according to the State Environment Ministry, an approval process could be completed within seven months. On the other hand, Elon Musk has just admitted in an interview with an American television station that the machines and systems for cell production still have to be developed. Nevertheless, production could start in 2022. For Grünheide, Tesla has now advertised positions for engineers and maintenance personnel in cell production, among others.
The recruitment for the start of car production is currently still in progress. 7,000 to 8,000 workers will have to be hired by next summer at the latest. Most of the positions are still vacant. One year later, the Tesla workforce should have grown to 12,000 and battery production should be set up at the same time.
For the responsible employment agencies, which see themselves as the first service provider on the job market, recruiting is already considered a daunting task. In the Brandenburg Ministry of Economics, they would rather not even comment on what the additional production means for the regional labor market. People in Potsdam are excited to see the company's detailed plans. "Without these, estimates of labor requirements are dubious."
The battery market has been carefully analyzed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research in Karlsruhe. There it is assumed that around 40 workers are required for each gigawatt hour of battery power in battery cell production. This means that the Brandenburg battery factory would initially require 4,000 and later 10,000 workers. In the meantime, the Federal Minister of Economics also spoke of 10,000 new jobs.
However, the acquisition of labor is not a sure-fire success. In Berlin and Brandenburg, almost 7,000 jobs have been cut in the last twelve months in the larger industrial companies alone and further layoffs are threatened. On the other hand, the shortage of skilled workers in the region will continue after Corona. For skilled workers in technical professions, for example, the chambers of industry and commerce in both countries are forecasting a shortage of 31,000 workers in the next year, according to which there will be a shortage of 1,400 workers in helper professions. Advantage for Tesla: The company does not attach importance to qualifications for a large number of jobs and promises decent wages. The gross starting salary for unskilled workers should be 2700 euros.
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