Tesla’s massive assembly plant outside Berlin, which opened two years ago in a community known for its forests and lakes, still rubs many residents the wrong way. They worry it threatens their water and air quality and has disrupted the tranquility that drew them to the area.
Steffen Schorcht, 63, who lives across the highway from the plant, said the light pollution alone meant he could no longer see the stars when he looked up at night.
Now Tesla wants to clear an additional 250 acres of forest near the factory for warehouses and a rail yard, as well as a day care center for workers and the community. Mr. Schorcht and many of his neighbors are determined to make sure that doesn’t happen.
“We’re saying, ‘enough is enough,'” Mr. Schorcht said. Their resistance campaign involves weekly hikes through the endangered forest and knocking on doors.
But three local teenagers see the situation differently. For them, the arrival of a front-line company with a strong focus on innovation through disruption has injected a dynamism into Grünheide, their sleepy town of 9,000, and given them a perspective on their future.
Asked if they would be interested in an internship or a job at Tesla, the three — Silas Heineken, 17; Moritz Tezky, 16; and Tariq Löber, 18 — all immediately responded, “Sure!”
The three high school classmates created a website with a built-in chatbot that tries to counter concerns about the plan. They’ve also put up posters across the city, emblazoned with two robotic-looking hands flashing a V symbol below the words ‘For It’ written in all caps.
“We realized how easy it is for people to be against something, to reject something new,” Silas said, sitting next to his friends in a garage that serves as a recreation room, band practice space and campaign headquarters. “It was this general opposition that really bothered us.”
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
The debate in Grünheide will culminate on Tuesday when officials announce the results of a citywide referendum on the expansion. The vote is not binding, but the mayor said city officials had said it would play an important role in their decision.
The dispute points to a larger issue playing out across Germany, which is facing an aging, shrinking population, especially in parts of the former East Germany. In the state of Brandenburg, where Grünheide is located, officials predict that almost a third of residents will be of retirement age, 65 or older, by 2030.
To thrive, analysts say such areas must attract more young people or persuade those who grew up there to return after college.
“They want to know: How can I grow here? Can I continue my education? There is work;” said Eva Eichenauer, a researcher at the Berlin Institute for Population and Development.
German companies are desperate to hire young people. More than a third of all businesses offering apprenticeships — on-the-job training alongside classroom work — did not receive a single application in 2023, according to the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Such positions serve as the main path to employment in the country’s automotive and other industrial sectors.
Tesla offers apprenticeships and a classroom building is part of the expansion. In a campaign that includes a rare level of company outreach to the community — weekly information sessions at its factory showroom and several information fairs around town — Tesla promises that its expansion would create “more good-paying jobs for you and your children .” Tesla said the warehouses and rail yard would ease supply chain problems and reduce truck traffic in the area.
When city officials decided to put Tesla’s plan to a vote, residents as young as 16 were allowed to vote. The opportunity was not lost on the three teenagers.
“The expansion of the Gigafactory was a reason to say, ‘Why don’t we show — for the first time, maybe in history — that we’re for something,'” Silas said.
The three friends insisted they don’t consider themselves fans of Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, but all three said they admired Tesla’s mission to “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”
They became close during the Covid lockdowns, often gathering for their online classes at Silas’ house. His father, Peer Heineken, provided technical support when the boys decided to start their campaign.
Using ChatGPT, they created a website that invited people to “type in what you’re against” — with the goal of providing counterarguments to those opposed to Tesla’s plans. But they learned how unreliable the technology can be and ended up writing letters of apology to people who received offensive responses.
Tesla’s arrival not only gave them job prospects if they stayed in the area, but also improved their overall quality of life, they said. They pointed to additional bus routes and more frequent trains to Berlin, a more vibrant retail and restaurant scene, and a sense that their city had become more interesting.
“I don’t feel like I’m living in a dead suburb anymore,” Moritz said.
The company’s decision to build in Grünheide was based on several factors, including its proximity to Berlin and the location’s designation for industry. But the location, on the edge of a coal mining area that had lost jobs, also meant local authorities were keen to welcome it.
“Tesla is an incredibly attractive employer, which, of course, opens up prospects for young people in education beyond coal, in areas that are interesting and relevant,” Ms Eichenauer said.
In the first half of 2023, while the German economy shrank by 0.3 percent from a year earlier, Brandenburg recorded growth of 6 percent — the strongest of Germany’s 16 states.
“This is about Tesla,” said Dietmar Woidke, the governor of Brandenburg. He said the auto industry had not only attracted a network of suppliers and subcontractors, but had also helped the local economy in ways big and small.
The company, which employs 11,000 people at the plant and still has hundreds of vacancies, is also more flexible in who it hires, an aspect Mr Woidke sees as an advantage for his region.
“Tesla hires and trains people regardless of their qualifications, whether they are now engineers, skilled workers or trained to be bakers or have no professional training at all,” Mr Woidke said.
But Mr. Schorcht and other Tesla critics argue that the factory is largely focused on simple assembly, not skills development, offering jobs that require more basic training and lack the guarantees of union contracts widely offered in the German auto sector. automotive industry.
“Kids who graduate from Grünheide usually have high school diplomas that will take them to university,” Mr. Schorcht said. “They’re not going to stay here and do low-skilled work at Tesla.”
Right now, the three teenagers are more focused on finishing high school than getting a job or going to college. But when they think about their future, they say Tesla’s presence in the place where they grew up makes it possible for them to imagine returning one day after earning a college degree.
“We’re all looking for higher education, which is hard to come by outside of a big city,” Tariq said. “But if I was going to stay here, Tesla would be a big reason.”
