\n<\/p>\n
W<\/span>hen Elon Musk advised Germans to vote for the far-right Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland (AfD) in elections last year, Manu Hoyer \u2013 who lives in the small town where the billionaire had built Tesla\u2019s European production hub \u2013 wrote to the state premier to complain.<\/p>\n \u201cHow can you do business with someone who supports rightwing extremism?\u201d she asked Dietmar Woidke, the Social Democrat leader of the eastern state of Brandenburg, who had backed the setting up of the Tesla Giga factory in Gr\u00fcnheide.<\/p>\n Hoyer said that in Woidke\u2019s \u201cdisappointing, but predictable\u201d answer, he denied the charge. \u201cHe said he didn\u2019t know him personally. As if that excused him.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Manu Hoyer has tried to question local politicians about Elon Musk\u2019s support of the far-right Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland party.<\/span> Photograph: Imago\/Alamy<\/p>\n She had co-founded a Citizens\u2019 Initiative to oppose Musk\u2019s plans, announced in 2019, to build in the sparsely populated municipality in the sandy plains south-east of Berlin. The initiative\u2019s fears at the time were largely over the potential environmental impact of the plant on the region\u2019s pine forests and groundwater.<\/p>\n However, more recently it is Musk\u2019s politics that have caused particular alarm. Not only has he offered his high-profile support to far-right European parties, but at a rally after Donald Trump\u2019s inauguration he appeared to twice make the Nazi salute.<\/p>\n <\/span>Elon Musk inspects cars as production started at the Tesla factory in Gr\u00fcnheide.<\/span> Photograph: Patrick Pleul\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n In the meantime Tesla sales have slumped, especially in Europe \u2013 where new vehicle sales fell for five consecutive months despite an overall growth in the electric car market.<\/p>\n Heiko Baschin, another member of the citizen\u2019s initiative, said he had been watching with a certain amount of schadenfreude. \u201cWe put our hopes in this,\u201d the carpenter said, discussing the change in the company\u2019s fortunes on a recent forest walk in the shadows of the sprawling Gr\u00fcnheide factory.<\/p>\n As sales have declined, the factory has suffered. Shifts manufacturing the Y-Model have been reduced from three to two a day. The trade union IG Metall \u2013 which recruited several hundred workers despite opposition from Tesla \u2013 has urged the company to consider putting workers on \u201ckurzzeit\u201d, the short-time work allowance much of the embattled car industry has introduced to enable it to retain workers during a downturn.<\/p>\n The regional press has reported how unsold Teslas have been moved on transporters en masse to a former East German airport 60km (37 miles) away, where, hidden behind trees and parked alongside solar panels, they bake in the sun.<\/p>\n Musk\u2019s apparent Nazi salute was in general met with shock and horror in Germany but did not play large in Gr\u00fcnheide, until campaign groups projected an image of it on to the facade of the Tesla factory, provocatively placing the Nazi-associated word \u201cheil\u201d in front of the Tesla logo.<\/p>\n The shock caused by the incident was palpable on the factory floor, workers told the tabloid Berliner Kurier. \u201cAt Tesla Germany they had pretended they had nothing to do with (Musk) and were keeping quiet,\u201d it wrote. Now they could no longer ignore their association.<\/p>\n Workers are hard to reach, most having been forced to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). But on Kununu, a job portal where employees can anonymously vent their feelings about their workplace, one Tesla worker has written: \u201cThe brand once stood for cosmopolitanism, progress, and tolerance, but now it stands for the exact opposite. That bothers almost everyone here, and you can feel it\u201d.<\/p>\n Almut, a resident of Gr\u00fcnheide, said local politicians were keen to cite the benefits Tesla had brought to the region, but \u201cneglect to mention at the same time the problematic reality that we are subsidising the richest man in the world, who in no way takes any social responsibility for what happens here\u201d.<\/p>\n She said local people joke among themselves about what might take the place of the factory, should Tesla fail. \u201cA munitions factory? A prison? In some ways these would seem like favourable alternatives,\u201d she said. The only positive contribution as she saw it that Tesla had contributed to Gr\u00fcnheide was a robotic lawn mower it had donated to the local football club.<\/p>\n <\/span>Gr\u00fcnheide\u2019s politicians have been keen to tout the benefits of the factory, but some who live nearby are concerned about the environmental effects it has on light pollution and water use.<\/span> Photograph: Michele Tantussi\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Two weeks before the salute, Musk had followed his endorsement of the AfD in the German federal elections with an hour-long conversation with the anti-immigrant party\u2019s co-leader, Alice Weidel. The two discussed topics including Hitler, solar power and German bureaucracy, which Musk said had required Tesla to submit forms running to 25,000 pages in order to build the Gr\u00fcnheide factory. Unmentioned was the fact that the AfD had vehemently opposed the Tesla factory, citing its fears over US-driven turbo capitalism and a watering down of workers\u2019 rights. \u201cPeople really need to get behind the AfD,\u201d Musk said.<\/p>\n For Gr\u00fcnheide\u2019s residents who oppose Musk, their preoccupation remains the impact of the factory on their rural community, which is characterised by its woodlands, lakes and rivers.<\/p>\n Existing cycle paths have been diverted, and new roads have required the felling of large swathes of pine forest, threatening the already perilous supplies of drinking water in a region declared a drought zone, the driest anywhere in Germany.<\/p>\n <\/span>The Tesla Gigafactory with forests in the background.<\/span> Photograph: Sean Gallup\/Getty Images<\/p>\n The 300-hectare (740 acre) large factory complex itself is due to be expanded in the near future by a further 100 hectares, under plans signed off by Gr\u00fcnheide\u2019s mayor despite a local referendum in which 62% expressed their opposition.<\/p>\n Supporters point to the 11,000 jobs the factory has created, and the boost it has given to the local economy in a region of the former communist east and which was one of the lowest-performing in the country. Some young people enthuse that the trains to Berlin now run more regularly, the supermarkets are better stocked, and that their home town is now on the map as a beacon of \u201cgreen capitalism\u201d alongside Shanghai, Nevada and Austin, locations of the other Tesla factories. They hanker for an invitation to the \u201crave cave\u201d techno dance space Musk has allegedly constructed within the factory complex.<\/p>\n The recruitment page of the factory\u2019s website \u2013 which emphasises that diversity is at the core of its business model \u2013 shows a lengthy list of positions needing to be filled, from shift managers to maintenance technicians.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, the mood has cooled even among those who used to enthusiastically speak out in favour of Tesla, such as a group of local teenage schoolboys who habitually flew drones over the site when the factory was under construction and proudly posted the footage from them <\/strong>on YouTube \u2013 until Musk asked them to stop. \u201cNobody is willing to speak publicly about Tesla\/Elon any more \u2026 even anonymously,\u201d one told the Guardian via text message, without elaborating.<\/p>\n There was no response to a request for an interview with the company or for access to the factory.<\/p>\n Arne Christiani, the mayor of Gr\u00fcnheide and an unwavering Musk enthusiast, said he was confident Tesla would stay in Gr\u00fcnheide and would thrive. He was unmoved, he said, by what Musk said or did. \u201cYou have to distinguish between what happens in the US and here in Gr\u00fcnheide,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Hoyer, who lives 9km from the factory, said she had not relinquished her dream of one day being able to see a starry sky from her garden again. \u201cSince the factory was built the light pollution from the round-the-clock operation has put paid to that,\u201d she said, showing before and after pictures on her mobile phone.<\/p>\n This article was amended on 14 July 2025. Gr\u00fcnheide is south-east, not south-west, of Berlin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Elon Musk advised Germans to vote for the far-right Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland (AfD) in elections last year, Manu Hoyer \u2013 who lives in the small town where the billionaire had built Tesla\u2019s European production hub \u2013 wrote to the state premier to complain. \u201cHow can you do business with someone who supports rightwing extremism?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[3946,3950,1736,2794,1870,3948,92,3949,3947,1381],"class_list":{"0":"post-10816","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-casts","9":"tag-corner","10":"tag-factory","11":"tag-germany","12":"tag-giant","13":"tag-lives","14":"tag-musks","15":"tag-quiet","16":"tag-shadow","17":"tag-tesla"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}