Whoever pays, creates

"Tesla's "Gigafactory" in Brandenburg was completed in record time. A lot can be learned from this - for better or for worse.

The opening of the Tesla factory in Grünheide this Tuesday afternoon will be a publicity event and a state act. Chancellor Scholz and also Federal Minister of Economics Habeck will be there when Elon Musk hands over the first Tesla electric cars made in Germany to customers. As always, he will probably talk about making the world a better place, as if electric cars were only good and didn't require any raw materials and it wasn't really about making money. People will clap when the word "Gigafactory" is mentioned. It sounds as if Germany has arrived in the future.

In fact, this billion-euro investment, which was implemented at lightning speed, has set things in motion: for the first time since reunification of East and West Germany, there are industrial jobs in Brandenburg on a larger scale. 

The German car managers have the fiercest competitor right in front of their door faster than expected, which should shift the balance of power, but also accelerate the fight for the best technologies.

As far as speed is concerned, the Tesla factory is at first glance a role model for Germany: building a large car factory in almost exactly two years is quite an achievement.

That compensates for the disgrace of the permanent construction sites in Germany, whether at the major airport BER or the train station Stuttgart 21. Just do it and don't constantly weigh up problems - so that's very fortunately also possible in this country.

In this respect, the state can learn from Musk's strength and the directing ability of his counterpart, Brandenburg's Economics Minister Jörg Steinbach. As well as from the stumbling blocks that have become apparent through Tesla. 

The opening of the factory was only possible with great difficulty in view of some nonsensical and paralyzing rules. For example, that an approval process has to start all over again if a client significantly reduces the resource consumption originally specified. In Tesla's case, that was water consumption, which the company has revised down by half over the past two years.

 The "just do it" mindset

However, speed at any price and going beyond or perhaps overdoing the law is dangerous, as this large-scale project has made very clear. The groundwater, for example, remains scarce, too scarce, the planning of the state government was inadequate from the start. Above all, the citizens and their parliamentarians have too often been sidelined by the company of the richest man on the planet and the government that made his cause possible. If, for example, Tesla envoys happened to be comfortable in parliament, they set up rules for discussion - but refused to discuss them. The matter of the topping-out ceremony last year was also obviously absurd: Elon Musk was officially allowed to celebrate on site with 9,000 fans - while public hearings about the factory were pushed onto the Internet, with reference to the ongoing Covid situation.

In Grünheide, the US investor's often-celebrated "just do it" mindset was ultimately one: Whoever pays, creates! And so driven, Brandenburg governed in a style that one would not even expect from a business-friendly CSU prime minister. This special treatment rightly triggers a feeling of disturbance, because the Central European mindset is based on the idea of ​​the common good. The real learning task that results from the Tesla factory for upcoming major projects is: How can you better reconcile doing things quickly and allowing those affected to have a fair say?"