Want Tesla to expand? Three German teenagers have a few thoughts.
Tesla's colossal 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 fear it threatens the quality of their water and air and has disrupted the peace that drew them to the area.
Steffen Schorcht, 63, who lives across the highway, said the light pollution alone made it impossible for him to see the stars when he looked up at night.
Now Tesla wants to clear another 250 hectares of forest near the factory for warehouses and a rail yard, and for a daycare center for employees and the community. Mr Schorcht and many of his neighbors are determined to ensure this does not happen.
“We say: 'enough is enough,'” Mr. Schorcht said. Their resistance campaign includes weekly walks through the endangered forest and knocking on doors.
But three local teenagers see the situation differently. For them, the arrival of a company making headlines with an intense focus on innovation through disruption has brought dynamism to Grünheide, their sleepy town of 9,000 inhabitants, and given them a perspective for their future.
When asked if they would be interested in an internship or a job at Tesla, the three responded: Silas Heineken, 17; Moritz Tezky, 16; and Tariq Löber, 18 – all replied at the same time: “Absolutely!”
The three high school classmates have created a website with a built-in chatbot that attempts to refute concerns about the plan. They've also put up posters around the city, decorated with two robotic hands flashing a V sign beneath the words “For It,” written in all capital letters.
“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 rec room, band practice room and campaign headquarters. “It was this general opposition that really hindered us.”
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
The debate in Grünheide will come to a head on Tuesday when officials announce the results of a citywide referendum on the expansion. The vote is non-binding, but the mayor said city officials had said it would play a major role in their decision.
The controversy points to a larger problem happening across Germany, which involves an aging and shrinking population, especially in parts of the former East Germany. In the state of Brandenburg, where Grünheide is located, officials predict that by 2030 almost a third of residents will be of retirement age, 65 or older.
To flourish, such regions must attract more young people, or convince those who grew up there to return after college, according to analysts.
“They want to know: how can I develop myself here? Can I continue my education? Are there jobs?” said Eva Eichenauer, a researcher at the Berlin Institute for Population and Development.
German companies are desperate for young people. According to the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry, more than a third of all companies offering apprenticeships – on-the-job training in addition to classroom work – will not have received a single application in 2023. Such positions represent the main route to employment in the country's automotive and other industrial sectors.
Tesla offers apprenticeships and a building for classes is part of the expansion. In a campaign that brings a rare level of community outreach for the company – weekly information sessions in the factory showroom and several information fairs around the city – Tesla promises that allowing expansion will bring “more good-paying jobs for you and your children.” Tesla said the warehouses and rail yard would alleviate supply chain issues and reduce freight traffic in the area.
When city officials decided to put Tesla's plan to a vote, residents ages 16 and up were allowed to vote. The opportunity was not lost on the three teenagers.
“The Gigafactory expansion was a reason for us to say, 'Why don't we show – for the first time, maybe in history – that we are for something,'” Silas said.
The three friends insisted they did not consider themselves fans of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, but all three said they admired Tesla's mission “to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy.”
They grew closer during the Covid lockdowns and often met for their online classes at Silas' home. His father, Peer Heineken, provided technical support when the boys decided to start their campaign.
Using ChatGPT, they built a website that invited people to “type what you are against” – with the aim of providing counterarguments to those opposed to Tesla's plans. But they learned how unreliable the technology can be and eventually wrote apology letters to people who received abusive responses.
Tesla's arrival not only gave them job prospects if they stayed in the region, but also improved their overall quality of life, they said. They pointed to additional bus routes and more frequent trains to Berlin, a livelier shopping 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 site's industrial designation. But its location, on the edge of a mining region that was losing jobs, also meant that local authorities were keen to welcome it.
“Tesla is an incredibly attractive employer, which naturally opens up perspectives for young people in training beyond the coal sector, in areas that are interesting and relevant,” said Ms Eichenauer.
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 all sixteen German states.
“That has something to do with Tesla,” says Dietmar Woidke, the governor of Brandenburg. He said the carmaker had not only attracted a network of suppliers and subcontractors, but had also helped the local economy in ways large and small.
The company, which employs 11,000 people at its factory and still has hundreds of open positions, is also more flexible in its hiring, an aspect that Mr Woidke sees as an asset to his region.
“Tesla hires and trains people regardless of what qualification they have obtained, whether they are engineers, skilled workers, trained as bakers, or whether they have no vocational training at all,” Mr Woidke said.
But Mr. Schorcht and others critical of Tesla argue that the factory is largely focused on assembly, not skills development, and offers jobs that require more basic training and lack the guarantees of the union contracts that are becoming common in the German auto sector offered.
“The children who graduate from Grünheide normally have a high school diploma that allows them to go to university,” Mr. Schorcht said. “They're not going to stay here and get low-skilled jobs at Tesla.”
Right now, the three teens are more focused on finishing high school than finding a job or going to college. But as they think about their future, they say Tesla's presence where they grew up makes it possible to return someday after earning a college degree.
“We are all looking for higher education, which is difficult to get outside of a big city,” Tariq said. “But if I were to stay here, Tesla would be a major reason.”