Tesla has confirmed that deliveries of Model Y vehicles built at Gigafactory Berlin in Germany are starting on March 22.
Last week, after months of delays, Tesla finally received its official building permit following the environmental approval of its Gigafactory Berlin project.
It was believed to be the last regulatory step needed for Tesla to officially start production at Gigafactory Berlin.
However, the approval was conditional on about 400 different conditions that the automaker needed to confirm. Surprisingly, German officials said at the time that they expected Tesla to fulfill all those conditions within the next two weeks.
It would put the start of production and deliveries (since production actually already unofficially started with hundreds of Model Y vehicles spotted coming out of the plant) at the end of March.
Tesla has now confirmed and started sending out invitations for a delivery event on March 22:
As we previously reported, Gigafactory Berlin is critical for Tesla’s plans to expand in Europe and improve its manufacturing and distribution efficiency throughout its entire operations.
Once fully ramped up, the factory is expected to greatly reduce Tesla’s need to import cars from factories in the US and China.
In turn, that would enable more capacity for those markets and keep vehicle production closer to the end customers.
The new factory is also expected to greatly help Tesla’s financials by reducing transit times. Since Tesla owns its vehicles until they are handed over to the final customer, vehicles in transit for a long time, like on boats across the ocean, are a big financial strain on the company.
March 22 will mark an important step for Tesla by starting deliveries of European-made vehicles and putting it on a path of better logistical efficiency.
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Author: Fred Lambert
Source: Electrek
