Musk is Screwing Up Over in Europe Too

Two years ago, Elon Musk was celebrated as a hero when he opened a factory in a sleepy town outside of Berlin.  But now he is back, dealing with an act of sabotage by eco-activists, which has resulted in the plant being shut down for more than a week.

Musk has now become entangled in a local culture war, making his shining factory a lightning rod for a range of critics-from local citizens to environmental activists, left-wing militants and far-right politicians.  In recent weeks, nearly two-thirds of Grünheide's residents voted against Tesla's application for an extension of the plant. The company has also been targeted by climate-change skeptics opposed to their country's green-technology transition, while trade unionists have mobilized against Musk's no-union policy.  Musk has called the eco-activists "dumber than a doorstop" for their criticism of electric vehicles.

63-year-old pensioner and Grünheide resident Manuela Hoyer hopes he won't expand the plant.  Hoyer is one of the central figures organizing opposition to GigaBerlin, as Tesla calls its plant. She and her allies scored a victory last month when 62% of residents voted in a nonbinding referendum to deny Tesla's bid to knock down 250 acres of local woodlands to make room for more factory buildings, a train yard and a daycare center.  "Our concern is about the water protection areas in the forest," she said. GigaBerlin sits amid acres of pinewood forests and country roads winding past lakes whose shores are dotted with bungalows and boat docks.

Tesla's arrival in the town has mainly translated into higher rents, higher prices, more heavy truck traffic and unfamiliar faces. Official statistics suggest most of the 12,000 jobs created by the plant have gone to outsiders, with unemployment in Landkreis Oder-Spree (the county where Grünheide is located), steady at around 6%.

Musk's behavior in public and on social media has contributed to the polarization. Last year, he was criticized after retweeting a post that claimed German-government-funded groups were rescuing asylum seekers in the Mediterranean. The post expressed hopes that German voters would back the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, in protest.

Musk's anti-union positions have also raised eyebrows in a country where organized labor has a tradition of working hand-in-hand with management across industries. IG Metall, the dominant manufacturing-sector union, has set up an office where Gigafactory buses drop off and pick up Tesla workers. Its representatives have been signing up employees ahead of a key vote inside the plant later this month to elect a new works council.

Shortly after the results of the Grünheide referendum were made public last month, a group of about 100 environmental activists, most of them from Berlin's left-wing scene, erected a forest camp in the woods outside the plant. Their protest, they say, aims to force the city council to honor the outcome of the vote and stop Tesla from cutting down the forest.  "We will stay until they come and carry us out," said Rene Sander, a 28-year-old social worker, as other activists behind him hung from industrial climbing gear while erecting wooden platforms in the upper reaches of the pinewood forest.

"The narrative of clean electric cars is a dirty lie," said Sander, citing the environmental and social impact of mining for battery materials, including lithium and cobalt. "We need more and better public transportation, not luxury SUVs."   Last week, an underground left-wing group calling itself Vulkangruppe, or the Volcano Group, claimed responsibility for setting fire to an electricity pylon. The act cut power to the factory for over a week and caused a production stoppage that Tesla said cost it close to a billion euros.

In an unexpected confluence of trends, local leaders of Germany's far-right AfD have joined the far-left in opposing the factory's expansion. In addition to concerns about the landscape, the AfD points to the thousands of foreigners from Poland and elsewhere recruited to work here.  German far-right politicians have seen the mounting hostility against Tesla and Musk as an opportunity to mobilize supporters against Germany's green transition.