Tesla, arson and shutdown in Germany. '9-figure damage'. The share price sinks
High-voltage junction near the Grünheide gigafactory sabotaged. Extremists claim on Indymedia. Musk: 'Very stupid act'
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Key points
3' min read
A bonfire of over 70 billion capitalisation for Tesla. In two days. On Monday, the negative figure for deliveries in February from the Shanghai plant: -19 % year-on-year. Tuesday morning at 4.50 a.m. the sabotage by an extreme left-wing group in Germany, which blew up a power grid substation, a high-voltage node, causing the flames to spread to the gigafactory in Grünheide, near Berlin. Total in 48 hours: more than 12% down for the stock. More than one analyst now estimates a drop in deliveries in the quarter compared to what was budgeted. This is due to the trend in China, the forced shutdown in Germany and, last but not least, the feared drop in demand for electric cars.
Damage in the hundreds of millions
.The left-wing extremist group Vulkan claimed the action against the American car manufacturer. 'We sabotaged Tesla'. The group was already suspected of starting an arson attack on the site's power grid in 2021. 'We were able to carry out a controlled shutdown,' saidAndré Thierig, director of the gigafactory, 'without any risk to personnel or the environment. But the damage is in the nine figures, several hundred million. Over the next few days it will become clearer whether we will be able to restart production at the beginning of next week'. Thierig went on to explain that, according to Tesla, this is clearly an 'attack on this industrial site' in Brandenburg. And he emphasised that 'there is currently a very critical climate towards Tesla. This is very unfortunate'.
Inevitable and timely was the comment on X by Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk. 'These are either the dumbest eco-terrorists on Earth or they are puppets of those who have no good environmental goals'. And again. "Stopping the production of electric vehicles, rather than fossil fuel vehicles, is extremely stupid," added Musk, who wrote "extremely stupid" in German.
The claim: "Tesla devours land, resources, people"
.The Vulkan group accused Tesla of 'extreme exploitative conditions' and demanded, according to the German news agency Dpa, the 'complete destruction of the gigafactory'. The message claiming responsibility for the attack was published on Indymedia, the platform of far-left activists. The group claims that Tesla 'devours land, resources, people and labour, and spits out 6,000 killer cars a week', the Afp news agency reported. The activists also accused the factory of 'polluting groundwater and consuming huge amounts of already scarce drinking water for its products'.
The dynamics of the attack
.The Grünheide factory is the only European gigafactory of the American manufacturer (here it produces only the Model Y, the best-selling car in 2023 globally) and from the very beginning it has been criticised by environmentalists (precisely because of the water used and the erosion of the forest heritage) and part of the population. As the Bild reported, at 4.50 a.m. there was a loud explosion in the Steinfurt subway station and a pylon caught fire. At 5.15 a.m. the fire brigade went into action to extinguish the fire in the Goßen-Neu Zittau area, the police confirmed. The extinguishing work was delayed because a tent with a warning message was discovered next to a burning transformer: 'Ordnance buried here'. The bomb disposal squad then intervened.
