Tesla’s Giga Berlin production facility will revolutionize the electric automaker’s presence in the highly-concentrated European electric vehicle market. While Tesla holds considerable advantages in EV tech, pricing, range, and performance, it holds another considerably important element that determines a company’s ability to control pricing: battery production. With Tesla planning to manufacture its newly-detailed 4680 cells at the Berlin Gigafactory within two years, according to Economy Minister Jörg Steinbach, the company is setting the stage to infiltrate the intensely-competitive European EV market with the best and most affordable electric cars on the continent in record time.
After being approved for a slice of the $3.5 billion assistance package for the development of Giga Berlin’s 4680 battery plant, Tesla is set in a prime position to dominate the European battery production market. CATL and BASF SE both have large-scale battery manufacturing projects in Germany already, but Giga Berlin’s plant could displace them as Elon Musk once said it could be the biggest in the world.
During the 2020 European Battery Conference in November 2020, Musk said:
“I think it will be the largest. It would be capable of over 100 GWh hours per year of production and then possibly going to 200 to 250. I’m pretty confident at that point it would be the largest battery-cell plant in the world.”
And Tesla will need it. After coming off of a record year in deliveries and production figures, Tesla is continuing to ramp scalability as it tackles international markets for the first time in its history. After expanding to China with its Giga Shanghai plant, which began delivering cars in January 2020, Tesla had already started developing the Giga Berlin property by excavating the grounds and clearing obstacles that were there previously. Now, the factory is well underway and is expected to begin producing cars this Summer.
There still is no exact timeline for the 4680 battery plant, as it could take several years to figure out supply chain details from suppliers to Berlin. Tesla is also still figuring out the manufacturing processes of the 4680 cell at its Kato Road facility in Northern California. Elon Musk has said in the past that 4680 cells have been in working vehicles for some time, but at what scale? Only Tesla knows.
However, Jörg Steinbach, a vocal supporter of Tesla’s Berlin facility, now says the plant could open in two years, Bloomberg reported.
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Tesla’s monster 4680 battery plant in Giga Berlin receives federal gov’t pre-approval
Despite regular hurdles to jump through, Tesla has had assistance from politicians all over Germany. With Steinbach’s support, another Economic Minister, Peter Altmaier, also extended his hand to the electric automaker, offering any help he can to expedite the factory’s construction. Environmental concerns, along with complaints from local citizens, have tied up Tesla from time to time at the factory. Still, construction has been moving along at an impressive rate since the official groundbreaking.
“You have to sometimes translate the culture of our approval procedures, which are also strongly influenced by environmental protection,” Steinbach said.
It is crucial for Tesla to open Giga Berlin so it can expand its outreach in the most EV-concentrated region on Earth. Steinbach says he is “totally relaxed” regarding the plant’s ultimate approval. He still expects EVs to roll off the line in July.
After the 4680 cell plant does open, Tesla will be able to scale-back costs of its EVs. Currently buying many cells from third-party suppliers, Tesla will still do that for the foreseeable future, according to Musk. However, creating more battery cells will decrease the shortage of batteries, making them less expensive and, at the same time, decreasing the price of Tesla’s cars. Because of this important point, the 4680 facility is of utmost importance.
“This project is given top priority,” Steinbach said.
News
These Tesla, X, and xAI engineers were just poached by OpenAI
The news is the latest in an ongoing feud between Elon Musk and the Sam Altman-run firm OpenAI.
OpenAI, the xAI competitor for which Elon Musk previously served as a boardmember and helped to co-found, has reportedly poached high-level engineers from Tesla, along with others from xAI, X, and still others.
On Tuesday, Wired reported that OpenAI hired four high-level engineers from Tesla, xAI, and X, as seen in an internal Slack message sent by co-founder Greg Brockman. The engineers include Tesla Vice President of Software Engineering David Lau, X and xAI’s head of infrastructure engineering Uday Ruddarraju, and fellow xAI infrastructure engineer Mike Dalton. The hiring spree also included Angela Fan, an AI researcher from Meta.
“We’re excited to welcome these new members to our scaling team,” said Hannah Wong, an OpenAI spokesperson. “Our approach is to continue building and bringing together world-class infrastructure, research, and product teams to accelerate our mission and deliver the benefits of AI to hundreds of millions of people.”
Lau has been in his position as Tesla’s VP of Software Engineering since 2017, after previously working for the company’s firmware, platforms, and system integration divisions.
“It has become incredibly clear to me that accelerating progress towards safe, well-aligned artificial general intelligence is the most rewarding mission I could imagine for the next chapter of my career,” Lau said in a statement to Wired.
🚨Optimistic projections point to xAI possibly attaining profitability by 2027, according to Bloomberg's sources.
If accurate, this would be quite a feat for xAI. OpenAI, its biggest rival, is still looking at 2029 as the year it could become cash flow positive.💰 https://t.co/pE5Z9daez8
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 18, 2025
READ MORE ON OPENAI: Elon Musk’s OpenAI lawsuit clears hurdle as trial looms
At xAI, Ruddarraju and Dalton both played a large role in developing the Colossus supercomputer, which is comprised of over 200,000 GPUs. One of the major ongoing projects at OpenAI is the company’s Stargate program,
“Infrastructure is where research meets reality, and OpenAI has already demonstrated this successfully,” Ruddarraju told Wired in another statement. “Stargate, in particular, is an infrastructure moonshot that perfectly matches the ambitious, systems-level challenges I love taking on.”
Elon Musk is currently in the process of suing OpenAI for shifting toward a for-profit model, as well as for accepting an investment of billions of dollars from Microsoft. OpenAI retaliated with a counterlawsuit, in which it alleges that Musk is interfering with the company’s business and engaging in unfair competition practices.
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News
SpaceX share sale expected to back $400 billion valuation
The new SpaceX valuation would represent yet another record-high as far as privately-held companies in the U.S. go.
A new report this week suggests that Elon Musk-led rocket company SpaceX is considering an insider share sale that would value the company at $400 billion.
SpaceX is set to launch a primary fundraising round and sell a small number of new shares to investors, according to the report from Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter who asked to remain anonymous due to the information not yet being public. Additionally, the company would sell shares from employees and early investors in a follow-up round, while the primary round would determine the price for the secondary round.
The valuation would represent the largest in history from a privately-owned company in the U.S., surpassing SpaceX’s previous record of $350 billion after a share buyback in December. Rivaling company valuations include ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, as well as OpenAI.
Bloomberg went on to say that a SpaceX representative didn’t respond to a request for comment at the time of publishing. The publication also notes that the details of such a deal could still change, especially depending on interest from the insider sellers and share buyers.
Axiom’s Ax-4 astronauts arriving to the ISS! https://t.co/WQtTODaYfj
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 26, 2025
READ MORE ON SPACEX: SpaceX to decommission Dragon spacecraft in response to Pres. Trump war of words with Elon Musk
SpaceX’s valuation comes from a few different key factors, especially including the continued expansion of the company’s Starlink satellite internet company. According to the report, Starlink accounts for over half of the company’s yearly revenue. Meanwhile, the company produced its 10 millionth Starlink kit last month.
The company also continues to develop its Starship reusable rocket program, despite the company experiencing an explosion of the rocket on the test stand in Texas last month.
The company has also launched payloads for a number of companies and government contracts. In recent weeks, SpaceX launched Axiom’s Ax-4 mission, sending four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) for a 14-day stay to work on around 60 scientific experiments. The mission was launched using the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and a new Crew Dragon capsule, while the research is expected to span a range of fields including biology, material and physical sciences, and demonstrations of specialized technology.
News
Tesla Giga Texas continues to pile up with Cybercab castings
Tesla sure is gathering a lot of Cybercab components around the Giga Texas complex.
Tesla may be extremely tight-lipped about the new affordable models that it was expected to start producing in the first half of the year, but the company sure is gathering a lot of Cybercab castings around the Giga Texas complex. This is, at least, as per recent images taken of the facility.
Cybercab castings galore
As per longtime drone operator Joe Tegtmeyer, who has been chronicling the developments around the Giga Texas complex for several years now, the electric vehicle maker seems to be gathering hundreds of Cybercab castings around the factory.
Based on observations from industry watchers, the drone operator appears to have captured images of about 180 front and 180 rear Cybercab castings in his recent photos.
Considering the number of castings that were spotted around Giga Texas, it would appear that Tesla may indeed be preparing for the vehicle’s start of trial production sometime later this year. Interestingly enough, large numbers of Cybercab castings have been spotted around the Giga Texas complex in the past few months.
Cybercab production
The Cybercab is expected to be Tesla’s first vehicle that will adopt the company’s “unboxed” process. As per Tesla’s previous update letters, volume production of the Cybercab should start in 2026. So far, prototypes of the Cybercab have been spotted testing around Giga Texas, and expectations are high that the vehicle’s initial trial production should start this year.
With the start of Tesla’s dedicated Robotaxi service around Austin, it might only be a matter of time before the Cybercab starts being tested on public roads as well. When this happens, it would be very difficult to deny the fact that Tesla really does have a safe, working autonomous driving system, and it has the perfect vehicle for it, too.
These Tesla, X, and xAI engineers were just poached by OpenAI
SpaceX share sale expected to back $400 billion valuation
Tesla Giga Texas continues to pile up with Cybercab castings
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