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Tesla Giga Berlin will be just 37 miles away from Europe’s largest lithium facility

(Credit: @factorymodes/Twitter)

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Canada-based Rock Tech Lithium announced the construction of Europe’s first lithium refining facility in Guben, Brandenburg. It plans to produce battery-grade lithium hydroxide for lithium-ion batteries, making it a perfect fit for Tesla Giga Berlin, which happens to be just 60 km (37 miles) away.

Rock Tech Lithium has a lithium hydroxide mine project in Georgia Lake, Ontario in Canada. It plans to build a “converter factory” in Lusatia, Brandenburg, to refine the lithium hydroxide from the mines in Canada. As noted in a Handelsblatt report, the planned facility would be Europe’s largest lithium facility to date.

In a press release, Rock Tech Lithium noted that it plans to invest up to €470 million (~$545 million) on all its factory units for the Guben site. The company expects the converter plant to be complete by 2024. It estimates that around 160 technicians, engineers, and production staff will be needed to operate the entire plant. 

With 160 employees, RockTech believes it could produce about 24,000 metric tons of lithium hydroxide per year, enough to equip around 500,000 electric cars with lithium-ion batteries. 

“We are becoming the lithium partner of the automotive industry and are building our own, previously non-existent infrastructure for battery-grade lithium hydroxide in Europe. Our goal is to be the first company worldwide to create a close loop for lithium,” said Rock Tech CEO Dirk Harbecke. “Guben seems to us to be the ideal location for this, which subsidies also playing a significant role.”

Coincidentally, Tesla Giga Berlin is just 60 km away, and its initial production goal is to manufacture 500,000 vehicles per year. Tesla CEO Elon Musk thinks it will take Giga Berlin about a year to reach full production capacity. 

At Tesla’s recent Giga Fest “Country Fair” in Brandenburg, the company displayed a poster stating it aims to produce 1 car body every 45 seconds. Elon Musk explained that with those times, Giga Berlin might be able to make ~10,000 vehicles per week if it ran 24/7, which equates to 520,000 cars per year. 

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Rock Tech has not officially announced a partnership with Tesla Giga Berlin. However, its proximity to Gigafactory Berlin may be beneficial to both companies. Besides vehicles, Tesla plans to produce its 4680 cells in Brandenburg, and it will need to establish a supply chain to make batteries.

The Teslarati team would appreciate hearing from you. If you have any tips, reach out to me at maria@teslarati.com or via Twitter @Writer_01001101.

Maria--aka "M"-- is an experienced writer and book editor. She's written about several topics including health, tech, and politics. As a book editor, she's worked with authors who write Sci-Fi, Romance, and Dark Fantasy. M loves hearing from TESLARATI readers. If you have any tips or article ideas, contact her at maria@teslarati.com or via X, @Writer_01001101.

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Elon Musk teases Tesla Roadster unveiling once again

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tesla roadster
Credit: Tesla

Elon Musk continues to tease the unveiling event for the Tesla Roadster, a continuing trend that has grown into a bigger game of “When” for fans who have been waiting years for the car to finally enter production.

A video shared on X of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast that Musk appeared on last year, teasing the Roadster unveiling, was shared once again on the social media platform. The poster said the Roadster event will be “unforgettable.”

Musk agreed:

The timing is interesting because just yesterday, Musk said that we will be getting flying cars, and for years, Tesla has hinted that it could develop a SpaceX cold gas thruster package that would help the car float or fly for a short period of time.

It would be reasonable to assume Tesla’s major delays with this unveiling event are likely caused by the company’s need to break the rules and push the envelope on nearly everything. Last July, Lars Moravy, Tesla’s VP of Vehicle Engineering, said:

“Roadster is definitely in development. We did talk about it last Sunday night. We are gearing up for a super cool demo. It’s going to be mind blowing. We showed Elon some cool demos last week of the tech we’ve been working on and he got a little excited.”

The latest updates that Tesla has given us are that the Roadster is in design development, and it did have several potential dates for an unveiling event this year, including April. It was then pushed to August.

However, there are no clues as to when Tesla will be ready, and fans are certainly getting frustrated with the delays.

For what it is worth, Franz von Holzhausen told Jay Leno this week that the event would be “very soon.”

We sure hope.

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Tesla’s driverless Cybercab just passed a big test with State Governor

Florida’s governor rode Tesla’s Cybercab at a closed test track and called the experience impressive.

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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis rode in a Tesla Cybercab on a closed test track this week and came away impressed, posting on X that the vehicle “successfully navigated all hazards — a kid running into the street, a crash with police stopping traffic, a Model S cutting us off, etc.” He called the ride “impressive.”

The stop was part of a broader event Monday at SunTrax, a 775 acre state owned proving ground in Auburndale that Florida built specifically to test autonomous and connected vehicles before they reach public roads. Standing next to a gold Cybercab, DeSantis described the car in plain terms: “You go in there and you just sit. You have a screen. There’s no steering wheel, no pedals. Clearly these things could be very beneficial.”

DeSantis paired the praise with a caveat that has followed autonomous vehicles since the category existed. “You don’t want to be in an autonomous vehicle and it drives you into a ditch. That would not be good,” he said, framing safety validation as the gate before wider deployment.

SunTrax, the 2.25 mile oval which the state calls the only high speed autonomous vehicle test track in the Southeast, can simulate rain, pedestrian crossings, hills and crowded urban conditions at highway speeds, letting companies push a car past what an early public rollout would risk. Tesla, Waymo and Beep all use the facility, and Florida’s regulatory approach, among the most permissive for autonomous vehicles in the country, doesn’t require a human operator inside a fully autonomous car.

Tesla has reason to want the blessing of Florida and states beyond, as the Cybercab entered volume production at Gigafactory Texas this spring and has since self certified as SAE Level 4 under Texas law. Public road testing so far has kept a safety monitor in the passenger seat, and Florida is where Tesla has been expanding its existing Model Y based Robotaxi service instead, adding Miami in July and then Orlando and Tampa two weeks later. A closed track endorsement from a sitting governor doesn’t change any of that, but it does put Tesla’s newest hardware in front of a state that has already shown it will move fast on rules.

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Tesla wins three-year standoff against Sweden’s IF Metall union

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Credit: Tesla Europe and Middle East | X

Sweden’s IF Metall union has announced that it is ending all protests against Tesla, effective immediately.

The union said in a statement this morning:

“There seems to be no limits to the length Tesla would go to keep unions out of their operations. Unfortunately, they have managed to pay their way out in Sweden. At least that has given the former IF Metall members more money in their pocket, but the insecurity of not having a union or a collective agreement still remains.”

IF Metall has been after Tesla in Sweden for the past three years, attempting to push unionized operations into its factories. Tesla, on the other hand, has given its employees the chance to unionize in various markets. However, the organization says that Tesla has “bought out all of its striking members.”

“Today, we end our industrial action against Tesla. We do so because it can no longer have an effect – not because our principles have changed,” a written statement said.

Over the past three years, IF Metall has definitely been a thorn in the side of Tesla and its operations in Sweden. The primary strike started in October 2023, when IF Metall members at Tesla’s Swedish Service Centers refused to work.

IF Metall chair to Elon Musk: “Give us a chance” as Tesla Sweden strike hits 2 years

Strikes extended to blockades and work stoppages at non-Tesla-owned repair shops that service Teslas. This limited and stopped anything related to warranties, transport damage, and other work on Teslas ending, eliminating work arounds for customers.

Sympathy strikes followed, as postal workers, dock workers, electricians, and other tradesmen stopped working. Add in lawsuits and other pressures, and you get the full scope of what strategies the union has used against Tesla over the past several years.

But now, it’s all over.

“We will continue to defend the right of workers to organize. We will continue to fight for collective bargaining. And we will continue to stand in solidarity with workers and trade unions facing similar challenges elsewhere – just as you have stood with us,” IF Metall said.

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