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Tesla factory delays show ‘how we stand in our own way’: German industry experts sound off
Water pumping approvals. Bats in trees. An empty tank. These are just a few things that have stopped Tesla’s progress in Germany as it attempts to launch its first electric vehicle manufacturing facility in Europe. It has been a long and trying road for the electric automaker, which has attempted to surf through the waves of German bureaucratic red tape since early 2020. After another delay in the approval process, which has expected production start dates ranging across three quarters, industry experts challenge Germany’s reputation as a place for companies to conduct business.
“Tesla shows the world how we stand in our own way,” Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, Director of the Center of Automotive Research, said. While Dudenhöffer does agree that Tesla should have treaded more carefully during the approval of a battery production facility and been smarter regarding document submissions, the industry expert believes that German red tape has mainly told a story of how hard it is to get things started if you are planning to open a business in the country. “But such hurricanes of resistance show how little sustainable Germany is,” he said in an interview with Handelsblatt.
Coverage of the Gigafactory Berlin project has spanned over two years for journalists in the sector, including myself. Musk announced that Tesla would bring a production facility to Germany in late 2019 while accepting an automotive industry reward. The project began just months later, in the early days of January 2020. More than two years later, a factory, a parage, a carnival, and a lot of speculation regarding when Tesla will finally receive the green light still exist. Earlier this week, German media reported that Tesla would likely not receive permission to begin production and deliveries until mid-March “at the earliest.” It is a far cry from the Summer 2021 start dates that many close to the project anticipated.
The delays are starting to worry those who see Germany as a potential leader in the future automotive industry, which over the past ten years has changed more than it did in the previous ninety. Car companies are not just about making cars anymore. They’re relatively closer to tech companies than anything due to the advancements in software and the widespread focus on developing autonomous driving platforms. Regardless of what a company brings to the table, they will likely have to encounter some major pushback and delays in their project. Even EV leader Tesla is having problems. Dudenhöffer wonders which companies are observing the red tape and the pushback, thinking that other options may be better.
Giga Berlin’s new graffiti panels as of early February 2022. (Credit: @Gf4Tesla/Twitter)
It isn’t just companies, either. Dudenhöffer says that the renewal of motorway bridges can take years or even decades to be rebuilt completely due to new approval procedures. It is not about getting things done quickly, it seems.
When things as simple as bridge repairs are taking over ten years to complete, there has to be an indication that the processes for planning and approval need to be revised. That is what Chief Executive Holder Loesch said, who encouraged the agencies responsible for approving projects to take a look at refining the approval steps. Loesch, whose association is overseeing the installation of wind turbines and industrial plants to double by 2030, says that his plans will include the submission of around 20,000 permits during the course of action. “This mammoth task can only be mastered with a comprehensive reform of planning and approvals that includes processes for industrial plant structures,” he said.
Even Brandenburg Economics Minister Jörg Steinbach submitted ideas to help expedite potential approvals. Driven by the lagging approval process in the Tesla project, Steinbach said that “It should be possible to make changes to the building plan in the ongoing approval process without the process having to be completely restarted.”
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Tesla gets new insurance program from firm that offered ‘almost free’ FSD rates
Tesla recently was offered “almost free” coverage for Full Self-Driving by Lemonade’s Shai Wininger, President and Co-founder, who said it would be “happy to explore insuring Tesla FSD miles for (almost) free.”
Tesla owners in California, Oregon, and Arizona can now use Lemonade Insurance, the firm that recently said it could cover Full Self-Driving miles for “almost free.”
Lemonade, which offered the new service through its app, has three distinct advantages, it says:
- Direct Connection for no telematics device needed
- Better customer service
- Smarter pricing
The company is known for offering unique, fee-based insurance rates through AI, and instead of keeping unclaimed premiums, it offers coverage through a flat free upfront. The leftover funds are donated to charities by its policyholders.
On Thursday, it announced that cars in three states would be able to be connected directly to the car through its smartphone app, enabling easier access to insurance factors through telematics:
Lemonade customers who own @Tesla vehicles in California, Oregon, and Arizona can now connect their cars directly to the Lemonade app! ⚡🚘
Direct connection = no telematics device needed 📵
Better customer experience 💃
Smarter pricing with Lemonade 🧠This is a game-changer… pic.twitter.com/jbabxZWT4t
— Lemonade (@Lemonade_Inc) December 11, 2025
Tesla recently was offered “almost free” coverage for Full Self-Driving by Lemonade’s Shai Wininger, President and Co-founder, who said it would be “happy to explore insuring Tesla FSD miles for (almost) free.”
The strategy would be one of the most unique, as it would provide Tesla drivers with stable, accurate, and consistent insurance rates, while also incentivizing owners to utilize Full Self-Driving for their travel miles.
Tesla Full Self-Driving gets an offer to be insured for ‘almost free’
This would make FSD more cost-effective for owners and contribute to the company’s data collection efforts.
Data also backs Tesla Full Self-Driving’s advantages as a safety net for drivers. Recent figures indicate it was nine times less likely to be in an accident compared to the national average, registering an accident every 6.36 million miles. The NHTSA says a crash occurs approximately every 702,000 miles.
Tesla also offers its own in-house insurance program, which is currently offered in twelve states so far. The company is attempting to enter more areas of the U.S., with recent filings indicating the company wants to enter Florida and offer insurance to drivers in that state.
Tesla Model Y configurations are getting hefty discounts and more benefits as the company is in the phase of its final sales push for the year.
Tesla is offering up to $1,500 off new Model Y Standard trims that are available in inventory in the United States. Additionally, Tesla is giving up to $2,000 off the Premium trims of the Model Y. There is also one free upgrade included, such as a paint color or interior color, at no additional charge.
NEWS: Tesla is now offering discounts of up to $1,500 off new Model Y Standard vehicles in U.S. inventory. Discounts of up to $2,000 are also being offered on Model Y Premiums.
These discounts are in addition to the one free upgrade you get (such as Diamond Black paint) on… pic.twitter.com/L0RMtjmtK0
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) December 10, 2025
Tesla is hoping to bolster a relatively strong performance through the first three quarters of the year, with over 1.2 million cars delivered through the first three quarters.
This is about four percent under what the company reported through the same time period last year, as it was about 75,000 vehicles ahead in 2024.
However, Q3 was the company’s best quarterly performance of all time, and it surged because of the loss of the $7,500 EV tax credit, which was eliminated in September. The imminent removal of the credit led to many buyers flocking to Tesla showrooms to take advantage of the discount, which led to a strong quarter for the company.
2024 was the first year in the 2020s when Tesla did not experience a year-over-year delivery growth, as it saw a 1 percent slide from 2023. The previous years saw huge growth, with the biggest coming from 2020 to 2021, when Tesla had an 87 percent delivery growth.
This year, it is expected to be a second consecutive slide, with a drop of potentially 8 percent, if it manages to deliver 1.65 million cars, which is where Grok projects the automaker to end up.
Tesla will likely return to its annual growth rate in the coming years, but the focus is becoming less about delivery figures and more about autonomy, a major contributor to the company’s valuation. As AI continues to become more refined, Tesla will apply these principles to its Full Self-Driving efforts, as well as the Optimus humanoid robot project.
Will Tesla thrive without the EV tax credit? Five reasons why they might
These discounts should help incentivize some buyers to pull the trigger on a vehicle before the year ends. It will also be interesting to see if the adjusted EV tax credit rules, which allowed deliveries to occur after the September 30 cutoff date, along with these discounts, will have a positive impact.
News
Tesla FSD’s newest model is coming, and it sounds like ‘the last big piece of the puzzle’
“There’s a model that’s an order of magnitude larger that will be deployed in January or February 2026.”
Tesla Full Self-Driving’s newest model is coming very soon, and from what it sounds like, it could be “the last big piece of the puzzle,” as CEO Elon Musk said in late November.
During the xAI Hackathon on Tuesday, Musk was available for a Q&A session, where he revealed some details about Robotaxi and Tesla’s plans for removing Robotaxi Safety Monitors, and some information on a future FSD model.
While he said Full Self-Driving’s unsupervised capability is “pretty much solved,” and confirmed it will remove Safety Monitors in the next three weeks, questions about the company’s ability to give this FSD version to current owners came to mind.
Musk said a new FSD model is coming in about a month or two that will be an order-of-magnitude larger and will include more reasoning and reinforcement learning.
He said:
“There’s a model that’s an order of magnitude larger that will be deployed in January or February 2026. We’re gonna add a lot of reasoning and RL (reinforcement learning). To get to serious scale, Tesla will probably need to build a giant chip fab. To have a few hundred gigawatts of AI chips per year, I don’t see that capability coming online fast enough, so we will probably have to build a fab.”
NEWS: Elon Musk says FSD Unsupervised is “pretty much solved at this point” and that @Tesla will be launching Robotaxis with no safety monitors in about 3 weeks in Austin, Texas. He also teased a new FSD model is coming in about 1-2 months.
“We’re just going through validation… https://t.co/Msne72cgMB pic.twitter.com/i3wfKX3Z0r
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) December 10, 2025
It rings back to late November when Musk said that v14.3 “is where the last big piece of the puzzle finally lands.”
With the advancements made through Full Self-Driving v14 and v14.2, there seems to be a greater confidence in solving self-driving completely. Musk has also personally said that driver monitoring has been more relaxed, and looking at your phone won’t prompt as many alerts in the latest v14.2.1.
This is another indication that Tesla is getting closer to allowing people to take their eyes off the road completely.
Along with the Robotaxi program’s success, there is evidence that Tesla could be close to solving FSD. However, it is not perfect. We’ve had our own complaints with FSD, and although we feel it is the best ADAS on the market, it is not, in its current form, able to perform everything needed on roads.
But it is close.
That’s why there is some legitimate belief that Tesla could be releasing a version capable of no supervision in the coming months.
All we can say is, we’ll see.
Tesla gets new insurance program from firm that offered ‘almost free’ FSD rates
Tesla Model Y gets hefty discounts and more in final sales push
