Production has recommenced at Tesla’s German Gigafactory after an arson attack left the facility without power for a week.
Last week, a group of environmentalists dubbed ‘The Volcano Group’ took credit for lighting a blaze at an electrical pylon near the Tesla facility. The group claimed to have attacked Tesla because it “eats up earth, resources, people, labor, and spits out 6,000 SUVs, killing machines, and monster trucks per week.”
On Monday, German energy network firm E.ON said that repairs over the weekend had allowed it to restore power. Tesla was reconnected to the grid at 8:45 p.m. local time on March 11 and said it would gradually restart systems at the factory.
Local radio broadcaster RBB states that on Wednesday, production resumed at the factory. Tesla says the disruption in production will have cost it hundreds of millions of euros in damages, Reuters reports. It also revealed that Tesla chief executive Elon Musk will visit the site this week.
Read: Activists Thwart Tesla’s German Gigafactory Expansion Plans With Tree Houses
“The machines have been restarted in a controlled and safe manner so that the early shift can resume,” the head of the works council at the site, Michaela Schmitz said. “We will have a team huddle and Mr Musk will also be there.”
The outage prevented Tesla from building approximately 1,000 vehicles per day at the factory.
Tesla’s factory near Berlin has come under criticism in recent months due to a planned expansion of the site. The carmaker intends on doubling production at the plant to 1 million vehicles annually and to do so, will need to cut down large parts of the nearby forest. Some locals have expressed concern about how this could impact local drinking water supplies.
