Elon Musk At War With German Environmentalists Protesting His New Gigafactory

It was just a couple of days ago that we first reported that Tesla would need to cut down “thousands of trees” in order to build its Gigafactory 4 in Germany.

In that article, we noted that the company needed to clear so much forest space to put up its factory that dozens of protesters recently organized a gathering known as a “Forest Walk” to protect against Tesla’s tree removal activities at the site, according to Teslarati. 

The protesters were dressed in yellow vests, replicating the “Yellow Vest Movement” in France and are also concerned about what the deforestation may do to the drinking water in the area.

This past weekend, in a fit of hilarious and ironic virtue signalling cognitive dissonance, Musk responded to the criticism, saying on Twitter “this is not a natural forest — it was planted for use as cardboard & only a small part will be used for GF4.”

Oh, well in that case, just cut down as many trees as you want, Elon. 

Musk also responded to criticisms about water usage at Gigafactory 4, lying saying “Tesla won’t use this much net water on a daily basis. It’s possibly a rare peak usage case, but not an everyday event.”

Company planning documents, however, estimate that the factory would need about 98,000 gallons of water per hour. 

The company remains in the process of “jumping through hoops” to get the plant up and running, according to Bloomberg.

One of those hoops included clearing the area of wartime bombs. Disposal officers carried out controlled detonations of seven wartime bombs on Sunday at the site.

The next step will be “harvesters and trucks” rolling in to clear those thousands of trees…

…or as Elon Musk put it on Twitter: “The net environmental impact will be extremely positive!”

For sure. Giga Berlin will build sustainable energy vehicles using sustainable energy, so net environmental impact will be extremely positive!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 25, 2020