Giga Berlin sabotage and idling China factory send Tesla stock down after up to $5,900 in Model Y sales incentives

According to the Brandenburg police department, there has been an arson attempt to sabotage the work of the Tesla Gigafactory near Berlin which forced it to cease operations.

A high-voltage pylon has been set on fire and melted cables cut the electricity supply of the Gigafactory as well as thousands of local residents in its Grünheide area and the southeast of Berlin. According to Brandenburg’s Interior Minister Michael Stübgen:

If the initial findings are confirmed, this will be a perfidious attack on our electricity infrastructure. That will have consequences. Here, thousands of people were cut off from basic services and put in danger. The constitutional state will react to such an act of sabotage with the utmost severity. Nothing can be said about the perpetrators yet, so I would warn against hasty speculation. Now we need to concentrate and work with all our strength to clear up the incident. The State Criminal Police Office has started the investigation.

The Giga Berlin factory expansion plans have been in the crosshairs of environmental activists for a while, as some of them set up a makeshift camp not far from where the fire started. "There was a burning electricity pylon in the Gosen/Neuzittau district," said the local utility company, while the police added that they "assume arson."

An activist group has now posted a manifest that amounts to assuming responsibility for the arson that stopped production at the Tesla Gigafactory in Berlin. "We sabotaged Tesla," they say. "Tesla consumes earth, resources, people, workers and in return spits out 6,000 SUVs, killer cars and monster trucks each week."

In any case, it would take a while for the electricity supply to Giga Berlin and the surrounding area to be restored and the factory will have to remain idle as Tesla's employees there have been evacuated.

Last month, Tesla also had parts of its largest Gigafactory in Shanghai idling, which resulted in a 15% drop in vehicle production compared to January. Despite that this always happens around the Chinese New Year celebrations, the news for the sales slowdown in China is probably what drove the 7% nosedive in Tesla's stock price Monday.

Tesla was rumored to use the Chinese New Year idle time at Giga Shanghai to upgrade it for the production of its Model Y Juniper refresh, but the latest tidbit on the release of the Juniper facelift is that it will arrive in 2025.

Meanwhile, Tesla has embarked on another round of Model Y sales incentives in China, shaving more than $5,900 off its price in the form of inventory vehicle discounts and insurance subsidies.

The de facto Model Y price cut will be valid for deliveries taken by the end of March. Tesla is now in a fierce market share battle with the world's biggest EV maker BYD which started a new price war round by launching cheaper facelifts of its most popular electric cars as soon as the Chinese New Year festivities were over.

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