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Saturday 5 September 2020
By Diana Dittmer
For a week, Elon Musk kept the media, politics and fans in Germany on edge. Now it’s gone again. What remains is pride. Your business in this country is celebrated as a strong signal for the location of the business. Others may follow the lead of the bite and speed of the tech investor.
It’s an electrifying ten minutes for the few viewers who can catch a glimpse of the eccentric tech investor. “Germany is cool,” Elon Musk calls them when he surprisingly appears Thursday at the construction site of his new Gigafactory in Grünheide, Brandenburg. Their timing leaves a lot to be desired for fans and the media. There was no official announcement of his visit. Apparently, he did not attach any importance to a large reception committee. But the billionaire enjoys the small stage, is visibly relaxed and in a good mood.
The location of your fifth Gigafactory is perfect, you probably mean in your words. Grünheide was the right decision for him. If all goes well, around 500,000 electric cars will roll off the assembly line here starting in the summer of 2021. The region is suffering from high unemployment, local politicians expect 12,000 jobs immediately with the new factory. As Prime Minister Dietmar Woitke explains after his meeting with Musk, the play fortunately already shows the “pull effect” that was expected.
Tesla accelerates. A good three months ago the area was intact. The forest has now been flattened and the first room, for the paint shop, is in place. The crown that ends already hangs from the building. It is conceivable that the new Gigafactory will be completed even faster than the one in Shanghai, which was built in the record time of eleven months. This is only possible because Musk works with preliminary permits and at his own risk. No one believes that there may soon be a ruin here.
Why are you picking up your pace so fast? Shouts a spectator outside the gates of the construction site. “I believe in speed,” Musk replied. It is important for the climate and the world that the transition to renewable energy takes place as quickly as possible. The speed with which he approaches his projects is his unmistakable brand; even in Germany, where the bureaucracy’s obstacles are high, Musk cannot be stopped.
A strong signal for the location of the company
Their investments are “a great sign of the company’s location,” says technology expert Frank Thelen. Musk is finally bringing speed to Germany. That is the proof: “We can still fast!” German investors could take a look at something here, he says. Musk is “a lottery prize,” but that’s not enough. “Now we have to emulate him. We have to show a pioneering spirit again, show fearless courage and run forward.”
Thelen says it’s a huge stroke of luck that Musk is primarily an international investor in Germany. However, the focus on the German auto industry is understandable. Germany Trade & Invest (GTAI) car expert Stefan di Bitonto agrees. The economy has something to offer musk caliber investors: “Germany is a place of high standards, great experience and a high density of engineers. Almost 40 percent of all premium vehicles are made here in the country. Exactly the segment Tesla operates in. If you want to build a premium car, then it makes sense to do it in Germany. ” With Musk he is now “ready for the future of the automobile.” The location can “look to the future reinforced,” says di Bitonto ntv.de.
The Tesla factory in Grünheide is not Musk’s first investment in the German auto industry. Three years ago he bought the car supplier Grohmann in Prüm in the Eifel. That worked for Tesla too, Thelen said. At Grohmann’s, Musk stopped on Tuesday on his tour of Germany. It is a win-win situation for both parties. The exceptional entrepreneur benefits from Germany, but the business location in Germany gets a new boost from him.
The technological visionary should take Germany on a journey into the future. His ability to “vehemently implement visions,” as di Bitonto describes it, should help. From Thelen’s point of view, Musk brings everything with him, his interest is in innovative technologies of the future. Companies like Tesla, SpaceX, Hyperloop or Neuralink show that he is not just a visionary, he loves spectacular things. The impossible drives him. Critics have often presented his plans as impossible. But in the end, Musk always succeeded: his rockets fly, the Tesla rolls, even the Neuralink chip in the human brain, which is supposed to connect the app store with the human brain, recently made its grand debut.
Musk’s greatest asset is his mind, Thelen explains. Whether it’s artificial intelligence, battery technologies, quantum computers, 5G, or blockchain, “Elon Musk understands these technologies,” he says. “It’s your DNA.” Ask how rockets can be launched cheaply into space, how things can be made possible that were not possible before. “Musk believes in exponential progress. That is what sets him apart from other investors.”
Musk, ein explosiver Cocktail
For billionaire and investor Carsten Maschmayer, it is the mix of “creative disobedience, irrepressible pressure to change” and a bit of “ego trip” that makes Musk so successful. “Brave things” that are a “great role model for tech founders”, as the jury of the startup program “Höhle der Löwen” admits on the ntv podcast “So techt Germany”, who is not considered a big fan of the eccentric Called American billionaire.
Tech investor Thelen also sees something else in Musk’s investment decisions: that he uses technology from his car supplier Grohmann for a 3D printer, for example, so that vaccine maker Curevac can fire up the turbo in production, “he says. the man. helps. ” But one thing is also clear: whoever gets a vaccine to market faster will make a lot of money. Suddenly, the automotive and space revolutionary can still hope to be among the pioneers in the pharmaceutical industry.
It is the successful combination of genius and luck, so to speak. Add to that a healthy dose of restlessness. Musk is said to have again had new investment ideas with him. Apparently he has set his sights on the German energy industry and has already surveyed whether customers are interested in a new electricity tariff from Tesla. The Minister of the Economy, Peter Altmaier, and the leadership of the Union’s parliamentary group are said to have given their full support to his projects in Germany. If the market entry of electricity sales is successful, Musk could suddenly shake up the best like Eon or RWE. Musk’s critics will have to get used to it: the limits of the impossible can be changed.
