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Nearly 1,000 protesters gathered outside the Tesla super factory in Glenn Hyde, Brandenburg, Germany, to protest against Tesla's proposed expansion plan, CCTV News reported. According to the released video, dozens of people wearing blue hats and masks came out of the nearby woods and tried to break into Tesla's factory.

Reported that since the protest began on March 8, the German Tesla factory had previously submitted a plan to expand the plant to the city government of Glenn Hyde, but local residents thought that the expansion project would pollute the water source, so they held a demonstration and asked the municipal government not to approve the expansion plan. Of course, it is not clear whether the protests will affect local official approval for the expansion of Tesla's factory.

It is understood that the Tesla Berlin factory is Tesla's fifth factory in the world and the second overseas factory after the Shanghai factory. It was completed in March 2023 and was first put into production of Model Y models. Under the condition of full capacity production, it can produce 500000 cars a year. It is worth mentioning that the construction of Tesla's Berlin factory was not easy and was hindered by environmental protection organizations at the early stage of its construction, because the construction of the factory needed to cut down a lot of forests, which environmental groups thought would cause damage to the environment. Local residents are also opposed to the construction of the factory, saying that deforestation will affect water resources and threaten local water quality and air quality.

On July 18, 2023, according to a document submitted to local officials, Tesla plans to double the size of the Berlin superfactory in Germany to an annual production capacity of 1 million vehicles, making it the most productive pure electric car factory in Europe. Tesla has submitted documents to the local area and obtained preliminary approval to carry out partial renovation of the factory, but he still has to wait until the completion of the environmental assessment study to obtain full approval.

On February 20, 2024, the Greenhead government released the results of a referendum with high resident participation and most residents opposed the expansion of Tesla's factory. Although the referendum was not legally efficient and the final decision was left to the local government, the referendum result hindered Tesla's ambition to dominate the European tram market.

On March 6, 2024, Tesla's Berlin Super Factory stopped production due to a power outage. Tesla and local German authorities said that preliminary investigations showed that unidentified perpetrators were suspected of deliberately burning high-voltage transmission lines near Tesla, causing power outages at Tesla's only manufacturing plant in Europe. Tesla was forced to stop production at the German factory. It is understood that Tesla stopped production in the Berlin super factory in Germany until March 17, longer than previously expected, and the loss of production is estimated to amount to hundreds of millions of euros.

Tesla released his first-quarter 2024 results after the US stock market opened on April 23rd. According to the data, Tesla's operating income in the first quarter of 2024 was US $21.301 billion, down 8.69% from the same period last year and 15.36% from the previous month, lower than market expectations. It was also the first year-on-year decline in operating revenue since 2020 and the biggest decline since 2012. In terms of profits, Tesla's performance was even less optimistic, with a net profit of only $1.13 billion in the first quarter, down 55.07% from a year earlier and below market expectations of $1.9 billion. During the reporting period, Tesla's gross profit margin was 17.4%, compared with 17.6% in the previous quarter and 19.3% in the same period.

Tesla's latest financial report is obviously "disappointed", which is mainly due to market concerns on car delivery. In the first quarter of this year, Tesla delivered 386000 new cars worldwide, down 8.5% from the same period last year and far below Wall Street's forecast of 449000. It is understood that this is the first time that Tesla's delivery has fallen below 400000 vehicles since the third quarter of 2022, and it is also the first quarterly delivery decline since the second quarter of 2020, when the decline was mainly due to the epidemic.

For the reasons for the decline in sales, Tesla attributed it to "force majeure." First, the outbreak of the Red Sea crisis disrupted Tesla's parts supply and temporarily suspended production at his plant in Berlin; second, in March, German environmental activists set fire to infrastructure near the Berlin plant, resulting in the loss of sufficient operating capacity of the Tesla plant, which led to the suspension of production; third, after the Model 3 upgrade, the Fremont plant in California was still in the early capacity climbing stage, affecting Tesla's production and sales. In the first quarter of 2024, Tesla CEO Musk said he would speed up the introduction of more affordable models, and cheap models are expected to be on the market in early 2025, even in late 2024.

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