Berlin

A majority of Tesla Gigafactory Berlin workers voted against union representatives of IG Metall in their new work council, but the union has still made significant progress. Work councils in Germany work almost like little governments within companies to represent the workers. They can work with unions or be independent of them. Workers at Gigafactory Berlin had to vote on a new worker council yesterday. Tagesspiegel reports that IG Metall has made a lot of progress with taking about 40% of the…

Ludmila Ulitskaya began her career as a scientist at the Institute of General Genetics in Moscow. In 1970, she was fired for reading and distributing western literature in samizdat (self-published) form. Today, she is one of the most significant writers in Russia. Her works have been translated into 47 languages and have won Russia’s most prestigious literary awards. Ulitskaya has been vocal in her opposition to the Russia-Ukraine war, and, as a result, had to flee Russia for Berlin, Germany, where she currently lives.…

Tesla announced that it restarted production at Gigafactory Berlin today after an arson attack killed the power at the factory earlier this month. Earlier this month, we reported on Tesla having to shut down Gigafactory Berlin after some people set a high voltage pylon on fire, which killed the factory’s power supply. It was beleived that a group of environmentalists who have been targeting Tesla were behind the attack, which has since been confirmed. At the time, it wasn’t clear how long it would…

Elon Musk says that Tesla will bring Tesla Semi, its electric semi truck, to production at Gigafactory Berlin. However, it will be important to start volume production in the US first. The CEO attended the reopening of Gigafactory Berlin after it had to shut down for just over a week following an arson attack that crippled its power supply. Tesla is currently only making the Model Y at Gigafactory Berlin. Local German media are reporting that Musk mentioned at the event that Tesla is looking…

Giga Berlin Fly Through 2.0 Tesla has shared an epic fly-through video (above) shot at its Giga Berlin facility in Germany. The electric automaker’s three-and-a-half-minute fly-through appears to cover much of the sprawling factory, which, since its official opening two years ago, has been manufacturing Tesla Model Y vehicles and battery cells. The footage reveals the extraordinary amount of cutting-edge technology that Tesla is deploying — along with a good number of human workers — to make the Model Y crossover…

Tesla had to shut down Gigafactory Berlin today after a significant power outage that may have been caused by sabotage. It has been a difficult couple of weeks for Tesla’s Gigafactory Berlin, the automaker’s only factory in Europe. First, it had to halt production due to supply issues amid problems with cargo ships getting through the Gulf of Aden and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait due to the civil war in Yemen. Then, it was the local residents of Grünheide, the municipality where Tesla Gigafactory…

Tesla is now having to deal with literal tree-hugging activists camping in the forest to prevent the Gigafactory Berlin expansion. Gigafactory Berlin hasn’t been a frictionless project for Tesla. The automaker has faced strong opposition and, surprisingly, primarily from environmentalists. Their main issues have been the deforestation needed to build the factory, and now the factory expansion, and the water usage. Tesla has done its best to address their issues by greatly adjusting its water usage…

An Israeli film-maker who won one of the top prizes at the Berlin film festival has said German officials’ description of the awards ceremony as “antisemitic” has led to death threats and the physical intimidation of family members, causing him to hold off plans to return to Israel.Yuval Abraham, 29, was on Saturday awarded the Berlinale’s best documentary award for No Other Land, which charts the eradication of Palestinian villages in Masafer Yatta in the West Bank.Abraham’s acceptance speech, in which he decried a…

Mati Diop’s documentary on the first major return of looted treasures from Europe to Africa beat several veteran directors to the top prize at the Berlin film festival.The 41-year-old Senegalese-French director’s one-hour film, Dahomey, follows a hoard of 26 treasures on their 2021 return journey from Paris to Benin, from where they were looted by French forces almost a century and a half earlier.Dahomey shows the celebrations in Benin’s economic capital, Cotonou, that greeted the priceless artefacts, including a towering…

Should we be talking about cinema at this year’s Berlin film festival? Not everyone thought so. After a post on X about a podcast discussion I took part in here, someone responded with a photo of Jean-Luc Godard at 1968’s politically fraught Cannes film festival, making his famous accusation: “And you’re talking tracking shots and closeups! You’re idiots!”The 2024 Berlinale might not have been as turbulent as Cannes 68, but given the state of the world, mere movie talk risked seeming frivolous. This year’s festival was…