Tesla‘s Giga Berlin, the factory Elon Musk once described as one of the most advanced production facilities on the planet, spent 2025 running at roughly 40% of its designed capacity. According to data from Inovev, cited by German newspaper Handelsblatt, the Grünheide plant produced 149,040 vehicles last year. That’s down from 192,801 in 2024 and 211,235 in 2023. The only year that looked worse was 2022, when the factory was still warming up its engines with 50,300 units.
Tesla has repeatedly stated that the Brandenburg site is designed for over 375,000 vehicles annually. On that basis, the 2025 output represents a utilization rate of approximately 39.7%, down from 56.3% the previous year. The prior year’s profit margin sat at a razor-thin 0.74%. To be fair, Inovev’s dataset may include estimates subject to revision, and Tesla declined to comment. Which, naturally, makes everything feel much more reassuring.
The production slump fits neatly into Tesla’s broader 2025 story. Global deliveries fell 9.1%, landing at roughly 1.6 million vehicles, the second consecutive annual decline. Gains in markets like South Korea, Norway, Thailand, and Turkey added nearly 70,000 units for Grünheide-built Model Ys, but those couldn’t offset a 155,000-unit drop across the U.S., China, and Europe.
Against this backdrop, the ongoing talk of expanding the Grünheide site reads like someone pitching a bigger aquarium while the fish are already dying. Musk recently addressed employees via video message, suggesting expansion plans could be reconsidered if the plant wasn’t kept, in his words, free from outside influences.
In the same breath, however, he spoke of ramping up battery cell production at Grünheide, which would be news to the sources who reported in mid-December that cell manufacturing in Brandenburg wouldn’t begin before 2027, after the project had reportedly been shelved since 2022.
Musk also floated future products for the site: the Tesla Cybercab as the likely next big program, plus the humanoid Optimus robot and the Tesla Semi as further possibilities. Apparently, when the Model Y stops selling itself, you pivot to science fiction.
