Tesla’s only European factory, the Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg, was evacuated earlier today due to a major power outage, caused by a fire that damaged a power line tower. The incident is being investigated as an act of arson, something that is supported by the fact that a group has claimed responsibility for setting the fire, a group known as Vulkangruppe (Volcano Group).
The group appears to be an anti-capitalist extreme environmental group, and they don’t seem too fond of SUVs, either, especially Tesla ones. The eco-benefits of electric SUVs also don’t appear to be a compelling argument for them, at least based on what I could gather from their very long statement.
Honestly, it wouldn’t kill them to get one of their members to do some editing or at least get some more illustrations in that massive block of text. Oh, no one was hurt in the incident, it’s worth mentioning.
Der Ministerpräsdient schloss auch nicht aus, dass es sich um eine Form des Terrorismus handeln könnte. "Sollte sich der Verdacht erhärten, wird der Generalbundesanwalt die Ermittlungen übernehmen müssen", so #Woidke. #Tesla @Tesla_Berlin 2/3
— Staatskanzlei Brandenburg (@staatskanzleibb) March 5, 2024
The attack was condemned by Brandenburg’s Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke who said
“Attacks on our critical infrastructure are a form of terrorism,”
… and it is worth noting that the suspected arson did cause power outages not just to the factory, which was temporarily shut down, but also to parts of Berlin.
The Tesla Gigafctory has been the target of a number of environmental protests, with 80 to 100 protesters setting up camp in the forest by the factory since late February, an area that the factory may expand into.
In their statement, the Volcano Group gave their reasons, lots of reasons, but here’s just a taste as they claim responsibility:
We sabotaged Tesla today. Because Tesla in Grünau eats up earth, resources, people, labor and spits out 6,000 SUVs, killing machines and monster trucks per week. Our gift for March 8th is to shut down Tesla.
Because the complete destruction of the Gigafactory and with it the sawing off of “technofascists” like Elon Musk are a step on the path to liberation from patriarchy.
They also consider Tesla cars as surveillance devices, and weapons:
The totalitarian technological attack then looks like this. A Tesla vehicle is a surveillance device in public spaces. It is equipped with high-resolution cameras from Samsung all around. Samsung is a company that is a leader in weapons technology, among other things. According to the manufacturer, the cameras record up to 250 meters. In “guard mode” they film everything around the vehicle and guarantee that the driver is monitored even while driving. The driver is already a free, integral part of the Telsa universe and a guinea pig. The artificial intelligence will register every movement and every mistake of the driver and monetize it in order to train the autonomous driving software with the data.
Tesla is militarizing the streets. His moving tanks are weapons of war. The car as a weapon. The street the battlefield. Tesla has now released 856 hp instead of 9mm: “If you get into a fight with other cars, you will win,” says Elon Musk. A Tesla is a status symbol, statement and propaganda at the same time: for contempt for humanity, limitless destruction through “progress” and an imperial, patriarchal way of life.
The group also provided a good bit of detailed information about the logistics of how they committed the attack:
Our goal with our sabotage is to cause the largest possible blackout of the Gigafactory. We have ruled out endangering our lives and those of other people. The shutdown of production in the automotive industry is the beginning of the end of a world of destruction. Our bonfire of liberation was aimed at powering Tesla. We wanted to hit the overhead line of a high-voltage pylon in the connection to the underground cables at the waterproof cable sleeves and short-circuit the six 110 kV cables in it. To do this, we opened the shaft to the cable sleeves, which was half under water. We still flambéed power lines that were sticking out and, in combination with water, perhaps created a short circuit. Damage to cable joints is often time-consuming and expensive to repair. At the same time, we started the fire big and high with lots of car tires to weaken the steel structure and cause the mast to become unstable.
A steel mast only melts at around 1300 -1500 degrees. Since we were working with a heat generation of around 900 degrees, the aim was to change the mechanical properties of the mast. As a steel structure under load, a rapid, large fire from 500 degrees upwards can cause loss of strength and alter the metal’s stiffness, tensile strength and elasticity. This can lead to buckling effects, twisting or deflection. That was our intention.
That’s some helpful advice on setting steel power line towers on fire and getting them to collapse, I suppose. I’m glad they decided against doing anything that could endanger anyone’s life, but setting electrical infrastructure on fire isn’t helping anyone, anywhere. No point is being proven here, the damage is to facilities that are used by everyone in the area, not just the Tesla factory, and that fire could have spread and actually hurt people. A local source has told us that about 3,000 homes/60,000 residents in Berlin were without power, though power seems to be restored.
Factory operation is expected to remain stopped for the rest of the week, and repairs are estimated to be in the €100 million range, though how that number is divided between the Tesla factory and the local infrastructure isn’t clear.
Plus, don’t they know that this is just going to let Elon play a victim? Nobody’s opinion is being changed by this act. If you don’t like Tesla or Elon or SUVs or capitalism – and they may have some valid issues to complain about – setting power lines on fire isn’t going to magically make anything better, and if you do like any of those things, well, now you can enjoy the warm blanket of sympathy, I suppose.
I think the takeaway here is that setting public power infrastructure on fire is not a great way to make a point, and more concise manifestos would be appreciated.
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“We want to save the planet so we started a tire fire”
Go watch “Woman at War” right now. Nevermind that it is an Icelandic film with subtitles. I’m pretty sure the protagonist is behind this act of sabotage.
I absolutely cannot take these people seriously. I just can’t. It has nothing to do with whether or not we need to address the climate – it has to do with them being resentful destructive fuckwads convinced of their own awesomeness. I wonder how much carbon was released into the atmosphere by the fire? Didn’t stop to ask yourselves that, did you, you assholes?
By their fruits you shall know them, some dead guy said long ago. Their fruits are rotten. If I was as resentful as they are, I would counter their “protest” by buying a pallet of R134 refrigerant, and just opening all the valves and spraying it straight into the air. But I’m not going to do that, because unlike them, I am an adult who is aware of the consequences of his own actions, no matter how convinced I may be of the rightness and righteousness of my motivation. I don’t have the right to injure other people.
You’d think Tesla of anyone would have had battery backups and/or solar panels to keep things humming. Its kinda what they do.
Oh well time to bring in the diesel generators…again.
If we hope to stem the mass destruction that inevitably attends our economic system (and to alter the sense of entitlement – the sense of contempt – on which it is based), fundamental historical, social, economic, and technological forces need to be pondered, understood, and redirected. Behavior won’t change much without a fundamental change in consciousness.
Does anyone really believe that a pattern of exploitation old as our civilization can be halted legislatively, judicially, or through any means other than an absolute rejection of the mindset that engineers the exploitation in the first place, followed by actions based on that rejection? This means if we want to stop the destruction, we have to root out the mindset.
So often, environmentalists and others working to slow the destruction are capable of plainly describing the problems (Who wouldn’t be? The problems are neither subtle nor cognitively challenging), yet when faced with the emotionally daunting task of fashioning a response to these clear and clearly insoluble problems, we generally suffer a failure of nerve and imagination.
The true question is: How do we change this ancient, exploitative human consciousness?
(raises hand)
“I got it! My cousin Pete’s got a bunch of old tires. My thinking is… if we pile em all up against that there electric pole and we lights em on fire…
Well that’s bound to get noticed right! I mean… then they gotta close the factory for at least a week, maybe two due to the meta.. metal.. metallurgical damage the fire might cause to that there electric pole.”
That was one impressive left-wing conspiratorial word salad by the Volcano Group, but they left out the obligatory references to climate change and Tesla’s inconsistent build quality.
Funny, my QAnon-loving sister always told me that jet fuel can’t melt steel beams. But apparently a bunch of tires can? I just don’t know what to believe any more…
A conspiratorial co-worker now believes that the towers never fell.
To be fair, that is physically impossible on a flat earth.
Reminds me of the scene in Young Frankenstein where the irate villagers come to the castle looking to kill the monster.
And so it begins.
I’ve been saying since 2020 that if we didn’t see drastic movement on the climate crisis, people would start taking matters into their own hands, and that we’d start missing the harmlessness of the superglue protests. It’s not going to be pretty, surgical, or well-researched. It’ll be ugly and desperate.
I’m not trying to condone infrastructure damage, just trying to explain that when good solutions are ignored, people start grasping for any solution, even bad ones.
As for targeting Tesla specifically, I believe that’s a consequence of overlapping fringe movements.
Alternate theory:
What if we have been deliberately bullshitted about the climate, and had a social contagion of climate anxiety planted in our brains by people who are maneuvering within their own secret agenda?
What if too many people have been led to believe that calm, sober reckoning with our ecological issues is not the way, but the cheap thrill of destruction is absolutely necessary, so that you at least FEEL like you’re doing something??
What if the entire goddamn planet is not going to die in 12 years like we were told?
And with regard to “grasping for any solution, even bad ones”: how long until the first dozen or so Just Stop Oil protestors take a seat in the middle of the street in front of the wrong driver in the wrong vehicle on the wrong day – imagine Michael Douglas in “Falling Down” behind the wheel of, say, a cement truck – and promptly get run right the fuck over, to THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE, which I will absolutely join?
Please don’t do this here. This is a nice site to talk about automotive news. I’m sure your ignorant theories would be well-received on most of the rest of the internet.
Well, that would make it the sort of place where “I can sorta see their point” is unwelcome as well, right?
How about we just all agree that this was an ill-advised dick move, and leave it at that, rather than granting these buttcheeks one shred of any benefit of the doubt? Because arson is wrong, full stop. As is blocking traffic.
Yeahhhhh the sentiment in that last paragraph isn’t any better than what the people detailed in this article are doing. Yeesh.
As long as we’re talking about heading off irrational responses, let’s talk about ALL OF THEM.
These assholes will get themselves killed. They are effing around. I pray they don’t find out.
…kinda.
“Let’s save the Environment!”
“Yeah – Lets sink an Oil Tanker!”
Oh – Wait…
Well, all you’d have to do is tow it beyond the environment.
https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM?si=v0lc26HmnWz-isc5
Let’s fight against environmental destruction by blazing the biggest fire we can.
What a bunch of assholes
“We had to pollute the atmosphere to save it.”
Elon is about to get loaded on ketamine and set Autopilot to Seek and Destroy mode. I hope Volcano Group doesn’t find themselves being a pedestrian anywhere within a 500 meter radius of a Model Y.
I sure hope they cross in front of a Cybertruck driven by a sleeping teenager