Elon Musk took aim at a militant group that claimed responsibility for a fire which halted production at Tesla’s German factory on Tuesday.
The far-left “Volcano Group” set fire to an electricity pylon near the plant that caused a power cut, they said in a letter posted on website kontrapolis.info.
“We sabotaged Tesla today,” the activists claimed. “Our gift for March 8th is to shut down Tesla.”
They said in the letter that Tesla “consumes earth, resources, people, workers and in return spits out 6,000 SUVs, killer cars and monster trucks each week.”
Musk said on X: “These are either the dumbest eco-terrorists on Earth or they’re puppets of those who don’t have good environmental goals. Stopping production of electric vehicles, rather than fossil fuel vehicles, ist extrem dumm.”
Police were notified about the burning pylon at about 5:15 a.m. local time on Tuesday, and firefighters were dispatched, a Brandenburg police spokesperson told Business Insider. An investigation into the suspected arson was ongoing.
Employees on the night shift were evacuated from the factory in nearby Grünheide, Bild reported. Tesla told the newspaper it did not expect to resume production quickly following a consultation with energy provider E.DIS.
The power-grid operator Stromnetz Berlin said the Berlin districts of Müggelheim, Rahnsdorf, and parts of Neukölln were affected by outages, DW reported. About 2,000 households were without power.
Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
The EV maker’s plans to expand its only manufacturing plant in Europe hit a snag last month as a majority of Grünheide residents voted against the proposals, The Guardian reported. Tesla told the publication at the time that it would now “seek dialogue with all participants to decide on further steps.”
Environmental activists protesting the plans started occupying the forest near the factory last Wednesday, DW reported. They planned to camp in the forest for a week in a bid to block Tesla’s expansion of its gigafactory. The expansion would mean clearing over 100 hectares of forest, the outlet added.
Production at the Grünheide plant was also temporarily brought to a standstill in January because of militant attacks on vessels in the Red Sea. The pause took place from January 29 to February 11, Reuters reported.
