Hundreds of protesters clash with riot police as they try to storm Tesla factory over environmental concerns
10 May 2024, 19:22
Hundreds of environmental protesters have been seen clashing with police at a Tesla factory in Germany during attempts to storm the facility.
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The activists gathered near the Grunheide factory, Tesla's only European production base, near Berlin in Germany on Friday.
They were seen carrying banners bearing complaints about the amount of water being used at the factory, and calling for public transport to be used instead of private cars.
The protesters have been demonstrating in a forest near the plant since February about plans to cut down trees to make space for the factory to be expanded.
Police spokesman Mario Heinemann said that "hundreds of participants ran into the forest and tried to get on to the Tesla site."
He added: "We prevented that with our forces."
Footage shared on social media showed protesters dressed in black, many of whom were wearing masks, sprinting towards the factory boundary.
Riot police officers used pepper spray to turn them back. The activists also blocked a nearby road and a railway line, police said, and set off fireworks at an airfield where Tesla stores new cars.
Officers detained several people temporarily, German news service dpa reported.
Ole Becker, a spokesman for Disrupt Tesla, a group that helped organise the protest, said:"Companies like Tesla are happy to destroy habitats for their own profit.
"Instead of SUVs for the few, we must build buses and trains for the many."
It comes after a protest in March, when a suspected arson attack on an electricity pylon claimed by a far-left group knocked out power supplies to the factory for nearly a week, interrupting production.
Company chief executive Elon Musk at the time called the culprits the "dumbest eco-terrorists on Earth" and said anti-Tesla protesters were misguided for aiming to halt production of electric vehicles rather than those powered by fossil fuels.
