Tesla to hire 1,000 more workers at only European plant as demand up

Tesla plans to hire an additional 1,000 workers for its plant outside Berlin, the US carmaker said on Thursday as it seeks to ramp up production at its only European facility.

Tesla, which is owned by US tech magnate Elon Musk, said it plans to increase vehicle production at the German plant by 20% to 7,500 units per week from October - or some 375,000 annually.

The planned new jobs come on top of 1,000 additional staff announced back in April, who were to be hired by the end of June, with Tesla citing an increase in demand.

A Tesla spokeswoman told dpa that the company has so far recruited some 700 workers as part of that batch, with hiring expected to be completed in July.

From July, production is to be ramped up by a fifth to 6,200 vehicles per week, according to the carmaker.

Tesla opened its only European plant, dubbed the Berlin-Brandenburg Gigafactory, in March 2022, and initially aimed to produce 500,000 cars per year.

In the long term, Tesla plans to ramp up vehicle production to 1,000,000 units a year.

The 2,000 new planned hires would bring the overall number working in car production at the plant in the town of Grünheide to 12,700.

In May, Tesla also announced plans to recruit more than 1,500 new employees for battery cell production in Germany, after Musk had vowed back in 2020 to turn the Grünheide plant into the world’s largest battery factory.

Under the plans, Tesla is to invest just under $250 million to create the conditions for the annual production of 18 gigawatt hours of battery cells.

Recruitment in this area is also "in full swing," the spokeswoman said. "We need a great many skilled workers here, which is why recruitment is proving somewhat more difficult," she added.

In addition to the total of 3,500 new hires planned this year so far, around 500 contract workers are also set to be taken on permanently in the course of the year.

After seeing a slump in demand last year, 5,111 Teslas were registered in Germany in May alone, an increase of 332% compared to the same month in 2025, according to the Federal Motor Transport Authority.