BERLIN — Elon Musk’s plan to turn a remote wooded lot in Germany into the home of a state-of-the-art car factory in less than two years sent an unequivocal message to local authorities: make it happen or lose it.
Eager to host Tesla’s first European plant near Berlin — a potential 4 billion-euro ($4.5 billion) development — German officials assured the company’s CEO fast-track navigation through the country’s notorious bureaucracy.
In recent years, onerous regulations have held up projects from a large train station in Stuttgart to Berlin’s first new airport since the end of the Cold War.
