Tesla started clearing a German forest late Friday to broaden its electric-car manufacturing facility close to Berlin, a key piece of the corporate’s progress plans for Europe.

The automaker is engaged on an software to extend its storage and logistics capability at its web site in Gruenheide, a spokesman stated early Saturday, confirming a report by the Maerkische Onlinezeitung.

Tesla already began the method of clearing some 70 hectares (173 acres) of timber obligatory for the enlargement, the spokesman stated.

“I’m happy that Tesla will proceed,” Joerg Steinbach, the financial system minister for the state of Brandenburg, the place the manufacturing facility is situated, tweeted on Friday. “Our nation is growing into a spot of recent mobility.”

It is unclear how swift any vital enlargement of the manufacturing facility shall be.

Main additions require approvals from environmental authorities and kick off one other session course of with locals, a few of whom have complained the positioning makes use of an excessive amount of water and threatens native wildlife.

The corporate has beforehand stated it needs to broaden the manufacturing facility by about 100 hectares so as to add a freight yard and warehouse to bolster the positioning’s rail hyperlinks and stockpile components.

CEO Elon Musk handed over the primary 30 Mannequin Ys constructed on the manufacturing facility to clients in March after months of bureaucratic setbacks. The corporate complained at one level final yr about “irritating” delays to ultimate approval of the challenge and stated the method was slowing down Germany’s industrial transformation.