At a municipal council meeting last week, a Tesla representative said the company would pay for exploratory drilling to update a decades-old public database of groundwater sources, according to Gruenheide mayor Arne Christiani, who attended the meeting.
If the automaker finds new water sources, it must still apply for the licence to use them, a spokesperson for the local environmental ministry said.
The U.S. automaker has sparked admiration from some and scorn from others for breaking convention in Germany from the get-go, paying upfront to build its plant before all licences were secured - a move that was not illegal but unusual in the risk-averse German business landscape.
Still, even if Tesla gets approval for exploratory drilling, multiple steps remain, including laying the pipes from new wells to the plant.
"That could take a very long time," said Joachim Schroeder, representative of Spreenhagen, one of the areas Tesla wants to explore - "unless Tesla takes over, of course, and does it at Tesla-speed."
Source: Automotive News