New Stories

"Factory" seems overblown here: the facility is described as a "battery factory, servicing facility and vehicle showroom", nothing to do with assembly.

I have no idea why they're proposing to raze a park for this when there's plenty of derelict actual car industry buildings left around Adelaide from the Holden/Mitsubishi days.

BLKNSLVR · 1d ago

There is, in fact, a walled off area within the old Mitsubishi facility that has a big Tesla logo on it. It's freaking tiny though, relative to the space needed for a "battery factory, servicing facility and vehicle showroom".

The old Mitsubishi facility has been turned into the "Tonsley Innovation District", it's quite an oddly interesting place with disparate little technology hubs / companies setup in there. I've visited because there's a lot of covered open space with polished concrete flooring which is great for inline skating on. It's a popular place for kids parties with skates, scooters, bikes, radio controlled cars, etc.

I don't know if there would be enough spare contiguous space there for a Telsa facility now.

https://renewalsa.sa.gov.au/projects/tonsley-innovation-dist...

Edited to add:

Here's a youtube video of someone skating around the facility: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HzUK7KTzNc

At 3:54 the Tesla bit is coming into view on the right hand side (direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HzUK7KTzNc&t=234s)

ggm · 1d ago

Why they didnt go for a brownfield is really unclear. Yes, there is a lot of anti Musk sentiment. But people want jobs, and battery related industries is a good line of business to be in.

There has to be some land-value/speculative play quality to this, because a greenfield is about the worst pick for this kind of thing.

quinndexter · 1d ago

re. greenfield:

state-owned land, which has been closed to the public since 2016 due to heavy contamination.

defrost · 1d ago

I understand much of the objection as being the same for any proposed development of public land that's open for walking and part of the green space of a community.

This particular site has that appearance with a lurking twist:

  City of Marion councillor Sarah Luscombe has urged the council to “think really carefully” about other options for the state-owned land, which has been closed to the public since 2016 due to heavy contamination.

"Heavy contamination" has the tone of a long past toxic industry, a tannery, something electrochemical, making it perhaps just greenfield in living memory.

ggm · 1d ago

Certainly does happen. Up here in Brisbane some "parkland" by the river has both post-industrial waste (town gas residues) and acid sulphate soils. Bits of inner sydney its Cyanide from printing industry, Lead from backyard smelting. you name it.

But as others have noted with the retreat of the car industry it's not like there aren't other brownfield sites in S.A.

000ooo000 · 1d ago

Worth keeping in mind as one reads this is that News.com.au is pretty widely considered to be trash in Australia.

ljsprague · 1d ago

The electric industry is "planet-destroying". Keep this in mind when people associate the right with Orwellianism.