Living across the street from the old factory in Berlin that was going to house a Google office until the local anti-gentrification movement started to protest,

Living across the street from the old factory in Berlin that was going to house a Google office until the local anti-gentrification movement started to protest, I'm not surprised. If you build a factory around here, with as much publicity as Tesla gets, you are going to see protests. There are probably two rare species of mosquitos being released in that forest right now. But just the existence of opposition isn't very meaningful. Of a few million people, some will oppose manna raining from heaven. Does this have a chance to derail the project? Absolutely not! Germany is getting quite nervous of its car industry doing an impressive 4-way re-enactment of Nokia's fate, and a significant Tesla presence is just about the best thing imaginable. The local politicians here in Berlin and Brandenburg (the state surrounding Berlin that includes the actual factory) are even more motivated, because it (still) lacks industry. Not one of the top-30 public companies in Germany is located in the east, for example. It's also important to mention that the concept of "protests" has significant different meaning here than elsewhere, especially the US: A protest is seen as one method/venue/institution among the many that make up "civil society". It carries no connotation of lawlessness[0], and any average citizen, even the blandest centrist, will attend many protests during their life. It's often a social event as well, and can include entertainment, somewhat similar to parades in the US. 0: some specific protests, like May Day, tend(ed) to involve some violence. But these number in the single digits, while there are 15 protests per day on average, just in Berlin.