An aerial view of the Tesla Fremont factory on April 24, 2024 in Fremont, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Tesla He sued the nonprofit Environmental Democracy Project, which alleges “continued failure to comply with the Clean Air Act” at the electric vehicle company’s assembly plant in Fremont, California.
In the lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco on Monday, the environmental group accused Tesla of violating that law “hundreds of times since January 2021, emitting harmful pollution into the neighborhoods surrounding the Factory.”
While Tesla has long touted the climate benefits of driving electric vehicles, its manufacturing practices have been criticized by environmentalists for years. Tesla landed at 89th on the 2023 Top 100 Air Pollutants list, an annual study by the Institute for Political Economy Research at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The Environmental Protection Agency fined Tesla $275,000 in 2022, saying the company failed to measure, monitor and keep records of its own emissions or minimize air pollutants from paint operations at the facility.
Separately, Tesla sued 25 California counties over the handling of hazardous waste at facilities across the state earlier this year and promptly settled with those counties. And in Germany, environmentalists are protesting Tesla’s clearing of forests to build a factory outside Berlin, as well as the company’s water consumption.
The latest California lawsuit described Tesla’s environmental violations as “ongoing” and said nearby residents and workers have been exposed to “excessive amounts of air pollution, including nitrogen oxides, arsenic, cadmium and other harmful chemicals.”
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District, an environmental regulator, recently accused Tesla of allowing “persistent emissions” in Fremont that should have been prevented. The agency said Tesla has received 112 infringement notices since 2019 and is now seeking an abatement order that would force the company to implement changes to its factory operations.
“Breaches are frequent, repeated and can adversely affect public health and the environment,” the regulator he said in a statement earlier this month.
Air pollution from the assembly plant is a result of equipment that often breaks down, allowing emissions to vent directly into the air without proper filtering, regulators said. In addition, Tesla employees or contractors have reportedly shut down air pollution controls at the factory, particularly when the company was experiencing problems with other paint shop equipment.
The paint shop is where unpainted vehicle bodies are primed, painted and coated prior to final assembly. Tesla’s has a history of repeated fires, CNBC previously reported.
At Tesla recent quarterly reportthe company stated that its mission is to “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”
But spearheading a massive reorganization at Tesla lately, CEO Elon Musk has pushed research and development efforts toward artificial intelligence and self-driving software, robotics and humanoid robots, rather than electric cars and solar power products.
Musk told investors on the company’s first-quarter earnings call to think about Tesla and its value “almost entirely in terms of solving autonomy.” He recently called climate activists “communists”, sharing derisive memes targeting them at X.
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