Aerial view of Tesla’s Fremont factory in Fremont, California on April 24, 2024.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Tesla was sued by the nonprofit Environmental Democracy Project, which accused the electric car company of “continued failure to comply with the Clean Air Act” at its assembly plant in Fremont, California.
In a lawsuit filed Monday in San Francisco federal court, the environmental group accused Tesla of “violating this law hundreds of times since January 2021 and emitting harmful pollution into communities surrounding the factory.”
While Tesla has long touted the climate benefits of driving electric cars, its manufacturing practices have been condemned by environmentalists for years. Tesla ranks 89th on the 2023 list of 100 toxic air polluting companies, according to an annual research report by the Institute of Political Economy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The EPA fined Tesla $275,000 in 2022, saying the company failed to measure, track and maintain records of its own emissions and failed to minimize air pollutants from its factory painting operations.
In addition, earlier this year, Tesla was sued by 25 California counties for disposing of hazardous waste at factories across the state, and quickly reached settlements with these counties. In Germany, environmentalists have been protesting Tesla’s clearing of forests to build a factory outside Berlin, as well as the company’s water use.
California’s latest lawsuit calls Tesla’s environmental violations “ongoing” and says residents and employees in surrounding areas have been exposed to “excessive levels of air pollution, including nitrogen oxides, arsenic, cadmium and other harmful chemicals.”
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Environmental watchdog the Bay Area Air Quality Management Board recently accused Tesla of allowing Fremont to “not reduce emissions” when it should have been avoided. The agency said Tesla has received 112 violation notices since 2019 and is seeking an emissions reduction order forcing the company to make changes to its factory operations.
“Such violations occur frequently and repeatedly and can have negative impacts on public health and the environment,” the regulator said in a statement earlier this month.
Regulators say air pollution at assembly plants is caused by equipment that frequently breaks down, causing emissions to be blown directly into the air without proper filtering. Additionally, Tesla employees or contractors allegedly turned off the factory’s air pollution control systems, particularly when problems occurred with the company’s other paint shop equipment.
The paint shop is where unpainted bodies are primed, painted and coated before final assembly. According to previous reports by CNBC, Tesla has had multiple fires.
In Tesla’s most recent quarterly report, the company maintained that its mission is to “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”
However, in leading Tesla’s recent massive reorganization, Chief Executive Musk has been pushing its research and development efforts in artificial intelligence and self-driving software, robotaxis and humanoid robots, rather than electric vehicles and solar products.
Musk told investors on the company’s first-quarter earnings call that thinking about Tesla and its value “is almost entirely about solving the self-driving problem.” He recently called climate activists “commies” and shared mocking memes directed at them on X.
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