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Comment by Koremat6666 | Hacker News Reader

Why should a GIGA factory be located near the airport and in a city ? A factory meant to mass produce something should be somewhere the land is cheap should not it be ?

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The area just south of Berlin (it's not in the city) is suitable for the gigafactory for the same reason it was chosen as the site for the new airport: there's not much else there, so you can build big.

Of course that applies to many other places in Brandenburg with similar distance to Berlin, but the airport means that transportation to and from the city has been (or will be) built out for higher capacity.

The area immediately around major airports is usually not terribly desirable. I don’t know about Berlin, specifically.

Also it has to be close enough to the city to make commuting from the population center reasonable, no?

The new train line to the airport is scheduled to open in 2025, then it should only take 20 minutes there from the city centre.

Berlin is in a special situation due to the history. As only west Berlin belonged to west Germany and east Berlin and all the surrounding areas were part of the DDR, there is still a steep fall-off in industrialization as soon as you leave the direct Berlin area. Also in the DDR the industrial centers were in other cities than Berlin. So there should be plenty of cheap real estate not too far from Berlin.

Also in Bavaria, once you leave Munich (BMW), Augsburg or Ingoldstadt (Audi), there is quite a steep drop-off in density. The traditional high-density industrial regions of Germany are rather in the west and south-west.

If it is directly under the flight path the noise would make it less desirable and lower costs while the easy access to labor could possibly make up for the rest of the land costs.

Surely you're not worried about airplane noise in a car factory?

AngryData is making the point that it is cheap to build there because no one wants to live there.

As the poster above you wrote: 'East Europe wages' with 'West Europe capabilities'

That is about as good as it gets.

They probably got the land cheap and commitment to build at another record breaking pace.

Airports are normally located where land is cheap (example - "Denver" air port)

supply chain, labor?

I mean we used to build factories on the river for that reason. Made a royal mess, but easy to ship things in and out.

Why not both when you can have it? Clearly there is some just right place in Berlin

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