Tesla sues over air pollution from Fremont, California factory

Tesla is being sued by the nonprofit Environmental Democracy Project, which alleges “continued noncompliance with the Clean Air Act” at the company’s electric vehicle 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.”

Although Tesla has long touted the climate benefits of driving electric cars, its manufacturing practices have been lambasted by environmentalists for years. Tesla landed at No. 89 on the 2023 Top 100 List of Toxic Air Pollutants, an annual survey by the Institute for the Study of Political Economy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The Environmental Protection Agency fined Tesla $275,000 in 2022, saying the company failed to measure, track and keep records of its own emissions or minimize air pollutants from painting operations at the facility.

Separately, Tesla was sued by 25 California counties over its handling of hazardous waste materials at facilities across the state earlier this year and promptly settled with those counties. And in Germany, environmentalists are protesting Tesla’s deforestation to build a factory outside Berlin, as well as the company’s water consumption.

The latest California lawsuit describes Tesla’s environmental violations as “ongoing” and says residents and employees in the surrounding area 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 “unabated emissions” in Fremont that should have been prevented. The agency said Tesla has received 112 notices of violation since 2019 and is now seeking an abatement order that would force the company to implement changes in its factory operations.

“The violations are frequent, repeated and can negatively affect public health and the environment,” the regulator it said in a statement earlier this month.

Air pollution from the assembly plant is the result of equipment that frequently breaks down, allowing emissions to leak directly into the air without proper filtering, regulators said. In addition, Tesla employees or contractors have turned off factory air pollution controls, especially when the company had problems with other paint shop equipment.

The paint shop is where unpainted vehicle bodies are primed, painted and coated before final assembly. Tesla has a history of multiple fires, CNBC previously reported.

In Tesla’s recent quarterly reportthe company maintains that its mission is to “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”

However, spearheading a major reorganization at Tesla recently, CEO Elon Musk has promoted his research and development efforts in artificial intelligence and self-driving software, robotics and humanoid robots, instead of 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 the autonomy problem.” He recently called climate activists “communists,” sharing mocking memes aimed at them on X.

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