Tesla’s Berlin factory will support flashy multi-layered paint jobs

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has revealed that the company is building a next-generation paint shop at Giga Berlin, Germany. In a podcast episode with the Third Road Tesla crew, Musk and Sandy Munro said that the facility will allow Tesla to add multiple layers of paint to each vehicle for unique looks and finishes that are nearly impossible to achieve with traditional painting methods.

“If you can do something like lay down a gloss layer, then lay down a layer with color tint, then lay down another gloss layer, you can get kind of a 3D feeling to the paint,” Musk explained. “It just pops. It’s so much better than anything else. We’re going to do this in Berlin for the first time.” Obviously, this fancy paintwork allows Tesla to offer an even more exclusive option to buyers, but it may also help address some criticism the company has had regarding paint defects on previous Tesla models. For a price, of course.

This won’t apply to Tesla’s $40,000 Cybertruck, however, as Musk has reconfirmed that wrapping will be the only finishing option for the vehicle, which comes in a cheerful stainless steel gray by default. First noted back in November and reiterated again today it seems that owners will have to apply wraps to achieve their desired color and patterns, a wrap being a thin plastic sheet that’s professionally applied to a vehicle body and looks like paint. Will Tesla itself offer this option to Cybertruck buyers? That’s unclear at this stage, although Musk’s tweet does seem to indicate that job will fall to the vehicle’s owners (“you”).