There aren't any competitors in the state, and there has been basically no politically influential pushback, so that line of argument doesn't really make sense.

There is no overt pushback. That doesn't mean that there is none. And the presence and activity of the usual environmental NIMBY organisations like Deutsche Umwelthilfe, NABU, BUND, etc. point to at least some covert opposition, since those organisations happily serve as fronts for non-environmental interests.

And state politics, especially in the east, is rife with people using it as a stepping stone to the federal level. Famously there once were more prime ministers from the west governing the east than eastern-born ones.

Anything that's not just wild speculation of what people could be doing, although to no apparent effect?

Since it is about corruption, of course there is only wild speculation. Maybe in 20 years someone will confess in their posthumous memoirs or something. Until then, there is only speculation, inference and the recognition of parallels to cases in the past.

I mean, if the options are (a) a grand corrupt conspiracy or (b) Tesla turns out to be bad at doing a thing, I think Occam's razor would suggest (b), especially given that it's _Tesla_. This would not be their first rodeo with screwing things up.

Wait, got any source to back up the claim that those environmental organizations are corrupt fronts for business interests?

Oh thats so not true. The Brandenburg (the state) Ministerpräsident (like Gouverneur) and his team really like to be a big car producing Bundesland. We have Baden-Württemberg (Mercedes, Porsche), Bayern (BMW, Audi) and Niedersachen (VW HQ) and to some extend also NRW (biggest EU plant of Ford) and Sachsen (VW plant). But there is not a single plant Brandenburg. So to be in the game is something they really wanna happen. Especially with something that hyped like tesla. But still there are rules, and you have to follow them.

Yes, and I remember that the people watched the project with a skeptic eye. It was neither pessimistic nor optimistic, just cautious. It's just an impression though.

I don't think there is any other car factory in Brandenburg. So there would only be interference from the federal level down. Which wouldn't matter that much in my opinion.

You could be right. It's Tesla, so the thinking was probably more along the lines of "Germany will do whatever we want because we're Tesla."

They don't have to buy politicians, because every politician knows that Germany's economic fate is directly tied to them. Which isn't the case for Tesla and never will be. German auto manufacturers long know that the real competition for E-mobility isn't Tesla.