The police prevent environmental activists from storming the Tesla factory in Germany

German police said on Friday they stopped hundreds of demonstrators from storming the Tesla factory near Berlin as they protested against the pioneering electric car maker over its environmental footprint.

Crowds of protesters gathered Friday near the factory in Grünheide, Tesla’s only European production site, carrying banners complaining about water consumption at the factory and advocating for using public transportation instead of private cars.

Activists have been protesting in a forest near the power plant since February over water concerns and plans to cut down trees to make way for an expansion of the plant, which opened in early 2022. In March, there was a suspected arson attack on a power pole. A far-left group cut power to the factory for almost a week, halting production.

At the time, the company’s CEO Elon Musk called the perpetrators the “dumbest eco-terrorists in the world” and said the anti-Tesla protesters were wrong because they aimed to stop the production of electric vehicles, not fossil fuel vehicles .

During the protest march on Friday at a nearby train station, “hundreds of participants ran into the forest and tried to get onto the Tesla site,” said police spokesman Mario Heinemann on ntv television. “We prevented that with our strength.”

Social media footage showed black-clad protesters, many wearing medical masks, running across rough terrain toward the factory boundary and riot police using pepper spray to repel them.

Police said protesters also blocked a nearby highway and railway line and set off fireworks at an airfield where Tesla stores new cars.

The police temporarily arrested several people, the dpa reported.

“Companies like Tesla like to destroy living spaces for their own profit,” said Ole Becker, a spokesman for Disrupt Tesla, a group that helped organize the protest. “Instead of SUVs for the few, we have to build buses and trains for the many.”