If regulators greenlight the deal, it should close sometime in early 2017. As you might guess, Tesla is painting this as a positive for the German economy: it plans to add more than 1,000 "advanced engineering and skilled technician jobs" in the country over the next 2 years.

The move isn't coming out of the blue. Tesla had already been partnering with Grohmann on manufacturing upgrades for months, and the two sides found themselves making such major strides that they felt they could do better together. As it stands, Tesla has its work cut out for it beyond just the Model 3. Between new Powerwalls and Powerpacks, promises of full self-driving capabilities and everything that will come from buying SolarCity, it'll have to understand how to manufacture a wider range of products in short order.