On the flat plains of Lower Saxony, near the town of Salzgitter, a new empire is growing out of the land. Well, specifically out of the mud right now, as it’s been raining for the past couple of days and, like all building sites, it doesn’t take long for the muddy puddles to form. Once the mud is clear and replaced by concrete and steel, this 260,000sq m site will be the home of Volkswagen’s first battery “gigafactory”, which has become something of a buzzword of late, applied to any production site that just happens to be large. This is,...