As a German
Permits, the government is V slow. And labor is expensive. Also sounds expensive to use all the water they need, since they would need to clean it up very good and align the temperature with the rest of the attached rivers or what they use. And other climate relevant regulations.
Taiwan is a tiny area compared to the diversity you get in Germany, which has very diverse weather across regions, significant rivers, accessible groundwater, etc.
That's what Elon Musk said too about the Brandenburg Facory ("Doesn't look like a desert so it must be ok")
But environment groups are saying that ground water levels have been decreasing for years and the factory would demand too much from the water network.
I assume Tesla was just trying to be cheap. As soon as the water supplier said Teslas expected demand (372 m³ per hour) wouldn't be possible, the demand suddenly shrank to 243 m³ per hour. So my guess is that Tesla tried to reduce capex by employing more wasteful water usage but now has to work more efficiently. https://www.quarks.de/umwelt/wie-problematisch-ist-der-bau-v...
I think the demand was peak demand, so all you need to reduce that is a) accept it as a bottleneck and slow the most water intensive process to spread the peak out, or b) add a buffer pool.
