Well, the building plans in Germany is still not approved. I don't think anyone ever said it would be much difference in speed once they started building. As you have all seen northern Europe is pretty good at prefab.
Any smaller project not creating thousands of jobs would likely not have been allowed to even start building without the permits done. The politicians wouldn't have risked it. Because of huge number of potential jobs Tesla got the chance but even so I can't see any other company could have started because without a position like Elons at Tesla. No other CEO would have risked to lose hundreds of millions to restore everything if needed. Without 50% growth a year there wouldn't even be the need to.
Without Elon as a both one of the most powerful CEOs and by far largest owner being able to decide taking that risk the German site would still at best be flat ground. Another great foresight from Elon being able to recognize this.
I think there is close to zero risk Tesla will run into trouble with building before permits, possibly they'll be forced to a few small and cheap changes to make it look better for the government vs the environmentalists and nimbys.
But yeah, Tesla is 'gambling' a huge sum that could be needed for restoration of the land, never mind the loss of production, against the very slim risk of running into a building stop. It would be a disaster if that happened but I think the risk is like 1 in 1000 or something and worth taking. Apparently so did Elon and the board.