Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Tesla Gets $465M DOE Loan, May Boost SoCal

Silicon Valley electric car darling Tesla Motors said Tuesday that it has gained approval for a $465M, low interest loan from the U.S. Department of Energy, for the firm's electrical vehicles--potentially benefiting Southern California and an un-named, local city--if negotiations for a location are successful. According to Tesla, it will use $365M of the low interest loans from the DOE for production engineering and assembly of the company's Model S all-electric family sedan, which the company has said will be built at a yet-to-be-determined Southern California assembly plant. Tesla said that it is in "final negotiation" for those facilities somewhere in California, which will employ around 1,000 workers. Tesla announced its Model S in March at an event in Hawthorne, where Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk, also runs space firm SpaceX.

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