Tesla Nabs $465M Government Loan To Build Model S

SignalFreq writes "Tesla Motors, based in San Carlos, California, was approved yesterday for $465M in loans from the Department of Energy's Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program. Tesla plans to use $365M of the money to finance a manufacturing facility for the Model S (review, Letterman video) and $100M for a powertrain manufacturing plant in the SF Bay Area. 'Tesla will use the ATVM loan precisely the way that Congress intended — as the capital needed to build sustainable transport,' said Tesla CEO and Product Architect Elon Musk. Tesla expects the Model S to ship in late 2011 and the base cost to be $57,400 ($49,900 after a federal tax credit). Ford received $5.9B and Nissan received $1.6B under the same program."

Comments

Re:It's a Loan.

[geekoid]

It must be great to be old, stupid and wrong.

Many banks and financial organizations are ALREADY preparing to pay it back, starting next month.
In fact, there some people are saying they should be allowed to until the enact the changes they promised when taking the money.
That's not going to happen. Almost all of that money will be paid back within a year. Why? because the financial institution don't like the strings that came with it. That's right, the government add string that would pretty much guarantee a payback.
Maybe you should read up on things instead of letting libertarians spoon feed you? You might be able to actually look at facts can come to your own independent conclusion.

"But if it was a sure fire moneymaker they could have raised the money on the private markets"

You've never looked for VC funding, have you?
Frankly I would rather get a loan I can pay of then give up 60+% of my company to a VC that want's to make 10 times the money they invested immediatly.
Wouldn't be the first company a VC forced a sell of so they could make a quick return, and destroying the company at the same time.

No, that is not a reasonable assumption, and if you knew anything about financing companies at this stage, you would understand why.