DailyTech - Tesla's Elon Musk Vows to Pay Off $465M Government Loan Within Five Years

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Auto Tesla's Elon Musk Vows to Pay Off $465M Government Loan Within Five Years
Shane McGlaun (Blog) - February 28, 2013 8:53 AM

68 comment(s) - last by jack daniels e.. on Mar 2 at 2:25 PM

Musk only needs half the time given to pay loan

Electric vehicle maker Tesla received a loan from the U.S. Department of Energy to the tune of $465 million. The automaker has until the end of the decade pay off the loan, but CEO Elon Musk believes that Tesla will be able to pay off the entire loan in half the time.

The loan was granted to Tesla under the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan program and allowed the automaker to retool an automotive manufacturing plant in California. Tesla uses that plant to produce the Model S electric vehicle, and has recently stated that it will be able to produce 20,000 of the sedans during 2013.

^{President Obama and Elon Musk}

Despite seeing a significant increase in revenue, the automaker lost nearly $90 million during the last quarter and lost approximately $400 million during all of 2012. This news sent Tesla shares downward last week.

Musk also got personally involved in a dustup with the New York Times over what he saw as an unfair and dishonest review of the Model S. According to Musk, the bad publicity cost the company $100 million.

Source: Technology Review

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Amazingly poor arguements

By foxalopex on 3/1/2013 10:05:39 AM , Rating: 2

I'm surprised that folks would be absolutely against bail-outs and loans. We need them to survive. Just read up on the history of the Great Depression and you'll understand. One of the causes aside from the free market crashing was the government at the time refusing to bail-out anything. Once everything bottomed out the government was powerless to do anything until WWII. (Which is a government initiative if you think about it.)

I think in the long run we as a society in general have a consumption problem. We have an economy setup such that we need to consume ever greater amounts of resources to continue to be profitable. It's going to result in a crash someday that no one will be able to recover from.

If you actually watched "Revenge of the Electric Car" Musk nearly personally bankrupted himself to build an electric car. In fact, without this government loan, I doubt the company would have survived. The Chinese are well on their way to developing electric cars, in fact some of the largest solar cell manufacturers are located there. I think the US in general is smart to invest a tiny amount of money in it's own strategic interests. Look up the cost of a supersonic bomber someday and ask yourself, is having your own electric car company worth the cost of a single warplane?