Posts Tagged ‘US’
$8 Billion Loan Given to Ford, Nissan and Tesla
The car companies Ford, Nissan and Tesla have been given a combined sum of $8 billion by the Energy department of the US government. This money is planned for developing new electric cars, which in turn will create new jobs in the car industry.
The money is simply a low interest loan which the US has given out to help increase jobs in the car industry, aswell as developing greener cars in the process.
The money has been split quite largely. Ford has received the majority, $5.9 billion. This money will be spent developing new electric cars, aswell as new technology for current gasoline powered cars.
Ford will benefit alot from this money due to the extremely low interest rate of around 3.75%. If Ford had tried to get the money on the open market, they would have ended up paying double figure interest rates.
Nissan are getting another large chunk of the loan, $1.6 billion. They have said that this money will be going towards one of their plants that are developing lithium ion batteries. The new batteries developed will be going into a new electric car in development for 2012.
Finally Tesla, they are only getting a small sum comapred to the likes of Ford. Tesla will only be receiveing a loan of $465 million. A new factory in California is being developed to create their new Model S Sedan using part of their loan. The other money will be spent on creating new greener car parts for other car makers.
Now that these car manufacturers have been given this money, we should see some new electric cars come to the market in the next few years. Being able to choose from an electric car over gasoline would save a leaser even more money. I imagine a huge number of people with a Ford lease or Nissan lease would love to have an electric car as this would save them even more money.