Palo Alto-based Tesla is the only company currently building real four- wheeled electric cars in the US that can go at freeway speeds (and much faster). Its plan has always been to leverage the initial luxury Roadster into funding increasingly affordable models – and it has hit all its goals so far. With a new affiliation with Toyota, Tesla moves one step closer to that goal.
Toyota is investing $50 million in Tesla, and the two will cooperate on developing electric vehicles, parts, production systems and engineering support. California’s Governor Schwarzenegger told the Sacramento Bee some of the details during an environmental event at Google headquarters in Mountain View.
“Today is a very exciting day for me because … I am also going over to the Bay Area to talk about Tesla and Toyota forming a partnership, where they take one of the Toyota cars and make them electric,” Schwarzenegger said.
“And again, they’re going to do that here in California,” he added. “Because in California, we have the laws in place, the laws are consistent and this is why one company after the other is coming into our state and producing those electric cars, and doing innovative stuff with solar, innovative stuff with windmills.” (more…)