This is an excerpt from EERE Network News, a weekly electronic newsletter.

May 29, 2013

EV Automaker Tesla Repays Department of Energy Loan

Tesla Motors has paid off its 2010 Energy Department loan nine years earlier than required. Credit: Tesla

Tesla Motors announced on May 22 that it has paid off the Energy Department's $465 million loan awarded in 2010 to the company under the Department's Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing program. The payment came nine years earlier than originally required. The California-based automaker designs and manufactures electric vehicles (EVs) as well as EV powertrain components for partners such as Toyota and Daimler. Tesla has delivered more than 10,000 electric vehicles to customers in 31 countries so far. Tesla vehicles have won the 2013 Car of the Year awards from both Motor Trend and Automotive Magazine.

The Energy Department released a fact sheet providing additional statistics and highlights of the Department’s loan portfolio. For example, in June 2009, the Department offered more than $8 billion in conditional loan commitments to three companies—Ford, Nissan, and Tesla—to help retool, refurbish, and reopen U.S. auto plants to produce energy efficient cars. Ford used the loan to upgrade and modernize 13 factories across six states and to introduce new technologies to raise the fuel efficiency of more than a dozen popular vehicles. In Tennessee, the first advanced battery packs produced in the United States are coming off the production line of Nissan North America’s production plant. And Tesla was able to reopen a shuttered auto manufacturing plant in Fremont, California and to produce battery packs, electric motors, and other powertrain components.

The Department also reported that overall losses to date in its loan programs represent about 2% of the $34 billion portfolio and less than 10% of the $10 billion loan loss reserve that Congress set aside to cover expected losses in the programs. See theTesla Motors press release and the Energy Department press release.