We’re just minutes away from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s joint announcement with Tesla Motors, but we already hear that he will discuss how Tesla plans to build its electric sedan factory in the Bay Area, not New Mexico as previously expected. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear as though Tesla will actually unveil the sedan itself.
While New Mexico offered a $7 million incentive package to locate the factory there, California upped the ante by offering sales tax exemption for the purchase of manufacturing equipment, and by providing grants for the training of new employees.
We’ll have a recording of the webcast here once the event finishes. In the meantime, head over to the Office of the Governator to see it live.
Most people know Tesla for its fancy electric sports car (seen above), which can be glimpsed driving down highway 101 near its discreet headquarters in San Carlos. But with $146 million in the bank, Tesla plans to expand into a more mainstream market with a $60,000 sedan, slated for production in two years.
Good job Schwarzenegger’s On getting it to CA. Way to go.
Cheers, Nag
Good
http://www.teslamotors.com/about/employment.php
Good job Arnold. California will be the new Detroit!
@Chris - do we want California to be the new Detroit? :-/
60k for low end car….give me a break….this is not meant for mass consumption
It needs to cost that much because it’s being made in California.
@4, I sure do. Detroit didn’t become a toilet because of the automobile industry.
How about a clean and safe version Detroit?
The Schwarzenegger way. Don’t ask questions, get in, get it done, get out.
He’ll be back!
The way to go with things as screwed up as environment and oil conglomerates. Congrats to California and the bay area.
@sk - Neither is the BMW 5-series, but they don’t seem to be having a problem selling those for $60k, do they? Wouldn’t it be nice to have an automobile with similar performance specs that has the added bonus of not using fossil fuel (power-plant argument aside, please).
Wouldn’t it still cost more money to have a plant in CA because of high workers’ comp even with the tax exemption? It seems like a novel decision.
Do these cars run on nickel batteries? If so, are the batteries going to be manufactured in CA as well?
Arnold is the man. What a progressive leader! He is the first cybernetic organism to successfully lead a great state like Caliiiiifornia. Don’t look at this unless you can handle the power of innovation!!…www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?RTA=web2
Cheers,
Josh
GM out Indian company in, OMFG ROFLMAO can’t even finish.
Global Warming, brought to you by the Alternative Energy lobbies, foreign auto makers, and the heavily invested energy blocking environmentalist machine
@jesse - neigther BMW 5 series is meant for mass consumption….good luck selling unproven technology for 60k…i will not switch to electric car till the price drops to 6k or something…..there are cars coming out that run on air and water…and recently TATA motors launched car for 2k
all this tells me spending 60k is like buying a super computer for web browsing and mail checking
He’s a well spoken man. Definitely a great leader.. i still think back to days of election when all the skeptics questioned his credentials. haha
GO AHHHHNOLD!
Wow sk, you are cheap.
This is a good thing for California. California needs to do everything possible to keep businesses here instead of driving them away. We need a turn around, and I don’t want to say that this could be the beginning of it, but it helps.
Personally, I would like to see California be the green auto capital of the world. Detroit can keep all the crap fueled vehicles there.
just fyi this 60K sedan is going to pay for development of a 35K sedan that will be mass produced. I think the date for that is like 2010 or something like that
@sk $60k for a car that doesn’t cost me 25 cents a mile to drive. Sounds like a deal to me.
hey duuuuudes you ever heard of a BI CY cle? Jeeeeeze!! Its like you “Tera Firmers” havent been aRounnd for to long, I mean, walking? Its like UHH duhhh, and big wheels?For kids?I made my “big green speed machine” electric when I was like 7 two years after recieving it as a gift for getting into the phisics program at MIT.
I was the fastest little NERD on campus!! And thats no lie.Annnyyywayyy Methane is like way healthy and being totally full of shit means ,Baby,…you get to flyyyyyy frrreeeee!
Ohhh yeahhh!!!!
But hey I dont care if they drink it on the space ship, Koolaid is wayyyy better then tang,unless yo talking about the other tang.Like Steve Miller said You aint tasted shit till yhouve tasted wild mountain honey.(orrr,, somthing like that).
Anyway who has 100,00000000 dollars to burn?Oil will last us for atleast another 10 years, thats a whole freakin decade!!!plus theres the uhhh like uhh the sun?Its energy is so powerfull its dead.
Hurricanes are suuuuper powerfull and as a boner, uhh I mean bonus they don’t like poor people.HAH! So there,.GM says they’ll have a fuel cell car ready in only 23 years. thats only a quarter of a century, no big DEAL!
I can walk on my hands!!
Stick a vibrator up my ass and Ive got tessla beat!
Plus did you hear the honey bees are all dying?
How do you know Elliott Spitzer is a Democrat?
He got busted with a woman!
@joel - not cheap, i drive MB…my point is with gas price so high, it doesn’t make sense to have 4 empty seats for trivial things like going to work and buying grocery etc….i am sure we are spoiled by cheap gas so far, but not anymore
@caleb - 25c is myth with all the subsidies…with gas prices so high, i am sure electricity costs will go to the roof…and imagine what happens if ppl start powering cars with electricity…simple demand and supply formula kick in driving electricity prices
I don’t understand what motivates “environmentalists” to hate on the oil industry.
Assuming these electric cars will run on nickel batteries like every other hybrid/electric, these are NOT environmentally friendly cars.
“Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius. As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles. ”
http://clubs.ccsu.edu/recorder.....NewsID=188
@Jesse, the electric car is by definition 1000 times cleaner then a gas powered car. Sure building the actual car and its battery does some certain amount of pollution. But the car then emits absolutely no CO2 for the next 5-10 years it is used. Also, the pollution of the production process of an car materials including the battery can be minimized through optimization and through a system that would MAKE SURE to control pollution levels of electric car manufacturing including the battery. You can contain pollution at the manufacturing level by simply LEGISLATING that price should not be the only factor, let people pay slightly more for manufacturing to make sure manufacturing including of the batteries pollutes to the minimum.
I’m going to go out on a limb and predict the only that will happen over the next two years is that not one car will be produced, $160 million they claim to have will disappear, Tesla motors will be bankrupt, and somehow the California taxpayer will have been screwed out of a couple 100 million dollars to boot.
tsk tsk.. I was born in another country, came here like many of you with the promise of America. Sometimes we forget what IS possible and how things can change DRAMATICALLY in a short period of time. This mentality of pessimism is such a drag.. mentality of hate such a drag.. Dude.. I raise your doom and gloom prediction with one that is much more likely.. Oil companies wont like gas prices going down TOO much (”there’s always Nigeria…” - look it up) and this price is JUST the kick in the pants we need to remind us of what we can do.. It’s the next “big thing” that will propel America once again.. GO ARNOLD, GO AMERICA.
and F you naysayers and self-important pessimist - you’re useless yourself.
Do you know who is the Tesla at all?
Ya, I know they have a great pedigree. But so did a lot of corporations that didn’t make it for one reason or another. I hope they do succeed, but the track record of creating an electric car for the masses in the US isn’t good…Zap Motors….
At $60,000 (if they can even reach that price point), the only people that will be buying them are the ultra-rich that can afford to have them as their fifth car so they have something to show off at public events. Most normal people spending 60K on a car probably don’t care much about the price of gas.
Cost of ownership is a fraction of any other $60k car. In most of Southern California, $60k is an average priced vehicle. No gas? For $60k, with savings of $500/month(no gas)…..this is an economy vehicle. Have you seen the performance of the Tesla Roadster? 0-60 in 3.9seconds…thats Lamborghini acceleration. What a phenomenal manufacturer!
@4 California already is a smog infested shitty version of detroit. Arnold is ok though.