tesla-model-s

Toy­ota CEO Akio Toy­oda, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Cal­i­for­nia gov­er­nor Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger have held press con­fer­ence in Palo Alto, Cal­i­for­nia to announce that both com­pa­nies will be work­ing together on elec­tric vehi­cle devel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing, with Toy­ota spend­ing $50 mil­lion in pri­vate place­ment of Tesla stock.

Tesla and Toy­ota plan to use the recently closed ex-​​Toyota NUMMI plant in Freemont, CA, USA with Model S pro­duc­tion expected to bring back 1,000 work­ers and out­put 20,000 cars a year, with that out­put expected to increase as new mod­els are added. The plant could soon expand to as many as 10,000 work­ers, and approach it’s pre­vi­ous capac­ity of 300,000 cars per annum.

The Model S is on track for pro­duc­tion in 2012. No infor­ma­tion is yet avail­able on any tech­nol­ogy or process shar­ing deals between Tesla and Toy­ota, but Tesla is expected to ben­e­fit greatly from Toyota’s mass pro­duc­tion exper­tise and efficiency.

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