Tesla looking for $350 million in government loans to build electric-sedan

As announced last month, Tesla Motors had submitted an application for about $400 million in financial aid for two projects including the upcoming Model S Sedan. Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk said today that it will have to further delay the introduction of its $57,499 Model S Sedan if the company doesn’t receive at least $350 million in government loans.

Musk said that Tesla won’t be able to open the $250 million manufacturing facility in San Jose, California that will produce the new electric sedan. He said that with government funding, it can start selling 20,000 units of the sedan annually by 2011.

“We can’t move forward with that without a major amount of capital,” Musk told the Detroit Free Press. “If we don’t get any government funding, then what we need to do is we need to wait until the capital markets recover, which could be a year or two years from now.”

Unlike the $109,000 Tesla Roadster, which shares its architecture for the Lotus Elise, the Tesla Model S Sedan will be built on its own platform.

Source: Detroit Free Press