Another automaker to make electric cars in California

Tesla Motors Inc. will start making electric cars next year at a recently closed plant in Northern California after Chinese electric carmaker BYD announced last month it would establish its U.S. headquarters in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.

Bolstered by a 50-million U.S. dollar investment from Toyota Motor Corp., the Palo Alto-based company plans to start manufacturing a sports sedan in 2012. The company has built only 1,000 high-performance Roadster electric sports cars largely assembled in England so far, according to the report.

"We look forward to learning and benefiting from Toyota's legendary engineering, manufacturing and production expertise," said PayPal Inc. co-founder Elon Musk, the company's co-founder and chief executive.

The deal was worked out by Musk and Akio Toyoda, Toyota's president and grandson of the Japanese automaker's founder, the report said.

The companies said they would cooperate on the development of electric vehicles and parts as well as the production system and engineering support. Toyota has been instrumental to reinvigorate the automaker, saying that its drive to grow in recent years sacrificed the attention to quality that previously characterized Toyota.

Tesla previously considered locating its factory in Downey, Long Beach and cities outside of California, but it said it settled on the Fremont property because of the amount of existing auto factory infrastructure that is still usable, the Times reported. The company plans to raise additional funds in an initial public stock offering later this year and the Toyota transaction will be completed as a private placement to close at the end of the offering.

BYD said it would establish its U.S. headquarters in Los Angeles, which will create about 150 jobs over the next year, the Los Angeles Times said.

Source:Xinhua