Toyota Partners With Tesla to Make Electric Cars

Toyota just announced that it will invest $50 million in Tesla Motors and the two companies will partner to manufacture electric vehicles to meet California’s growing demand for greener cars. Bay Area residents should be especially excited, as this venture is expected to create thousands of new jobs to San Francisco, and is sure to be a boon to California’s flagging economy. Tesla fans as well should rejoice as the new partnership will allow the EV start-up to bring its highly coveted, iconic design to more affordable electric vehicles like the Model S sedan, which will sell for $49,900 and gets 300 miles on a 3-5 hour charge.

This exciting new partnership will unfold at the ‘New United Motor Manufacturing Inc’ (aka Nummi) in Fremont — a recently shuttered GM/Toyota auto plant which will re-open under the Tesla/Toyota partnership to produce the Model S sedans. Up until this partnership was announced, Tesla had been searching for a site where they could manufacture the highly anticipated Model S, which is slated to be released in 2012.

Inhabitat