Will Our 'Green Jobs' Dollars Help a Ritzy Car Company Open a Toxic Manufacturing Plant?


By Seth Sandronsky
AlterNet
December 26, 2009.


Tesla makes a sleek electric roadster at $110,000. A new model's generating buzz, but one possible manufacturing site's haunted by ghosts of the old economy.


Financial aid from various levels of government is driving Tesla Motors Inc. to expand its production of jazzy electric cars and parts. But will the company make their clean-emission vehicles at a site that some say is unsafe?

Currently, Tesla finalizes assembly of 1,000 electric Roadster models annually in San Carlos, California, said Tesla spokesperson Ricardo Reyes. Tesla Roadsters are not cars for the masses. At least not yet. Roadsters sell for $110,000. They can drive 244 miles on a single battery charge with zero tailpipe emissions. Well-heeled buyers can see these autos at showrooms in the Golden State’s Silicon Valley and Los Angeles, and in London, Munich and Monaco. Away from these showrooms, though, issues of private wealth and the public power it shapes are clashing in Tesla’s bid to grow.

Tesla Gets Welfare

In June, the federal Department of Energy awarded a two-part loan totaling $465 million to Tesla. The loans came from the DOE’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program to help “automobile manufacturers and component suppliers to pay the cost of re-equipping, expanding, or establishing a manufacturing facility in the United States to produce qualifying advanced technology vehicles; or qualifying components; and, engineering integration performed in the United States of qualifying vehicles and qualifying components.â€