On Sept. 28, 2009, Tesla Motor's Vice President of Business Development, Diarmuid O'Connel, made a post on the Tesla Motors blog regarding their recent DOE loan award of $465 million, which was announced on June 23, 2009.
Perhaps as a response to confusion between the loans to GM and Chrysler from the Department of the Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), and those to Tesla Motors, Ford and Nissan (and now Fisker Automotive) from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program (ATVM), Diarmuid emphasizes the purposes for the loans in general, and how they apply specifically to Tesla Motors.
While they repeated the intent to use the loan to produce both the Model S and the powertrain subsystems for sale to other automakers (and how the loan would explicitly NOT be used for Roadster production), of interest was the first ever mention of the derivatives of the Model S yet to be developed. Diarmund states: "The Model S platform will also be used for derivatives including a minivan, cross-over utility vehicle and a utility van for fleets and other industrial or civic uses." We've heard talk of a cross-over derivative before, but minivan and utility van derivatives are new developments.
Diarmuid O'Connel's blog post can be read here.
Tesla Motor's original press release about the DOE loan can be seen here.
