Government loans to fund electric car production

President Obama announced this week that the government has given out over $8 billion in loans to automobile manufacturers to increase the development of low-emission technologies.

Nissan has accepted a loan $1.6 billion of this money to produce 150,000 electric cars a year at its production plan in Smyrna, Tennessee. The money will also be used to build a new part of the plant that will manufacture lithium ion battery packs, creating over 1,300 jobs.

Nissan expects to release a preview of its electric car model in August and have the cars ready to launch sometime next year. The manufacturer has said it wants to manufacture 100,000 a year by 2012. A very ambitious agenda, indeed.

In other big news, Ford has accepted a $5.6 billion loan to create an electric version of the Ford Focus, the affordable and popular compact sedan.

For more information on these exciting developments in the automobile industry, check out this story from Business Green.