Tesla Inc is to forgo 1.14 billion euros (US$1.3 billion) of state aid for a factory that it is building in Germany because it has first decided to try to produce a new type of battery cell at scale in Texas, a person familiar with the matter said.
The US automaker has been working on so-called “4680” battery cells at a site near its auto plant in Fremont, California.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk last year said that after the firm proved it could make them on a pilot assembly line in Texas, it would manufacture them at scale at the factory that it has been constructing outside Berlin.
This made Tesla eligible to receive public funds from Germany as part of the EU’s Important Project of Common European Interest initiative, which backs first industrial deployments of battery projects in member states.
As Tesla has shifted gears and is further along producing 4680 cells at its factory under construction in Austin, Texas, it is no longer eligible for the money, the person said on condition of anonymity.
Tesla informed German authorities that it would not use the support package, German Ministry of Economics and Technology spokeswoman Beate Baron said earlier on Friday, without specifying a reason for the decision.
“It has always been Tesla’s view that all subsidies should be eliminated, but that must include the massive subsidies for oil & gas,” Musk wrote on Twitter after the ministry’s announcement. “For some reason, governments don’t want to do that...”
Musk, who also runs rocket maker Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX), has bristled for years at detractors faulting him for taking advantage of government support. Examples of this include the US loan that helped Tesla get the Model S sedan into production, which the company paid back early.
After his initial Twitter post, Musk revisited a three-and-a-half-year-old exchange with another user who criticized Tesla and SpaceX’s use of subsidies.
“Combined Tesla+SpaceX market cap is now over US$1.2T [trillion],” wrote Musk, who then took issue again with a figure mentioned in a May 2018 Twitter thread.
Tesla shares on Friday fell 3.1 percent in New York trading.
Tesla has almost completed construction of an electric vehicle factory in the town of Gruenheide, southeast of the German capital, and also plans to manufacture battery cells at the site.
While Musk wants to start assembling Tesla Model Ys in Gruenheide before the end of the year, local authorities still have not granted final approval for the project.
The German ministry has estimated that Tesla is investing about 5 billion euros in Gruenheide.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last