In a disclosure filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday, Tesla revealed that it secured $1.6 billion in financing from a consortium of Chinese banks to finance its business in the country. While some of the money will be invested to constructing the Gigafactory 3 in Shanghai, the rest will go towards the repayment of an earlier loan. The lenders include China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the company said.
According to the filing, “On December 18, 2019, (Tesla) entered into agreements with a syndicate of lenders in China for: a secured term loan facility of up to RMB 9.0 billion and an unsecured revolving loan facility of up to RMB 2.25 billion, in each case to be used in connection with our Gigafactory Shanghai. On December 20, 2019, proceeds from one of the new facilities were used to repay in full the subsidiary’s drawn amounts on its existing bridge loan facility of up to RMB 3.5 billion, which was terminated as a result of the full repayment”.
Tesla may be yet to sort out supply issues of its existing models in the US and around the world, but that isn’t stopping it from announcing new concept models that are still years away from entering commercial production. The company last month unveiled the electric-powered ‘Cybertruck’ after a deluge of rumors and speculations surrounding it over the past few months. The vehicle is only expected to be available for purchase in 2021, but has apparently already received more than 200,000 pre-orders within just days of its launch.
