Who Paid First, Chrysler or Tesla?

Tesla Model S

Tesla Motors has paid back the loan it received from the Department of Energy back in 2010, but its claims of being the first US company to do so aren’t sitting so well with Chrysler.

The announcement made by Tesla Motors stated that it had wired $451.8 million to pay off its loan balance in full with interest. Included in the statement was the assertion that “Tesla will be the only American car company to have fully repaid the government.”

It didn’t take long at all for the good folks at Chrysler to point out that this statement wasn’t entirely accurate. Gualberto Ranieri, a senior vice president at Chrysler, took to their blog later that night to note that they had already paid back their loans to the US and Canadian governments in full with interest exactly two years ago in 2011.

Chryser also took to twitter, a place where Tesla CEO Elon Musk is very comfortable and has always been vocal in defending his car company against any slights.

Chrysler Tweet

The #shortcircuit hashtag was a particularly nice touch directed at an electric car company. Unsurprisingly, Elon Musk wasted no time at all crafting his own twitter response to Chrysler.

Screen Shot 2013-05-25 at 3.37.09 PM

Ouch. I suppose that it is splitting hairs a bit, but that does make Tesla’s original statement right from a certain point of view. Tesla then added a bit more strength to their argument, citing funds from the original TARP loan that were assigned to old Chryser when the US government sold its stake in the new Chrysler to Fiat.

The original loan was for $12.5 billion dollars and about $1.3 billion of that was never repaid as a result of the sale to Fiat. In June of last year, the US government even acknowledged that they weren’t likely to ever recover that outstanding balance.

Nicole Wakelin fell in love with cars as a teenager when she got to go for a ride in a Ferrari. It was red and it was fast and that was all that mattered. Game over. She considers things a bit more carefully now, but still has a weakness for fast, beautiful cars. Nicole also writes for NerdApproved and GeekMom.