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Empresas y finanzas

Tesla to raise $1.6 billion to build battery factory


    (Reuters) - Tesla Motors Inc said on Wednesday that it plans to raise $1.6 billion from investors to build a new battery factory that will help the company reach its goal of producing a lower-priced, mass-market electric car by 2017.

    The Palo Alto, California-based maker of high-priced electric cars would raise the money through a sale of convertible senior notes, half of them due in 2019 and the other half in 2021, it said in an 8-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission,

    The money is expected to help fund a new U.S. car battery plant that Tesla expects to go online in 2017 and bolster the supply of the lithium-ion batteries that power the company's electric vehicles.

    In a separate press release on Wednesday, Tesla said the plant - known as the "Gigafactory" - would be built in one of four states: Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico or Texas.

    The company said that by 2020, the Gigafactory will produce "more lithium ion batteries annually than were produced worldwide in 2013."

    (Reporting by James B. Kelleher and Bernie Woodall in Detroit; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)