Last fall congress approved a $25 billion loan to the automakers as part of their bailout. The loan is going to be dispersed through the department of energy and is to be directed towards vehicles that don’t use much gas.

A natural pick for the loans is Tesla Motors since they build vehicles that use no gas at all. The Silicon Valley electric car builder will use the funds to complete development of its Model S sedan and electric power trains being licensed to Mercedes-Benz.

The loan amount is $465 million. Add that to the $50m invested last month by Daimler plus the debt and equity already invested in the company, Tesla now has a $700m capital war chest.

They plan to use $365m of the loan to bring the Model S into production with the remainder going to customer power train development.