Toyota ends collaboration with Tesla
BEIJING: Japanese carmaker Toyota Motor Corp has sold its stakes in Californian electric carmaker Tesla Motors Inc, a spokesman for Japan’s largest carmaker said on Saturday.
The sale marks the end of collaboration between the two companies for now, said Toyota spokesman Akiko Kita.
Toyota held 1.43 per cent in Tesla as of July last year, Bloomberg data showed.
In 2010, Toyota acquired a US$50 million (RM213 million) stake in Tesla as carmakers were competing to introduce less-polluting vehicles in the United States and sold a shuttered California factory to Tesla for US$42 million.
The two companies then started to jointly develop RAV4 electric vehicles in Canada in 2011 and later sold about 2,500 units over three years amid culture clashes and recalls.
Toyota formed its own unit to develop electric cars in November last year and aimed to introduce electric cars soon.
In May 2010, as the emerging alliance took shape, Tesla Motors Inc chairman and chief executive officerElon Musk called the partnership “historic” and said Toyota was a company he had long admired.
In describing his test drive of the Tesla Roadster about a month earlier, Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota said he felt “the wind of the future”.
Shares of Tesla have risen by almost 60 per cent this year. Bloomberg