The US is to make billions of dollars in cheap loans available to Ford, Nissan and Tesla, the California electric carmaker, so they can re-equip their plants to build a new generation of electric and other fuel-efficient vehicles.

Ford will receive $5.9bn, Japan's Nissan $1.6bn and Tesla $465m from $25bn of government money that was set aside in 2007 for a scheme known as the advanced technology vehicles manufacturing incentive programme.