United States Energy Secretary Steven Chu is coming to Menlo Park to talk about his vision for the country's energy future.

Chu will speak to Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) scientists in Menlo Park on Friday, June 26.

The visit comes on the heels of a June 23 announcement that Tesla Motors of San Carlos, makers of electric cars, has received approval for about $465 million in low-interest loans from the U.S. Department of Energy.

The funding is to accelerate the production of affordable, fuel-efficient electric vehicles.

Chu was co-winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics and is a former Stanford University professor of physics.

Prior to his Obama administration appointment, he was a professor of physics and molecular and cellular biology at the University of California, Berkeley and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

SLAC is a multipurpose laboratory for astrophysics, photon science, accelerator and particle physics research and is home to a two-mile linear accelerator -- the longest in the world.

— Sue Dremann