Not much seems to be printed about this audacious little company. Last I heard, they were still having technical difficulties. Have they solved their problems, and are they shipping cars?
I want to see this company succeed-having it thrive would prove there is a market for a high-performance electric car.
Or is Tesla just the latest in a string of failures…Tucker, DeLorean, Avant…etc.?
They are shipping cars, but they are not yet making money and they’ve had to substantially increase the price of the vehicles numerous times.
The cars are getting good reviews, though. The only noteworthy complaints are that it is based on the Lotus Elise and is therefore not too comfortable and the range is very limited. Oh, and the price. Did I mention the price?
The car magazines have had loads of articles on the Tesla.
They are planning to release a cheaper car in 2011.
It will cost $50k after the tax credit. Who knows if they will survive that long.
:: looks over site ::
Cool! They’re opening a dealership in Toronto! 
They opened a dealership right across the street from the building I work in. Occasionally we see them driving the cars around the block.
They got big chunk of cash from the government (which, given the kinds of companies that have been getting huge chunks of cash from the uncle sam of late, I have no problem with). As a result seem to have got past their cash-flow problems and are doing pretty well.
They are opening a big new plant in Palo Alto CA.
They are setting up a power plant facility in Palo Alto, next to Stanford, and that seems to be on track still – last Thursday a woman came into the pizza joint where I was having lunch and ordered a boatload of pizzas to be delivered to the construction site.
The Model S is an interesting looking car–I pass the Tesla showroom on the way to visiting grandkids a couple of miles north of here, and someday I may stop and look at the one in the window.
If you buy a Tesla in Colorado, the state will give you a $42,000 tax credit:
What’s to stop people from buying them all up and reselling them to other states for a $5,000 profit?
Presumably because it is a tax credit, so you would have to have a $42K tax liability (which can be spread over five years) to take advantage of this. Also, each taxpayer is limited to $400K of tax credits in any five year period.
The major problem with Tesla and any other startup is the quantity. You can be a niche producer like Ferrari and charge huge amounts of money, or do the mass production thing, which takes huge amounts of capital. Try to imagine what a Ford Focus would cost if it weren’t mass produced!
It’s still money in the bank. I don’t see the environmental return on investment the state gets from paying wealthy people $42,000 to buy sports cars. Call me a skeptic but it looks like Tesla invented a car that goes from zero to paid for in 3 years and runs on tax money.