Over at the Tesla Motors blog, future Roadster owner Ken Jacobs has written a guest post about his recent visit to England. While he and his wife were in the UK, they hopped over to Hethel, the home of Lotus and primary assembly site of the Roadster. They were given a tour of the factory and the assembly line where Lotus employees take the thousands of bits and pieces that comprise a Roadster and bolt them together. The regular Elise assembly line has been modified to simultaneously accommodate both the Roadster and the Elise. At the moment, Roadsters are still only being started at the rate of around 4 cars per week, although that should increase rapidly later in August as Tesla prepares to switch over to the updated drivetrain. Lotus assembles "gliders" whose motor and battery get installed once the rolling chassis arrives in California. Tesla is ships the cars by boat from England, a trip that takes several weeks.

[Source: Tesla]

Over at the old gray lady, Joe Nocera has cast a jaundiced eye upon the phenomenon that is Tesla Motors and comes away with the conclusion that the Chevy Volt will come away as the winner. In fact Nocera seems very skeptical that pure battery electric cars will be a viable mainstream prospect anytime soon. Certainly based solely on the example of Tesla, it does not seem likely that a start-up will succeed in producing an EV for the masses profitably anytime soon. As I've said here many times building an affordable mass market car is actually a lot harder than building a high-dollar sports car, and Tesla has clearly shown that even that is no easy feat. Tesla hopes to build the Model S sedan in about two years at a cost starting at $60,000. The model S is unlikely to match the nominal range of the Roadster at the base price, especially when you consider that it will be a much larger heavier car made of aluminum rather than carbon fiber (over an aluminum structure). Even the Roadster only achieves a little more than half its nominal range of 227 miles when driven hard. Contrary to Elon Musk who thinks hybrids and ER-EVs are a red herring, Nocera feels that the Volt is a far more viable candidate for success.

What Nocera doesn't touch on is the small Japanese EVs that are coming from the likes of Mitsubishi, Subaru and Nissan. Mitsubishi in particular seems extremely confident about the iMiEV. Only time will tell.

[Source: New York Times]

Tesla Motors held the grand opening of its Northern California dealership in Menlo Park Saturday evening. A slew of valet parkers greeted. Then, I walked down the red carpet past an orange Tesla Roadster to the large showroom. Beyond the gazpacho cocktails and first of three full bars one entered the even larger service area where the Elon Musk and Ze'ev Drori mingled among the hundred or so invited guests.

Conversation with various Tesla personnel revealed that founder Martin Eberhard received his repaired Roadster earlier in the day. Presumably his blog will shortly contain his first impressions. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, I was told, will be delivered his Roadster within a few weeks, although the color remains top secret. Once he and the state's First Lady Maria Shriver spend some time driving this powerful and impressive electric car one can only hope state policies will begin to reflect the near-term role that plug-in cars can play in carbon and petroleum reduction.

Well, after at least one false alarm last week, it now appears that Martin's Roadster has been repaired. Of course, it is still impossible to say for sure, at least until we get an official update from either Tesla Motors or Martin himself, but a picture of what certainly appears to be Martin's distinctive Roadster was supposedly taken just yesterday, Friday July 18, and uploaded directly from the iPhone it was taken on to Flickr by user marliemars. The car appears to be damage free, though only a single side-profile is available. In any case, it appears as if the ongoing saga of the protracted delivery of the second Tesla Roadster ever produced may soon come to an end. Martin, we're sure you'll love your new car. We are, of course, waiting anxiously to hear if you've gotten a delivery date yet, and even more so to hear about your first drive. Thanks for the tip, Joseph!


[Source: Tesla Motors Club Forum]

Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria recently got some face-to-face time with Elon Musk, who, as you surely know by now, is one of the "product architects" at Tesla Motors. There were plenty of interesting quotes to come from the interview, but a few truly stood out from the rest. For instance, Musk slams plug-in hybrids pretty mercilessly while also claiming that the "a majority of all new cars produced in the United States, perhaps worldwide, will be electric. And I don't mean hybrid. I mean pure electric," within just thirty years. What's more, Musk adds that one of his other start-up companies, SolarCity, has the solution to what he refers to as the "'long tailpipe' criticism," where EV opponents point to the fact that much of the electricity in the U.S. comes from dirty sources such as coal. A small solar-panel setup of about 10 by 15 feet [is enough] to generate 200 to 400 miles a week of electricity for your car," according to Musk. We can get behind the idea of charging our own electric cars for the week with our own solar array mounted atop the roof our our garage. Maybe in thirty years that won't sound so far-fetched.

[Source: Newsweek]

Click above for more shots of this orange Tesla Roadster

Thanks to a tipster named Eric, we have some pictures of an orange Tesla Roadster which was spotted in the parking lot of a place called the 99 Ranch in Richmond, California. Considering that just a handful of Roadsters have actually been delivered to customers so far, we're thinking that this is almost certainly the same Validation Prototype that was seen being driven by Elon Musk in the Fox News clip we posted here. We are unsure who was driving this particular car, but whenever a Tesla is spotted out and about, at least until they become more common sights on our nation's roadways, expect somebody to recognize what it is and snap off a few pics. After all, you never know who may be behind the wheel. The spotter seems to think that the interior of the car is a bit spartan and too plasticy, though this is likely a preproduction car, so take that with a grain of salt. Thanks for the tip, Eric!


[Source: Nipple Dial]

In case you haven't been paying close attention, things at Tesla Motors have been in a bit of an upheaval of sorts as of late. We've been following the story of the Silicon Valley startup since its inception and have seen the roller coaster ride make its various ups and downs along the way. From the first set of specifications and images of the electric Roadster though the initial round of funding provided by Elon Musk and the subsequent removal of Martin Eberhard, a company founder who has still not gotten his own Roadster, there has been a sense that Tesla may have gotten in a bit over its head, a bit too soon. Now that vehicles are (very slowly) rolling out the doors, it's a good time to sit back and reflect on what it took to get the Roadster to this point, and that is exactly what Fortune magazine has done. Click here for their entire article.

A few juicy details were mentioned in the article, especially related to the upcoming Model S. As you may be aware, the new mid-size sedan is now expected to be built in California, but the most interesting tidbit from the article is that the new model may in fact be a hatchback. Score one for practicality, and consider us even more interested in seeing the new model in the flesh.

[Source: Fortune]

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger took to the podium today at Tesla's San Carlos, California facility to formally announce a new set of incentives for EV manufacturers to call Cali home. The crux of the address centered on the new CAEATFA program, approved last Wednesday, that exempts automakers from paying sales and use tax on manufacturing equipment used to build EVs. The program is expected to save automakers – and Tesla specifically – millions of dollars, and is largely in response to Tesla's original plan to produce its new sedan in New Mexico.

Tesla used the Governor's visit as an opportunity to formally announce its new "multi-use sport sedan," currently codenamed Model S, which is estimated to get 225 miles on a single charge and to cost around $60,000. However, Tesla did not announce when the sedan would go on sale, nor would it give any indication about where the new EV would be produced.

UPDATE: Official press release pasted after the jump.

Ok, ok, we previewed most of what we knew/know about Tesla's announcement regarding the future plans of the WhiteStar sedan this morning. Our friend Damon is at the ceremony and will be providing us with as many details as he can in very short order. For now, thanks to Engadget, we see that the WhiteStar concept will be called the Model S when it goes into production. Yes, it'll be built in CA and the numbers are awesome at this point: $60,000 for zero tailpipe emissions and 225 miles on a full charge. More soon.

[Source: Engadget]

We received a heads up overnight that California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will be making an appearance later today at Tesla Motors headquarters in San Carlos, CA. According to the notice from Tesla, Schwarzenegger will make an announcement regarding the manufacturing strategy for the WhiteStar sedan. Given this announcement and what chairman Elon Musk told us last week about plans to centralize production of its cars, it seems almost certain that the factory originally planned for Albuquerque, NM will never materialize. Instead it appears the sedan will be built at a factory somewhere in the Bay Area close to Tesla's headquarters. CEO Ze'ev Drori may even reveal the name of the new car (don't get too excited about this one folks) and hopefully give us a glimpse of what it looks like. Autoblog's Damon Lavrinc will be on site at Tesla HQ at 11:30 PST with all the gory details.

[Source: Tesla Motors]

Among the readers of this site, one of the cars that elicits a lot of passion is the Tesla Roadster. The battery-powered Roadster and its provenance have elicited a great deal of discussion over the past nine months, in particular since the demotion and ultimately the departure of co-founder Martin Eberhard. This is a complex tale involving passionate entrepreneurs with that all-too-common but in many ways necessary human frailty known as ego. When humans interact, they often see the same results through their own mental filters.

People can see exactly the same thing and interpret it in many different ways. Unfortunately in today's media landscape, particularly on television, but also in blogs we often see a very cut-down sound-bite version of things. Sound-bites by definition are taken out of context. In and of themselves they often lead to incorrect or at least inaccurate conclusions.

With all of that in mind I was recently contacted by Tesla Motors Chairman Elon Musk. Musk wanted to discuss his role at Tesla, and hopefully fill in some of the gaps in the story. What follows after the jump is the phone conversion that I had with Musk recently as well as some comments from Martin Eberhard via e-mail exchanges. Eberhard's version of events is italicized.

Update: Just to be clear Elon Musk contacted me immediately after a previous article where I called into question his role in the development of the Roadster. He wanted to clear up what he felt were misconceptions of his role rather than to pitch a story idea about him.

For the last couple of months there has been an ongoing discussion on various sites (including our own) about the status of Martin Eberhard's Tesla Roadster. For those just now tuning in to this little saga, Eberhard was the co-Founder of Tesla Motors, and was supposed to get production car #2 but at least three other cars have now been delivered ahead of his car. Since we last discussed the topic several weeks ago, things have been pretty quiet on this front, but we now have some new information.

During a recent call with Tesla Marketing VP Darryl Siry, I asked about the status of Eberhard's car, given that at least two and perhaps three other cars have now been delivered. It turns out that the car is here in the U.S. and was due to be delivered to Eberhard several weeks ago. Unfortunately, on the appointed day while a technician was doing a final checkout drive to make sure everything was working properly, there was an accident and the back front end of the car sustained significant damage. Continue after the jump for more.

Over at the Tesla Motors Club, one of the posters put a couple of photos of a silver Tesla Roadster on the back of a flatbed truck in the Windy City. I checked with Tesla and they confirmed that this car is in fact P4, the fourth production model. This is the same car that had been temporarily used as a marketing car in Europe and was seen in Monaco and Cannes. It has now arrived in the States and is on its way to its owner who happens to be a Tesla board member that lives in Chicago. You might now be saying to yourself: "that's at least three cars that have been delivered and still no car for Martin Eberhard. What gives?" Stay tuned for news on that front. We'll have something for you very soon.


[Source: TeslaMotorsClub, thanks to Doug for the tip]

Yesterday we told about news from Tesla Chairman Elon Musk that the Silicon Valley EV startup had struck some sort of deal with Daimler. We speculated that it might be an engine supply deal for the range-extended version of the WhiteStar. Tesla Marketing VP and primary spokesman Darryl Siry declined to comment on the deal and Daimler has apparently said nothing. Lucky for us, one of our readers pointed to where Fox Business News had the video up on their site so that we could see exactly what Musk said. Unfortunately, it appears that at least on the topic of the Daimler deal, Musk said nothing beyond what we had already heard and there isn't much to be drawn from his statement beyond our existing conjectures.

However, watching the rest of the clip, it became clear that in typical Fox (and almost all of traditional media fashion) they weren't about to let facts get in the way of a good story. Reporter Liz Claman started off the puff piece by introducing Musk as the creator of the Tesla Roadster. Now whatever you may think of Musk and what has transpired at Tesla over the past 10 months, calling him the creator of this car is blatantly wrong. Martin Eberhard had the vision for Tesla and he and the team of engineers are the ones who created this car. Musk then goes on to describe the Roadster as "the only production electric car for sale in the United States of any kind." This is most definitely not true. It may be the only really desirable EV but there are plenty of others of various descriptions. Obviously all the neighborhood electric cars out there are for sale and are drivable on many roads. They certainly aren't in the same class as the Roadster but they are electric. And of course we must grudgingly acknowledge the Zap Xebra here as well even though it is technically a motorcycle. Nonetheless this is not a promising start to the five-minute interview. And given that we know of only two cars that have been delivered to customers (one of which was Musk himself) calling the Roadster in production is still very much a stretch. We know almost no one watches Fox Business News but this is ridiculous and don't even get me started on this reporter. The video is after the jump.

Back in April, Tesla filed a lawsuit against Fisker Automotive for allegedly stealing insider information having to do with the production of an electric vehicle. You may recall that Henrik Fisker was hired to style the Tesla Whitestar sedan, though his designs were ultimately rejected. About a month later, word spread that Fisker had asked to have the lawsuit enter arbitration, and a hearing was set for June 11. Fast forward to today, and the hearing apparently took place as planned and court documents show that Fisker's request for arbitration was granted.

Interestingly, those documents also reveal that the deal between Tesla and Fisker had a clause requiring the arbitration of any disagreements in a specific court. It appears that Tesla Motors went outside those terms by suing Fisker in a different court than was initially agreed upon. Not surprisingly, Henrik Fisker is "extremely pleased" with this outcome. Regardless of how things proceed between the two companies from this point forward, we can be hopeful that each company is able to bring a desirable and suitably green vehicle to market. Thanks for the tip, Doug!

[Source: CNET]