Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal and founder of Tesla Motors and Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), sat down with Erick Schonfeld tonight just before TechCrunch Disrupt’s closing ceremony. During the brief conversation, Musk provided insight into how entrepreneurs can get started disrupting major industries like energy, transportation and space.
It’s not an easy route to success, he warns. Musk described starting a company like “staring into the face of death.”
“If that sounds appealing, go ahead.” → Read More
Tesla has released their shareholder statement for Q2 2011, and while it doesn’t make for the most exciting reading, it’s at least full of fairly good news. They’ve been on cruise control for quite a while now, if you will, designing and testing their Model S sedan, but there are plenty of pitfalls that could have afflicted the process, techniques and technologies that could have failed to pan out, and cost overruns that could have piled up. But no, things are going as expected and barring any major upsets, they should have the Model S rolling out in mid-2012 as planned.
Here are a few Q2 takeaways from the letter. → Read More
Electric car company Tesla Motors has priced its follow-on offering of 5,300,000 shares of stock at $28.76 per share, the closing price for Tesla shares on June 2. Tesla CEO Elon Musk also plans to purchase 1,416,000 shares of stock directly from Tesla at the public offering price and Blackstar Investco, an affiliate of Daimler AG (a Tesla investor), plans to purchase up to 637,475 shares of stock directly from Tesla at the public offering price. Tesla has also granted the underwriter a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 795,000 shares of stock. Excluding the underwriter option, Tesla will raise around $211 million in this follow-on offering.
This money is primarily going towards the development of its Model X crossover vehicle, says Tesla The Model X will be Tesla’s first SUV, and will cost around $30,000. Musk has said that this car, which is expected to become available in 2013, will be appeal to mainstream car buyers because of its lower price point. → Read More
After the retirement of the Shuttle program, NASA will begin flying along with – and funding – multiple “commercial crews” including Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin group and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. NASA is paying out $270 million to SpaceX, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada (not the beer) and Boeing. This program, begun in 2009 and is now vitally important as it pairs NASA’s scientists and astronauts with commercial crews to perform spaceflights. → Read More
http://player.ooyala.com/player.swf?embedCode=U2OG9kMjoPuxSXWmn8G3D11Z9vGSHPFG&version=2 Unlike other automakers, Tesla is headquartered in the hills of Palo Alto next to beautiful rolling hills with lush green scenery and horse crossing signs. As you can imagine, a place like this would have some of the best driving roads in the country. We were slightly disappointed that the man behind it all, Elon Musk, was out of town. But coincidentally this gave us the perfect opportunity to borrow his personal Roadster Sport while he was gone. → Read More
Being called “America’s fourth automaker” is good for stock prices. That’s what Tesla was recently labeled in a report from Morgan Stanley and it caused their stock to shoot up nearly 20% to close at $27.75. It also doesn’t hurt that they’re projected to hit $70 by the end of the year. → Read More
Top Gear fans? Remember the episode from a few years back where the crew tried to flog the Tesla Roadster? Yeah, it didn’t end so well for the Tesla after Clarkson started off praising the little electric supercar. The entire segment is embedded for your viewing enjoyment after the jump, but the skinny is that the Top Gear testers sort of died prematurely — a few times. The first car’s battery’s ran out only after 55 miles. Then another car’s motor overheated. When they went back to the original car, something was up with the brakes. So yeah, one of the most watched TV programs in the entire world didn’t exactly portray the Tesla Roadster favorably. Enter the libel lawsuit. → Read More
Considering that only 1,500 Tesla Roadsters are out on the roads, it’s amazing they’ve been able to clock up 10 million miles since 2008. Even more impressive is that the Roadsters have collectively saved 500,000 gallons of fuel and over 5.3 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, while maintaining supercar performance. → Read More
When Elon Musk first came to Silicon Valley he was researching advanced, highly-energy-dense super-capacitors at Stanford. Coincidentally, when speaking at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco about the future of electric vehicles Musk said, “If I were to make a prediction, I’d think there’s a good chance that it is not batteries, but super-capacitors.” → Read More
The Model S, is the most hyped electric car due to come out soon. Everyone is waiting to see what the Model S will feature and whether or not it’ll be worth the wait. Today, at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the Model S will support third-party apps and text-to-speech, pretty much confirming many rumors. → Read More
To those awaiting the most promising electric vehicles to ever enter the market (Tesla Model S), the company has given some more insight as to the Model S rollout. Today, on Tesla’s blog, George Blankenship, Vice President, Worldwide Sales & Ownership Experience, gave an update to the progress of the EV startup company. → Read More
A newly released app for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, called PlugShare aims to alleviate so-called “range anxiety” for electric vehicle drivers by giving them a map of an area’s available, paid charging stations and homes or lots that will allow them to plug in and recharge for free.
Xatori co-founder and chief executive Forrest North —who previously worked as an engineer at Tesla Motors, and founded and was CEO of Mission Motors, a company that makes electric motorcycles and their components— explained Xatori’s mission with PlugShare:
“We want to build and support a community that’s creating a paradigm shift to a massively cleaner type of transportation. The reality is that most people will charge their electric vehicles at home and not exceed the range of their vehicle very often. This [app] provides a kind of backup plan, and lets you feel comfortable. If you did miscalculate, you’d be ok.”
Today, Tesla opens its new Washington, D.C. showroom and starting tomorrow, February 11, Tesla will begin offering test drives of the Tesla Roadster. The showroom, located a few blocks from the White House at 1050 K St. N.W., is Tesla’s 16th store to open globally. Not only will customers be able to purchase Tesla Roadsters – and soon the Model S — but they will also be able to learn about Tesla’s technology and electric powertrain. → Read More
I feel like there’s something missing from this video. Oh yes, the thumping music and roaring engines that usually accompany these road-type videos — on Top Gear, anyway. Isn’t it a little creepy how quiet it is?
If you’re looking for more Model S love, we got a bunch of shots of a nice red one at CES. I actually like the silver color better, though. → Read More
CODA Holdings (or CODA Automotive) the Santa Monica, Calif. company that plans to sell all-electric sedans in the U.S. this year, raised another $76 million according to a company statement today. The company’s total equity funding, with this round, reached about $200 million. CODA’s new backers include Harbinger Capital Partners and Riverstone Holdings, who were joined by earlier investors AERIS Capital and the Angeleno Group.
In addition to producing electric vehicles, CODA manufactures power storage systems for transportation and utility businesses, through a joint venture with Chinese Lishen Power Battery, LIO Energy Systems… → Read More
Tesla Roadster owners get all the cool toys, don’t they? Not only do they hoon around in one of the hottest EVs ever made, but it seems the company is shipping special RC Tesla Roadsters to owners for the holidays. Bah! Humbug! Click through for one owner’s demo reel. → Read More
While Tesla is still working on making itself profitable, it has to do what it can to pay the bills. I mean sure, they’ve got investments from big auto and power companies, but that money disappears pretty quick when you’re losing $50m per year just to stay in business. But the fact is they’re here to stay, and they’ve got a good product. Toyota knows that, which is why they’ve gotten into bed with Tesla to make the all-electric RAV4 we’ve been hearing about.
And this savvy maneuvering by Tesla, according to the Wall Street Journal, should earn the company something in the area of $60m. → Read More
In retrospect, Tesla may have been cleantech’s Netscape moment. It didn’t get off to the world’s greatest start, but like a few other venture-backed IPOs, lately it has been trading at nearly double its opening price.
Meanwhile, a few other cleantech companies have filed S-1s and several more are waiting in the wings, watching to see what the market does. To continue the Netscape analogy, 2011 could even see Elon Musk emerge as the new Jim Clark if one of his other companies SolarCity files, as some in the industry expect.
Nat Goldhaber of the venture firm Claremont Creek Ventures argues that 2011 will be the year of the cleantech IPO, and it’s not just because of those handful of hot companies are finally ready for primetime and bankers are itching to take them out. → Read More
The Toyota RAV4 EV just debuted at the LA Auto show. It’s not much of a surprise, really. It’s been known for a while that Toyota and Tesla were working together on the CUV EV. Tesla was tasked with the developing the power train, battery, electronics, electric motor, gearbox and software — pretty much the heart of the vehicle. The first crop are already on the road and seeing a 100 mile range but engineers are working on improving that for the 2012 model. → Read More
Wrightspeed, a maker of fuel efficient, electric drive systems, has raised a $5 million Series A round from an unnamed private investor. According to the company’s press release, co-founder and EVP of Infinera, David Welch, will also join the company’s board.
The company’s founder and CEO is Ian Wright, one of the co-founders of Tesla. Although Wright was an important figure in Tesla’s early days, he left long before the IPO to found Wrightspeed. Wrightspeed doesn’t want to be the next electric automaker, instead, the company wants to build the best hybrid electric drive systems for high-performance cars and medium to large-sized trucks. → Read More
