- Saturday, 28 November 2009
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The Israeli Palestine dispute is a short term problem - Dr Craig Barrett, Intel
Electric car company about to crash and burn
SILICON VALLEY upstart electric car manufacturer Tesla seems to be running out of juice, a Bay Area online gossip rag reports.
Tesla is past the prototype stage, having delivered dozens of sporty, slick-looking all-electric vehicles to buyers. It had been considered a good bet to become profitable selling thousands of relatively affordable 'green' cars.
But the company recently laid off dozens of employees and announced that it was closing its Detroit office. Wednesday evening it held an all-hands meeting and told its employees that it has only $9 million left in the bank, according to one employee who'd attended the meeting.
The problem is that the company had collected tens of millions of dollars in deposits from customers for more than 1,200 cars but has delivered only about 50 of the vehicles so far.
The first few hundred cars were reportedly fully paid for, in cash up front, at $60,000 each, and subsequent car reservations required deposits of about $4,000 to $6,000 per customer.
Having already burned through most of its customers' deposit funds, Tesla might find itself unable to deliver vehicles that have already been paid for. Unless Tesla can obtain interim financing in order to build all the cars that it's promised to buyers, things could get ugly. ยต
L'Inq
Valleywag
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this is already OLD news

"The company's new CEO and primary financial backer, PayPal multimillionaire and tech visionary Elon Musk, appeared to pledge his personal fortune to meeting Tesla's commitments if necessary."
-source THE REGISTER

I would hate for the future success of this company to flounder because of incorrect media coverage. we need these g'damn battery cars yesterday.
Not only the need for electric cars, we need to drastically consolidate our travel distances.

It's already happening here in Canada, shopping districts are exploding around and spreading closer to residential areas. Golf carts could be better used for this instead of this sport.

I'm trying to scare the rich in loosing their sport or help out in the electric car business.
Is anyone really surprised that you can't start a car company with bold ideas and pixie dust? John DeLorean was far better equipped than these guys to start a car company, having RUN a major division in General Motors for 15-20 years. Well, he couldn't make a go of it with a far more conservative business model: gee, let's NOT invent a revolutionary new engine! The real surprise here is that so many people were stupid enough to give these guys 10s of thousands of dollars in deposits for cars they won't ever get.
So where did all the money for 1,200 cars to be manufactured go? those 50 cars they sold accounts for 3 million. The executive compensation at this company as well as wasteful spending on perks is likely the cause. Welcome to the economic meltdown.
I smell a prime candidate for another bail-out plan!
So did they not charge enough to cover the cost of making the vehicles? Or did they have a dot com bubble moment and all go out and buy big houses and whores an hummers? I would think that since they were in the production stage most of their money woes would be gone. Unless someone took some of the money.