tesla motors

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June 30, 2008

Tesla Motors, Inc. is a Silicon Valley automobile startup company focusing on the production of high performance, consumer-oriented battery electric vehicles. The firm was started in July, 2003 by engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in San Carlos, California.

Tesla Motors is named after electrical engineer and physicist Nikola Tesla.

The initial, Series A investment round of USD$7.5 million was led by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk in April 2004 and included Compass Technology Partners. Mr. Musk became Tesla’s Chairman of the Board and in February 2005, led Tesla Motors’ second, USD$13 million Series B investment round which added Valor Equity Partners to the funding team. Mr. Musk co-led the third, USD$40 million Series C round in May 2006 along with VantagePoint Venture Partners. Tesla’s third round included investment from prominent entrepreneurs including Google co-founders Sergey Brin & Larry Page, former eBay President Jeff Skoll, Hyatt heir Nick Pritzker and added the VC firms Draper, Fisher, Jurvetson, Capricorn Management and The Bay Area Equity Fund Managed by JP Morgan.^[1]

The fourth, Series D round in May 2007 added another USD$45 million and brought the total investments to over $105 million USD through private financing. Elon Musk, who was President of PayPal before it was bought by eBay, has contributed $37 million of his own money to the company. In August, 2007 Martin Eberhard was replaced by an interim CEO, Michael Marks. In December 2007, Ze’ev Drori became the permanent CEO and President of Tesla Motors. In January 2008, Tesla Motors fired several key personnel that had been involved from the inception after a performance review by the new CEO.

Tesla Motors’ first production vehicle, the Tesla Roadster, is an all-electric sports car. According to test results from an EPA certified laboratory, the car has a range of 221 miles (356 km). The company and reviewers state that the Tesla Roadster accelerates from 0 to 60 mph (100 km/h) in less than 4 seconds, and has a top speed of 125 mph (201 km/h) (limited for safety). The cost of powering the vehicle is estimated at US$0.02 per mile.

Prototypes were introduced to the public in July 2006, and the Tesla Roadster was featured on the cover of Time Magazine in December 2006 as the recipient of the magazine’s “Best Inventions 2006 - Transportation Invention” award.Demand has been high for the first “Signature One Hundred” set of fully equipped Roadsters, which sold out in less than three weeks, and the second hundred sold out by October, 2007. As of May 2 2008, more than 600 Tesla Roadsters have been reserved and 400 more are on the waiting list. The first production model was delivered to Elon Musk, Chairman of the Board, in February, 2008 and were in general production by March 17, 2008.

Tesla plans to offer home roof mounted solar-photovoltaic systems through Solar City, another Elon Musk-funded company, that will offset power used by the home charger, allowing 50 miles (80 km) of travel per day without burdening the power grid, thus making the package “energy positive” for a driver whose average daily mileage is less than that.

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