Tesla Motors - First production high-performance electric car
April 24, 2008 – 7:40 pm
Wow! That’s all I have to say. Tesla Motors was founded in 2003 by engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning with exactly one thing in mind: create an awesome high-performance electric car. They got funded early in 2004 with a Series A round of $7.5 million. These guys truly are out to change the world. Gas prices are on the rise, but the American appetite for a really fast car will never die and that’s exactly what Tesla Motors is out to solve.
They’ve been around for 5 years as an entity and have had major financing since inception. To date, they’ve raised over $100 million dollars in private equity funding, which is pretty substantial considering that they have yet to launch a product. Their current model, the Tesla, is in general production for a sticker price of about $100,000.
The car goes from 0 to 60mph in under 4 seconds which makes it comparable to new the new Corvette C6R5 and faster than any Porsche on the road today. It will definitely destroy any Ferrari out there too (except the Enzo). It’s absolutely beautiful and gets infinite miles to the gallon (no gas, remember!). It costs about 2 cents per mile to drive compared to the 54.1 cents per mile that it costs on average with gasoline powered vehicles.
How about charging it? Just plug it in. Tesla Motors plans to sell solar cells that you can just pop on your house to generate some power for this beast. What a fantastic idea and a great way to stay green! It costs less than 4 dollars to charge the battery to full. Let me rephrase that.. right now, gas is about $3.25/gallon in NJ and my tank is probably 17 gallons. By comparison, this car will only cost $4 to charge fully. Less than a single gallon of gas and you can go over 200 miles.
What’s the concept?
High-performance, production electric cars
Why should you care?
The world seems to be going green nowadays and the oil industry is in turmoil.. well, maybe not turmoil, but things certainly are getting more expensive. If you have $100,000 to drop in an automobile, you probably don’t care about gas mileage, but you might care about the environment.
How do they make money?
Selling cars.
Will this company last 5 years?
They’ve lasted 5 so far with OPM (other people’s money), so 5 more? Sure, why not.
