To push off development of the White Star is very telling. If I were shoveling money into this company, I would be concerned about delays on this project. The White Star is the Duke Nukem Forever of the automotive industry.

It may be naive of me but I’ve thought of Tesla more as creating a halo to wrap around more practical electric cars. Building glorified golf carts hasn’t worked and imo won’t work. I would have hoped that the tesla effort would foster discoveries that would make electrics R Us more practical. So in this case, I think it was reasonable for them to claim green cred. David

It makes me suspect that Musk has spent the last several months trying to “shine’er up for trade-in” but the problems were so deep that they couldn’t get things sufficiently “shiny” before the recession hit. Heck, they might not have their ducks in order now, but the only way they’re going to get the cash to keep going and/or pay off the VCs is to go public.

Now I love sports cars, but I am a little sick of companies wrapping themselves in the ‘green’ flag to sell what is essentially a luxury good.

At Tesla retail prices, I think buying the thing is all about green cred, and gadget geekery. If the economy weren’t, uh, taking a rest, I wouldn’t expect the drop in gas prices to have much effect.

@SherbornSean
It takes fewer units of energy to run a car a given distance on electricity from a power plant than on gasoline in an internal combustion unit. My memory on the precise figure is uncertain, but somewhere betw 1/4 to 1/2 sticks in my head. And you have the advantage of less $ to OPEC. On the other hand, coal is maybe twice (does anyone know precisely?) as co2 intense as oil, so it may be a wash there. you maybe taking the tops off of Appalachian mountains to get the coal, and depositing the dirt and slag in the valleys, killing the streams and the environment for all the people who live there.