By Frank Williams
February 20, 2008 -
Tesla sent out a press release yesterday bragging that they'd raised $40m in "bridge financing" that was "co-led by Valor Equity Partners and [Tesla chairman] Elon Musk." They're really going to have to stretch that $40m; Tesla plans to use it "for the continued development of a 4 door, five passenger sports sedan planned for introduction in 2010, the establishment of company-owned sales and service infrastructure, and the continued production of the Tesla Roadster, a stylish, high-performance, zero emissions car." The use of the singular in describing the Roadster is appropriate, given they've only produced one Roadster, despite describing the company as "a manufacturer of high-performance production electric cars" in the opening paragraph. So let's see… that's $40m down and only $210m to go.
Subscribe to New Content Alerts3 Comments on “ Tesla Birth Watch 36: Maybe They Should Have a Bake Sale ”
Leave a Reply 
Back to Top
You must be logged in to post a comment.
BlinkList
Digg
del.icio.us
Facebook
Furl
Google
Live
NewsVine
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Technorati
YahooMyWeb
POWERED
February 20th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Is it me? I am still trying to figure out why they want money to develop the four dour when they aren’t even able to make the roadster now.
I would think it would be easier and more lucrative to get venture capital once successfully making real cars at a profit. But what do I know?
February 20th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
dougw states:
I would think it would be easier and more lucrative to get venture capital once successfully making real cars at a profit.
It would seem that it is easier to BS the VCs when you are almost there than when you have to actually open your books and show them that your business is nowhere near as good as the hype.
February 20th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
given they’ve only produced one Roadster
Did they really?
PR spin aside, they didn’t deliver a roadster to a real customer - they delivered it to Elon Musk who is the company chairman. For all intensive purposes, that makes the one “delivered” roadster nothing more then an advanced prototype.
Until they deliver one to a paying customer who isn’t deeply affiliated with the business, they still haven’t made a production car.