Comments on: Tesla Death Watch 17: Fifteen Cars?

By: guyincognito

guyincognito — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 12:12:21 +0000

@ Frantz:

I haven’t been keeping a tally but I know the initial round of funding was something on the order of $100M, last year they raised another $140M, and Elon Musk has kicked in a bunch of his money so they must have burned around $300M by now.

By: healthy skeptic

healthy skeptic — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 06:42:59 +0000

@carlisimo

Shouldn’t you call it something besides the “gas filler cap”?

Wish I’d seen it. I work in SF’s Financial District.

By: Durishin

Durishin — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 02:09:36 +0000

I thought Nancy Pelosi was saving the planet this month.

By: carlisimo

carlisimo — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 01:00:55 +0000

I saw one today! Here in San Francisco, where all the offices are. It was a boring dark green color, the taillights were ugly, the mesh grilles reveals too many inelegant mechanical bits inside, and the gas filler cap is awkwardly located (why’d they have to make it look like a normal one?). Looks good besides those little details, but TTAC had convinced me that they don’t exist in the wild and clearly they do.

By: ckb

ckb — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:17:56 +0000

Actually I have seen their showroom (and fit all 6′3″ of me in the car). The interior decorating was definitely fit for a startup…complete with free cake! The 3 employees and 2 prototypes didn’t really fill up the couple thousand square feet (or the 3 repair bays) but I’m sure it was good feng shui and the saleswoman had some interesting info. Apparently they sold 4 cars that day despite the 12 month lead time. Hopes and dreams of LA’s green status seekers is apparently a fine way to fund development of the next Tesla.

By: LoserBoy

LoserBoy — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:59:56 +0000

Frantz:

Maybe I’m misremembering, but wasn’t the whole point of the Roadster to raise enough cash to build a “regular” car?

By: Frantz

Frantz — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:36:00 +0000

do we know how much they have tied up in this little project? I mean if someone has the money to bring this to the table.. if they only lose a little on their first project and have money or investors behind them i’d say they have an okay chance.. better odds than the volt anyway at only 3 times the cost!

By: cjdumm

cjdumm — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:06:42 +0000

Fifteen cars represents, what, TEN YEARS worth of inventory for Tesla, at its current rate of production? Maybe my math is off a little, but I hope Lotus isn’t expecting another order soon.

RF has had the goods on Tesla all along.