Tesla Motors
Written by admin on May 20th, 2011Corporate strategy
Tesla’s primary goal is to increase the number and variety of EVs available to mainstream consumers in three ways: Tesla sells its own vehicles in a growing number of company-owned showrooms and online; it sells patented electric powertrain components to other automakers so that they may get their own EVs to customers sooner; and it serves as a catalyst and positive example to other automakers, demonstrating that there is pent-up consumer demand for vehicles that are both fun to drive and socially responsible. General Motors’ then-Vice Chairman Robert Lutz said in 2007 that the Tesla Roadster inspired him to push GM to develop the Chevrolet Volt, a hybrid sedan prototype that aims to reverse years of dwindling market share and massive financial losses for America’s largest automaker. In an August 2009 edition of The New Yorker, Lutz was quoted as saying, “All the geniuses here at General Motors kept saying lithium-ion technology is 10 years away, and Toyota agreed with us — and boom, along comes Tesla. So I said, ‘How come some tiny little California startup, run by guys who know nothing about the car business, can do this, and we can’t?’ That was the crowbar that helped break up the log jam.”
The Tesla Roadster has a base price of US9,000, prompting criticism in the media that the company is catering exclusively to affluent consumers. Tesla’s goal is to sell EVs to mainstream consumers at more affordable pricesut Tesla purposely aimed its first production vehicle at “early adopters” so that the company could optimize the technology before cascading it down to less expensive vehicles. (The company’s subsequent car, the Model S sedan, is anticipated to begin production for the 2012 model year with a base price of ,400, roughly half that of the Roadster.) This approach is a well known business strategy in Silicon Valley and the global technology industry, where prices for cellular phones, laptop computers and flat-screen televisions drop dramatically every product cycle. However, this approach has been rare in the global auto industry, where the prevailing business model has been one of mass production in assembly plants optimized to build hundreds of thousands of vehicles per year with comparatively low sticker prices. According to a blog post by Tesla CEO, Chairman and Product Architect Elon Musk, “New technology in any field takes a few versions to optimize before reaching the mass market and in this case it is competing with 150 years and trillions of dollars spent on gasoline cars.”
History and financing
Corporate headquarters in San Carlos, CA
Tesla Motors was incorporated in Delaware on July 1, 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning to pursue mass production of AC Propulsion’s tzero prototype electric car. With a small amount of personal funding, they rented Tesla’s first office in Menlo Park, California and set about developing a business plan. They quickly added Ian Wright to the team and in January 2004 started looking for funding to develop an production electric sports car. They arranged with AC Propulsion to borrow their TZero prototype to demonstrate to potential investors the performance possible with an electric car. By April, they found a lead investor in Elon Musk and closed a Series A capital investment round of USD.5 million. The round included Compass Technology Partners and SDL Ventures, as well as many private investors. Musk, a South African-born entrepreneur, became Tesla’s Chairman of the Board. Musk later led Tesla Motors’ Series B, USD million, investment round which added Valor Equity Partners to the funding team. Musk co-led the third, USD million round in May 2006 along with Technology 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 JPMorgan Chase. The fourth round in May 2007 added another USD million and brought the total investments to over USD5 million through private financing.
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 who had been involved from the inception after a performance review by the new CEO. According to Musk, Tesla was forced to reduce the company workforce by about 10 percent to lower its burn rate, which was out of control in 2007.
The fifth round in February 2008 added another USD million. Musk, who was President of PayPal before it was bought by eBay, had contributed million of his own money to the company by this time.
In October 2008, Musk succeeded Ze’ev Drori as CEO. Drori became Vice Chairman. He left the company in December.
By January 2009, Tesla had raised USD7 million and delivered 147 cars.
On May 19, 2009, Germany’s Daimler AG, maker of Mercedes, acquired an equity stake of less than 10 percent of Tesla for a reported million. The investment deepened the relationship between the inventor of the automobile and the newest member of the global auto industry. As part of the collaboration, Prof. Herbert Kohler, Vice President E-Drive and Future Mobility at Daimler AG, took a seat on Tesla board of directors. In July, Daimler announced that Abu Dhabi’s Aabar Investments bought 40 percent of Daimler’s interest in Tesla.
In June 2009 Tesla was approved to receive 5 million in interest-bearing loans from the United States Department of Energy. The funding, part of an billion program for advanced vehicle technologies (Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program), supports engineering and production of the Model S sedan, as well as the development of powertrain technology that Tesla plans to sell to other automakers. The low-interest loans are not related to the “bailout” funds that GM and Chrysler have received, nor are they related to the 2009 economic stimulus package. The Department of Energy loan program was created in 2007 during the George Bush administration in order to get more fuel-efficient vehicle options to U.S. consumers and to decrease the country’s dependence on foreign oil.
The company announced in early August 2009 that it had achieved overall corporate profitability for the month of July 2009. The company said it earned approximately million on revenue of million. Profitability arose primarily from improved gross margin on the 2010 Roadster, the second iteration of Tesla award-winning sports car. Tesla, which like all automakers records revenue when products are delivered, shipped a record 109 vehicles in July and reported a surge in new Roadster purchases.
In September 2009, Tesla announced an .5 million round to accelerate Tesla’s retail expansion in advance of the Model S. Daimler participated in the round to maintain equity ownership from its initial investment. A new investor was Fjord Capital Partners, under the leadership of founders Michael Obermayer (a former senior partner and director of McKinsey & Company, Inc), Arild Nerdrum and Xavier de La Rochefoucauld. Fjord is a specialized European private equity manager investing into the clean energy sector globally. Fjord invests growth capital in renewable and low-carbon companies and projects.
On 29 January 2010, Tesla Motors filed Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, as a preliminary prospectus indicating its intention to file an initial public offering underwritten by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J. P. Morgan and Deutsche Bank Securities.
Models
Tesla Roadster
Main article: Tesla Roadster
Tesla Roadster
Tesla Motors’ first production vehicle, the Tesla Roadster, is an all-electric sports car. Tesla announced in January 2010 that it had produced its 1,000th Roadster and had delivered cars in 43 states and 21 countries. According to test results from an EPA certified laboratory, the car has a range of 244 miles (393 km) per charge (using a standard EPA cycle of 45 percent highway driving and 55 percent city driving). Tesla acknowledges that if the car is driven extremely fast in typical racecar “performance testing,” efficiency is not optimized and the car, like its internal-combustion engine predecessors, will not achieve 244 miles per charge — and conversely if driven more moderately it can achieve significantly more range than 244 miles per charge. On Oct. 27, 2009, the Roadster set a new world record when customer Simon Hackett drove the entire 313-mile segment of Australia’s annual Global Green Challenge on a single charge. The company and reviewers state that the Tesla Roadster accelerates from zero to 60 mph (97 km/h) in under four 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.02 per mile. The base price of the car is US9,000, and it qualifies for numerous state tax waivers, as well as the ,500 federal tax credit.
Prototypes were introduced to the public in July 2006, and the Tesla Roadster was featured on the cover of Time in December 2006 as the recipient of the magazine’s “Best Inventions 2006ransportation Invention” award. Demand was 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. The first production model was delivered to Elon Musk, then-Chairman of the Board, in February 2008, and general production began on March 17, 2008.
In July 2009, Tesla began
Tags: "base price" usa "tesla roadster" tesla motors, "electric sports car" volt, "elon musk", "fjord capital partners" rochefoucauld, "market trend signal" scam, "n.u.m.m.i pension", "tesla motors was incorporated in delaware on july 1, 2003", "tesla’s primary goal is to increase the number and variety of evs available to mainstream consumers in three ways:", ♠the market trend signal, 2006 tesla price, 2011 nummi news, 2011 nummi pension news, 2011 nummi pension plan, ac propulsion finance, acre, affluent consumers, best investments for 100 000, breaking news nummi pension payout payment, brownfield, california startup, capital, car business, chairman robert, chevrolet volt, city, crowbar, Daimler, daimler financial pension payouts, DOE, does market trend signal work?, early adopters, finance, financial losses, financial resource for laptops in new market, flat screen televisions, gasoline, General, global technology, google, google pension investment jobs, Hewlett, how much does market trend signal cost, how much has been spent on tesla motors, how much is market trend signal, ion technology, is market trend signal a scam, johnloganfund.com/search/reviews-on-market-trend-signal/, july 2011 nummi pension news, June, laptop computers, latest news on nummi pension, latest news on nummi retirement package, latest nummi pension news, laws in california about shortsales in 2012, lithium ion, location, log jam, mainstream consumers, maintenance, manufacturing, market trend signal, market trend signal complaints, market trend signal cost, market trend signal does it work, market trend signal opinions, market trend signal review, market trend signal reviews, market trend signal software complaints, market trend signal software review, markettrendsignal, markettrendsignal.com reviews, martin eberhard ac propulsion, martin eberhard deutsche bank ag, martin eberhard, deutsche bank, microsoft pension investment jobs, Minivan, Model, Motors, mph, new nummi news 2011, news about nummi retirement, nri tax rate 2011, NUMMI, nummi define pension payout date?, nummi money pension, nummi paying out pension, nummi pension, nummi pension 2011, nummi pension for ex employers, nummi pension fund, nummi pension fund payout, nummi pension funds, nummi pension information, nummi pension news, nummi pension pay date, nummi pension pay out, nummi pension payday, nummi pension payment, nummi pension payout, nummi pension payout 2011, nummi pension payout date, nummi pension payout dates, nummi pension payout information, nummi pension payout latest news, nummi pension payout update 2011, nummi pension payouts, nummi pension place, nummi pension plan, nummi pension plan contact number, nummi pension plan date for pay out, nummi pension plan office phone number, nummi pension plan pay out, nummi pension plan pay out date, nummi pension plan pay out update, nummi pension plan payout, nummi pension plan payout update, nummi pension plans contact number, nummi pension release, nummi pension update, nummi pensionplan, nummi pention payouts, nummi retirement, nummi retirement administrator, nummi retirement pay, nummi retirement payout, nummi retirement payouts, nummi retirement pension, nummi retirement plan option update, Packard, PARC, parcel, percent, powertrain components, rate market trend signal, rate market trend signal system, review market trend signal, review market trend signal tim skyes, review markettrendsignal.com, review of market trend signal, reviews "market trend signal", reviews market trend signal reviews, reviews of market trend signal, reviews on market trend signal system, robert lutz, rochefoucauld xavier, shell climate change united states, shell fuel price, shell pension investment jobs, shell recruitment accounting or commercial or finance or hr or management or pension or investment or procurement or supply or support, shell renewable future, shell renewables, shell safety record, show, silicon valley, store, SUV, telsa market financials market share, telsa pension payout, Tesla, tesla 2011 company cost spent, tesla consumers, tesla financial review, tesla incorporated 2003, tesla inspires chevrolet volt, tesla motor, managers, ceo, corporate management, tesla motors, tesla motors 2004 or 2005 or 2006, tesla motors dollars spent since, tesla motors economic performance, tesla motors finance, tesla motors financial future, tesla motors financials, tesla motors financials 2003, tesla motors jp morgan, tesla motors market trends, tesla motors production rate, tesla motors strategy, tesla motors strategy early adopters, tesla nummi 2011, tesla owned by general motors, tesla roadster, tesla series a investment, tesla's economic performance, time, timing, tzero daimler, uaw 2224 pension payout nummi, uaw nummi pension payout, uaw nummi pention payout, uaw pension plan nummi pay out, uaw pention payouts for nummi, uaw report pension payout date, update on nummi pension, update on nummi pension payout, us tax "report foreign property" -canada -canadian, valor replaced vc-funding tesla, web, what are the results of market trend signal, what is going on with the nummi retirement plan, what's going on with the nummi pension money?, whats the timing of nummi pension payout, when will nummi pay out pension, when will nummi pension be paid out, will nummi pay out pension plans, xavier de la rochefoucauld, xavier de la rochefoucauld fjord capital
