the art and observations of Ranjit S. Mathoda

Tesla Motors, creator of an all electric car, is creating a dealership in Los Angeles.  Near Santa Monica Boulevard & the 405.  I’m excited, even if I’m not quite ready to spend $98,000 for a 2 seat roadster.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-garagebriefs26may26,1,987834.story?track=rss

Elon Musk (wikipedia) is one of the most interesting entrepreneurs alive today. After creating Zip2 (sold to Compaq for $307m) and Paypal (sold to eBay for $1.5b), he’s kept busy. He financed and executive produced the rather hilarious libertarian movie Thank You For Smoking (imdb), and founded two remarkable companies:

Tesla Motors (my prior post; wikipedia; their website), a credible attempt at making an all electric car.

And

SpaceX, which is trying to create cheap rockets to help humanity finally get into space in a real way. Here’s an interesting profile of SpaceX: http://www.wired.com/science/space/magazine/15-06/ff_space_musk

Update, 6/20/07: Make that 3 companies. He’s also the founder and Chairman of SolarCity (http://www.solarcity.com/), a company that helps building owners or communities of homeowners install, finance and monitor roof mounted solar panel installations.

If you are interested in the future of car design, or how to start an innovative physical products company, there is no more interesting company to watch than Tesla Motors (wikipedia), which is developing an all electric 2 seat sports car.

It has great range (200 miles), incredible performance (3.9 seconds to go from 0 to 60 miles per hour; top speed of 130 miles per hour), gets the equivalent of 135 miles per gallon (but electricity costs 2 cents per mile), and is relatively cheap for a startup sports car ($100k). Oh, and it’s a rather beautiful car (http://www.teslamotors.com/). 380 people have already put down a deposit.

I highly recommend their blogs, which you can find here (http://www.teslamotors.com/blogs.php?js_enabled=1). The blogs cover all aspects of their business. The innovation isn’t just in the cars, but how they have re-imagined the car dealership (you could see your car being worked on in a crystal clean room, for example), and the refueling station (they are offering roof mounted solar panel systems for home recharging).

And in 2010 they will start selling a sedan for $50,000 to $70,000.

Update, 5/17/07: Apparently they plan on selling a third vehicle in the $30,000 range after the roadster and the sedan. See this interview for more information on founder Elon Musk’s take on Tesla: http://www.autobloggreen.com/2006/07/26/exclusive-q-and-a-with-elon-musk-on-the-tesla-roadster-and-the-fut/

Update, 6/12/07: A great article on the founding of Tesla Motors, from Vanity Fair: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/05/tesla200705?currentPage=1 

Yesterday, Tesla Motors started taking orders for a two-seat car that

1. goes from zero to 60 mph in 4 seconds
2. goes 250 miles on a single charge
3. runs entirely on electricity
4. can be recharged in 3.5 hours

At the current national average retail price for electricity, that’s the equivalent of 150 miles per gallon.

The car is expensive, costing up to $100,000, but perhaps by aiming at the sports car enthusiast market they can create a viable business, and then move into other segments of the automobile industry.

For more, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/19/business/19electric.html

For photographs, see: http://blog.wired.com/teslacar/