That’s likely due to a combination of California’s strong state incentives for electric cars, the state’s population of tech early adopters, the area’s environmental leanings, and its population that in areas like the Bay Area have considerable disposable income. And because the population of California is the most receptive to electric cars, the car manufacturers are also concentrating on the state first and foremost, launching cars in California and opening up dealerships in California first.

Tesla Roadsters lined up outside of the Model S Beta Customer event

California also has its own electric car startups, too, including Tesla Motors, Fisker Automotive, and Coda Automotive.

Other states that also have populations interested in electric cars, include New York, Florida, Texas, and Washington.

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The first Model S customer is driven off

Tesla Motors needs to make a profit and is counting on the Model S to get it there. The electric car company began shipping the sedan in late June and the hoopla surrounding the rollout has boosted the Model S reservations to about 12,200 now, compared with roughly 11,500 by the end of June.

“We obviously don’t have a demand problem. One of the biggest reasons people don’t put down a reservation payment for Model S is you have to wait a year, and if you need a car you need a car,” said CEO Elon Musk, during a conference call with analysts to discuss the company’s second-quarter earnings.

Tesla expects to ship a total of 5,000 Model S in 2012, but the big delivery push won’t happen until the fourth quarter. The company plans to ship roughly 500 of the car in the third quarter and the rest before the year ends. In 2013, Tesla plans to ship 20,000 of the Model S.

Analysts questioned whether Tesla could ramp up so quickly and do it without glitches, given the short period of time it will have to accomplish it. Musk said it’s not unusual for a new car to have a low production rate at the start. Plus, the company continues to trouble-shoot problems. It already has had to change one supplier and replace an interior trim that looked good in a sample but not so swell when it showed up inside a car, he added.

Musk offered assurances of the company’s production ramp up by saying that he expects the annual production rate of Model S to reach over 20,000 by the end of 2012.

“At the end of next year, there is a pretty good likelihood that we will be at the 30,000 per year runrate,” he added.

Tesla is building some kind of “super charger” station, a project Musk had hinted previously, and on Wednesday he suggested that the company will unveil it in September, depending on whether Tesla could finish the construction and secure all permits. The station is supposed to add 150 miles of charge to Tesla cars in 30 minutes. He remained mum with the details of the project but promised a showstopper.

“I’m really excited about the announcement. It’s way cooler than anyone realizes,” Musk said. “I’ll have a profound effect on how the public sees electric vehicles. There will be a few surprises.”

Here are the details about Tesla’s financial results:

Revenues: $26.65 million, down from $58.17 million from the second quarter of 2011.

Losses: $105.6 million, or $1 per share, compared with $58.9 million, or $0.60 per share, in losses from the year-ago period.

Model S: Ship 5,000 of the Model S during 2012. About 500 of them will be delivered to customers during the third quarter and the rest in the fourth quarter. The company was rolling off the assembly lines five cars per week back in June, and it has since “approximately doubled” that pace.

Roadster: 89 Roadsters were sold during the second quarter. Another 130-140 Roadsters are left and should be sold by the end of 2012.

Guidance: Tesla expects to generate $560 million to $600 million in revenues for 2012. In 2013, the company expects to ship at least 20,000 Model S and achieves a gross margin that will “exceed 25 percent,” Musk said.

Powertrain project: Tesla announced a powertrain development program for Mercedes-Benz earlier this year, and it began to record revenues from the project during the second quarter. Asked how Tesla’s powertrain compares with competitors’, Musk said, “I think Nissan should double down on their electric vehicle investments to improve their product; it’s not where it needs to be.”

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Despite tepid sales of electric cars, NRG Energy’s electric vehicle charging network project eVgo is rolling out chargers in public places like malls in Houston and Dallas. The company is getting in early, snapping up agreements to place its chargers at key points of visibility, good security and high traffic. NRG is betting that if it builds it, they will come, and with direct current fast chargers that can charge an electric vehicle in as little as 15 minutes, what’s not to like?

Members only

The proprietary subscription pricing model is what’s not to like. EVgo is selling access to the charging stations on a cellphone model where for a 3-year contract at $89 a month, customers get free installation of a home charger as well as access to all of the public chargers with electricity included at eVgo network stations (for $49 a month, you just get the home charger).

The problem with this charging network is that using it is proprietary. You can’t even access an eVgo charging station if you don’t have a subscription. And if you do have a subscription, you are extremely reliant on there being an eVgo charger where you need it. Because after plonking down your $89 a month, who wants to pay more money when you find yourself in a location where you need a charge and the only charger available isn’t an eVgo charger.

The issue of proprietary charging networks isn’t unique to eVgo and it represents a future customer experience problem for the electric vehicle industry. While other charging networks like Ecotality’s Blink and Coulomb’s ChargePoint may not employ strict subscription models, they penalize customers for not carrying company specific RFID cards that switch on their network chargers. Imagine needing the gas card of every gas station you go to get the best deal or the best service.

If you don’t have their company specific RFID cards, Ecotality’s Blink Network allows payments with “Blink codes” that can be obtained from a mobile device at double the price of using a Blink member card. And Coulomb’s ChargePoint requires drivers to call a number and provide their credit card over the phone if they don’t have a ChargePoint card (you can use contactless credit cards, which few people have, to pay at the station). The inconvenience aside, consider having to call a service late at night in a dimly lit parking lot and provide one’s credit card number in order to charge one’s car. Talk about the kind of user experience that would have Steve Jobs rolling in his grave.

A coming problem for the automakers

I spoke with the founder of EV Charging Pros, John Kalb, who has worked with numerous retail and commercial establishments throughout Northern California on public charger installations. “The charging networks believe the RFID cards allow them to control the customer experience but it’s not creating a customer experience that allows the market to grow,” he said. Right now the automakers have early adopters and enthusiasts for customers who don’t necessarily mind carrying different EV charging cards, but as Kalb noted to me in a previous conversation, what happens when you’re Nissan and you want to sell 400,000 electric vehicles.

What’s on the horizon is the potential for automakers to be in conflict with charging network operators in a way that they never were with gas station owners. The charging operators want proprietary systems because they want to optimize their relationship with their customer so that they can allow interesting payment schemes like letting mall owners offer discounted charging to people who frequent the mall. But this vision comes at the expense of the wider market need, which is about making it as easy as possible for EV drivers to access a charge.

Defenders of the current system point out that early adopters don’t mind the charging systems being deployed, and I

NRG Energy's eVgo Network at a Best Buy

suspect that eVgo’s all you can charge plans have a great appeal for car owners who want to pay one fee for all their energy use. But electric vehicles won’t exist in 5 years if the auto industry can’t move beyond early adopters and offer a convenient charging network. Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf sales have been disappointing, and EVs are getting caught up in the current politicization of cleantech, which led GM CEO Dan Ackerson to note in The New York Times last week that GM “did not engineer the Volt to be a political punching bag.”

The interesting thing about electric vehicle charging is that it actually has the potential to make everyone’s life more convenient. We’re accustomed to having to take a trip to the gas station to fill up, but what if we could charge our cars while shopping or being at work. Any retail, government or commercial entity with some parking real estate can offer charging. It’s a lot cheaper to install an electric car charger than to put in a gasoline pumping station, and if level 3 direct current charging specs are ever resolved, charging one’s car will be a 20 minute affair.

It’s already slow going with EV adoption. Let’s not make this any more complicated.

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Fisker Karmas

Updated. Electric car startup Fisker Automotive pushed its long-delayed inaugural electric car to market before it was market-ready in order to try to meet government milestones for a loan, according to a former Fisker retailer employee that left the company. (Update 3/15/12: The Chronicle discloses more on the exec and I’ve corrected this article to reflect that the employee worked at a Fisker retailer, not as a full time Fisker employee).

Update 3/15/12: Fisker sent over a second statement that says these “allegations are absolutely untrue,” and the exec “was not privy to any business information from Fisker concerning the development of the Karma sedan and/or Fisker’s financing.”

Over the past few months, as hundreds of Fisker’s extended-range electric Karmas have been shipped to customers, some of the cars have had a variety of technical issues, including being recalled for a battery problem and requiring software upgrades, and Consumer Reports even reported last week that a Karma it had bought to test out died upon arrival.

Consumer Reports wrote in a blog post:

We buy about 80 cars a year and this is the first time in memory that we have had a car that is undriveable before it has finished our check-in process.

The former Fisker retailer employee said that it wasn’t uncommon for the first Karma cars to have technical issues, and said that was one reason for leaving the Fisker retailer — the employee now works at with electric car company Coda. The former retailer employee says that Fisker launched the car before it was market-ready in order to try to meet milestones from the Department of Energy for its loan. Fisker was awarded a $529 million loan award from the DOE in late 2009, but because the Karma was so delayed to market, Fisker had been unable to draw down on the rest of the DOE loan since May 2011.

I’ve contacted Fisker for a response and will update this when I hear back. Update 3/12/12: A Fisker spokesperson says to me: “Quality and customer satisfaction are the top priority for Fisker Automotive. With any new technology there will be unanticipated bugs and we have demonstrated the ability to quickly resolve them on a case-by-case basis. In addition, Fisker’s 24 hour VIP call centers and comprehensive vehicle warranty are also designed to give our customers complete peace of mind.”

It should be noted that given electric car technology is new, it’s not so uncommon for the first line of electric cars to face some of these types of issues — the first versions of Tesla’s Roadster faced a few recalls.

As a result of the DOE withholding the rest of the Fisker’s loan, Fisker said it has suspended production of its second car the Nina, which it was planning to build in Delaware. Fisker also says it is now looking for alternative funding to build Nina and to get its Karma cars to market.

A couple weeks ago Fisker brought in a new CEO, former Chrysler Chief Executive, Tom Lasorda, and said on a call with the media that Fisker is planning to be profitable in 2013 off of just the Karma line. Fisker said as of the end of February, it had produced 2,000 cars and shipped 840 of them to dealers and distributors. The extended electric car the Karma costs $100,000.

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The first shipment has been a long time coming. Coda was planning on starting shipments of the electric sedan — the first car from the venture-backed startup — back in late 2010, but then pushed that back to late 2011, and now early 2012. It’s not unusual for an electric car startup to push back launch dates, though, and both Tesla and Fisker also delayed the launches of their first electric cars.

Last week Coda’s sedan got its official ratings from the EPA, and it received an 88-mile range (the distance its batteries can go on a single charge), with fuel mileage of 73 miles per gallon equivalent (77 in the city and 68 on the highway). That range is one of the longest official ones out there for an all-electric car, other than Tesla’s higher-end cars, and Coda says its car can do a 125-mile range under reasonable driving conditions.

Coda is directly competing with the LEAF in terms of price, all-electric features and the fact that both cars are pretty basic. Nissan’s LEAF has an official electric range of 73 miles and a 99 MPGe, and costs $35,200 (without subsidies). The Coda sedan has a base cost of $37,900 $39,900, down from $44,900 (before any state and federal subsidies). Coda boosted the battery warranty on its car to 10 years (up from 8 years) or 100,000 miles late last year. Nissan has a warranty of 8 years for the battery for its LEAF.

Coda has a joint venture with China battery maker Lishen, called Lio (oil spelled backward), and is in the process of raising $150 million in funding to help get these inaugural cars to the first customers in California. Other investors in Coda include Aeris Capital and Singapore-based EDB Investments.

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Not hitting the goal signals a setback in efforts to convince consumers to embrace more environmentally friendly vehicles. The Volt attracted a lot of fanfare leading to up its launch because it represented a departure from the gasoline-centric approach of GM and the auto industry. Sure, at a price at around $41,000 (before tax incentives), the car isn’t as affordable as comparable sedans that run on combustion engines only. But then, GM wasn’t expecting the car to sell outsell any of its other models either, particularly given the weak economy.

GM saw an increase in Volt sales in October and November, but the uptick isn’t enough to enable the carmaker to hit its goal.  GM sold 1,139 Volts in November while Nissan sold 672 all-electric LEAFs in the U.S. In October, 1,108 Volts found buyers while 849 LEAFs did so. But Nissan still leads in overall sale for 2011 so far: 8,720 LEAFs versus 6,142 Volts.

GM and other carmakers have been under pressure by the government to roll out more fuel-efficient cars and invest more in electric and other alternative-fuel vehicles (with hefty financial support from the government). Just last month, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a new fuel economy standard for 2025 that comes with provisions to allow automakers to hit lower fuel efficiency numbers if they invest in, say, building electric cars or using better air conditioning systems that emit fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

Though GM and Nissan were early to the electric car marker, other carmakers plan to follow. Ford, Toyota, Honda all plan to launch similar cars in the United States over the next few years. Tesla Motors plans to roll out Model S into the showroom next year, and Coda Automotive just started producing its very first, all-electric model.

How well GM and Nissan fare will give other automakers an indication of the consumer appetite for electric cars, and they will adjust their production accordingly. Any product plan cuts will not just impact carmakers and their dealers, but suppliers such as lithium-ion battery makers. A123 Systems already is doing layoffs and has reduced its sales projection because its customer, Fisker Automotive, has cut its battery orders.

President Obama has set a goal of putting 1 million plug-in electric cars on the road by 2015. Debates have raged over whether the goal is easy to meet. His administration had counted on a number of car companies to supply enough cars to help achieve the goal. It was counting on GM to produce 15,000 Volts and Nissan to deliver 25,000 LEAFs for 2011. Figures for Think EV and Fisker Karma also aren’t panning out.

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