Tesla CEO: With loan repayment, U.S. taxpayers made $20M profit off us
Tesla has now paid off its loan to the U.S. government entirely, plus interest, meaning U.S. taxpayers actually made a $20 million profit. Read more »
Tesla could pay off the rest of the DOE loan today, says CEO
Electric car maker Tesla Motors could make history again, if it pays off its loan from the Department of Energy many years before its due. According to a tweet from the CEO that could be as early as today. Read more »
After loving to hate Tesla, many scramble to show their love
Tesla is now officially a success according to blind-sided investors and media. Tesla didn’t emerge last week with a win, it’s taken a decade to deliver and true game-changing innovation takes a very long time. Read more »
Tesla could raise $830M through new offering, including $100M from CEO
Tesla could raise another $830 million in a new offering in a combination of selling common stock, and issuing senior convertible notes. That means Tesla can pay back its DOE loan early, among other things. Read more »
Elon Musk, David Sacks ditch Zuckerberg’s Fwd.us
Mark Zuckerberg’s immigration reform group Fwd.us is losing two big players this week: Elon Musk and David Sacks. A bad sign for the Valley’s latest political group? Read more »
Tesla delivers 1st profit, record revenue and boosts Model S guidance to 21K
Tesla hit its goal of the first profit in its 10-year history, and also delivered a record revenue, and boosted its guidance of Model S car sales by 1,000, to 21,000 for the year. Read more »
10 milestones Tesla hopes will make it a $43 billion company
Tesla is about to announce what is says will be one of the best quarters in the company’s history, reaching profitability for the first time. But Tesla’s ambitions are much higher than its current $6.4 billion marketcap. Read more »
Cleantech investing quietly re-emerging as smaller, more rational and capital-light
We’ve all heard that following weak returns, venture capital cleantech investing has retrenched. So what’s next? A style of investing that is a whole lot more rational, return-driven, shorter timelines and capital lite. Read more »
Tesla to offer loaner cars to customers with cars in the shop
Tesla plans to offer loaner cars to its customers when the customer’s car is in the shop and needs to be serviced. Read more »
A look under the hood: why electric car startup Fisker crashed and burned
We bring you the behind the scenes story of how electric car startup Fisker Automotive spent over a billion dollars, took down a government loan and ultimately delivered about 2,000 cars, a small fraction of what it originally promised. Read more »
Tesla messes with Texas, over how to sell its electric cars
Tesla is battling Texas over selling its electric cars directly to customers. CEO Elon Musk spoke at the Texas Capital Wednesday morning calling for support of a new bill. Read more »
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Cleantech first-quarter 2013 analysis and outlook
The first quarter of cleantech was a mix of good and bad news. Avis’ purchase of Zipcar and Silver Spring Networks’ long-awaited IPO finally occurring were further signs of thawing capital markets and movement in the acquisition space. However, in both situations valuations were lower than hoped, a sign of how investors view cleantech. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Sources: Fisker to lay off many of its employees today
According to sources electric car startup Fisker Automotive is laying off most of its staff and is announcing that to employees today. Read more »
Zappos CEO rethinks urban transportation in Vegas with 100 Tesla Model S cars
Downtown Vegas is going personal car free (or hoping to) with the launch of Project 100, the out-there transportation service for the Downtown Project, from Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. Read more »
For energy tech, the boring stuff (business model innovation) will be key
It’s the non-sexy stuff like financing and business model innovation that will drive forward the next-generation of energy technologies. Read more »
Tesla to offer leasing option for Model S
Tesla is offering a new financing option that will provide a lease for potential Model S customers. Leasing electric cars could help bring the technology to more mainstream car buyers. Read more »
Tesla, Fisker, and what could have been: A tale of two electric car startups
Tesla is successfully morphing into a profitable electric car maker, while Fisker is coming ever closer to stumbling, has lost its founder and hasn’t made a car since last Summer. How did these two end up in such different places? Read more »
Tesla’s stock soars over 20% on profit, sales news
Tesla’s stock hit over $46 per share on Monday on news that the company would be profitable on a GAAP basis, and ship 250 more Model S cars than expected. That’s the highest Tesla’s been since its IPO in the Summer of 2010. Read more »
Westly Group raises a $160M (gasp) cleantech fund
One of the few investors to make money from backing cleantech startups, The Westly Group has finally closed on a $160 million cleantech fund. Read more »
Tesla delays production of Model X electric car to the end of 2014
Tesla has quietly pushed back production of its third electric car, the SUV/minivan, the Model X. The car is important for the company and signals to the world that Tesla is an automaker with a line of cars that appeals to a broader demographic. Read more »
Elon Musk on his one regret from the NYT incident, spaceship scares & Russian missiles
In a wide ranging interview at the SXSW festival in Austin on Saturday, entrepreneur Elon Musk talked about his crazy life bringing the world life on Mars, electric cars, and solar rooftops. Read more »
5 potentially disruptive, but “out there,” energy innovations
The world needs more crazy energy entrepreneurs, said Bill Gates. Well here’s five potentially disruptive but a little out there energy projects spotted at the ARPA-E Summit this week. Read more »
Getting to gross margin: Tesla’s year ahead
Tesla continues with its goal of getting EVs to the mass market after announcing its fourth-quarter earnings. But the challenges the Model S-maker faces are many, and there are limits on how much the company can scale. Read more »
Tesla CEO Elon Musk says Tesla will repay its loan to the DOE in half the time
Tesla CEO Elon Musk pledges to pay back the company’s loan to the Department of Energy in five years instead of ten. Musk says if the DOE should be criticized for failures like Solyndra it should be praised for successes like Tesla. Read more »
News and the new amplification reality
The media outlets apart from bringing readers news and information now have to embrace a new role: become amplifiers of the right kind of news including that directly shared by sources. Here is why I think so. Read more »
Tesla, and its Apple-style stores, to focus on Asia, Europe this year
Tesla is using its Apple-style stores to draw in customers across Europe and Asia, and in particular jump into a new market, China. Already a quarter of Tesla’s reservations are outside of the U.S. so the bet on international growth, seems like a good one. Read more »
Disruption: It moves in mysterious ways
Google today released a new video showcasing the user interface of its Google Glass efforts. On the surface it might look like a hands free camera, but in reality it can open up a lot of new possibilities. Just like the iPad did before it. Read more »
Tesla expects to turn its first profit in the first quarter of 2013
Electric car maker Tesla revealed in its earnings that it will generated a slightly positive net income (on a non-GAAP basis) for the first quarter of 2013, and has hit its production goals for its Model S car. Read more »
Tesla, the New York Times and the levelling of the media playing field
One thing that Tesla’s’ battle with the New York Times has reinforced is how the balance of power has shifted in media now that everyone — companies included — has the ability to publish their side of a story. Read more at paidContent »
Five important lessons from the dustup over the NYT’s Tesla test drive
Tesla has released the data logs that tracked a negative review by a New York Times reporter, and I think they reveal five important lessons about electric cars, about Tesla and CEO Elon Musk and about reporting in the data age. Read more »
A German startup’s plan to make electric car charging more like cell phone service
Despite the slower-than-expected roll out of electric cars, young startups are still innovating around how to make electric car charging make economic sense. Berlin-based ubitricity thinks it has a breakthrough idea with its portable charging meters. Read more »
How battery improvements will revolutionize the design of the electric car
Battery innovation isn’t as slow as many people think it is, and the continued pace of battery improvement enables entirely new types of electric car design, according to Tesla co-founder and CTO JB Straubel. Read more »
A safer next-gen battery is used with solar panels for the first time
A startup called Seeo, backed by Vinod Khosla and Google.org, has created a safer lithium ion battery that’s being trialled with a solar panel system developed by SunEdison. Batteries can provide much needed energy storage systems for solar. Read more »
Shocker: An electric car company actually meets production goals (and yes, it’s Tesla)
In contrast to the bulk of the electric car companies and vendors out there, Tesla actually reaches its planned production run rate of its Model S electric car. This is its path to profitability and mainstream auto status. Read more »
The fourth quarter of 2012 in cleantech
The fourth quarter in cleantech saw attention paid to two prominent, publicly traded companies: EV maker Tesla and newly minted public listing SolarCity. It remains a transitional period for the sector as investment declines, with a shift toward those companies able to scale with little additional capital. Read more »
GigaOM’s top 10 cleantech posts of 2012
Show me — that’s the common thread in the top 10 most-trafficked GigaOM cleantech stories of 2012. Exclusive photos and videos of emerging clean power and electric car technologies lead the year. (OK, we’re not so surprised by that.) Read more »
Tesla’s solar powered super chargers hit the east coast
Tesla’s solar-powered super chargers — which can charge Model S cars in 30 minutes — have officially hit the east coast. Last week Tesla announced it had installed two fast chargers, one in Connecticut and one in Delaware. Read more »
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Cleantech and investment in 2013
In 2013 cleantech investing will move toward companies serving unsubsidized markets where software plays a role in reducing power consumption. In many ways this is a return to plays for energy efficiency, and there’s still money to be made from business models built around saving energy. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
SolarCity IPO still moving, now plans to sell more shares at $8 per share
In a new filing SolarCity says it plans to sell 11.5 million shares at $8 per share, well below its previous range of $13 – $15 per share. However the IPO seems to be still moving, and only slipped past its original deadline to price Tuesday night. Read more »
As electric car experiments fumble, Tesla is last man standing
Three companies that made aggressive bets on the future of electric cars — A123 Systems, Fisker Automotive and Better Place — are now facing major problems financially and commercially. Read more »
