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According to reports from America, Tesla Motors is laying off 100 staff, more than half of its workforce, as a result of the global financial crisis.

The fledgling electric car company’s CEO Ze’ev Drori is also said to be leaving.

Tesla – which has just launched its incredible Elise-based all-electric Roadster - had recently announced plans for a £143 million factory in San Jose.

Gee, I'm shocked!

Who can blow $100k+ on a toy when America in reality is headed into a depression?

Some clowns, only a few weeks back, were guffing about Tesla being the rebirth of the US auto industry, a paradigm shift, a milestone equivalent to Microsoft's founding and kickstarting of the PC computer industry or Google and Internet 2.0. All utter guff. It was just another bling, flotsam and jetsam bauble for the look-at-me American craperati to feed their egos and earth-saving cred.

Take a look at what Ruf in Germany have done with their electric 911. They've done the same as Tesla/Lotus but unlike them/they know it's not a mature, sellable product but a moving billboard/development mule for perhaps a viable product in five years hence, maybe. Its lithium ion battery pack - same technology as Tesla - weighs over 550Kg alone and yet still only accelerates it to 62mph in 7.5 secs and has a range under 150 miles. 

Developing a car from scratch and one as technically new as the Roadster is always going to take a lot of cash.

I have always had my suspicions about Tesla but the recent drive for green cars meant that the project became high profile and potentially viable.  The banking crisis was always going to be a turning point for a company like this and it looks like they may have just fallen short.

At least the technology and development won't go to waste, they will be snapped up by one of the corporate giants for relative pennies if the company does go under, and at least then someone will produce an affordable concept.

TegTypeR:

they will be snapped up by one of the corporate giants for relative pennies

 

BMW to buy it and relaunch as a replacement for the X8?

 

 

Kee Law:

BMW to buy it and relaunch as a replacement for the X8?

 

Kee, you mean Z8, no?

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't electricity largely produced via fossil fuel combustion or nuclear reaction, and doesn't both forms of generation create significant environmental contaminants: the former being acid rain whilst the latter include radioactive waste that must be shielded for centuries, and in some cases hundreds of millennia?  I really wonder if electric-powered vehicles are in fact the right direction for the automobile industry to be heading, or just opening a Pandora's box of new environmental woes.   Wouldn't research be better spent on enhancing the efficiency of the combustion engine, complemented by supporting technologies, i.e. KERS?  The Tesla is an interesting experiment, but given the opportunity, I'd prefer a highly efficient PETROL-powered Elise at first chance!

You are completely correct kirin98.  The future of clean cars (at least until we start sourcing our electricity from a sustainable power source from the sun, wind or sea on a larger scale) has to go to improving the current concept of a motor vehicle.

I would be interested to know what the Co2 output and effective MPG from an electric car charged from a traditional power station is, in comparison to something like the Chevrolet Volt.

I wonder what the last start-up motor company anywhere in the world to actually grow into at least a minor mass market manufacturer was? Seems to be a tricky old business.

 If they get the administrators in and a couple of women arrive representing them, will they be known as the Tesla Girls?

 

I'll get my coat.................

TegTypeR:

I would be interested to know what the Co2 output and effective MPG from an electric car charged from a traditional power station is, in comparison to something like the Chevrolet Volt.

Tesla's website gives the well to wheel CO2 figures for the Tesla when supplied by the power mix that runs to US grid, it works out as 150mpg equivilent. The Volt's CO2 figures will vary greatly depending on how you drive it, on a motorway it will probably be similar to small engined petrol car if it's mostly driven by a commuter than the figures will be the same as the Tesla.

 The big reason why Tesla is shedding jobs is that now all the big manufacturers are building their own electric cars Tesla don't really have a long term future as a car maker. The people they brought in to design the roadster are now no longer needed as they probably won't make another model.

 The people who set Tesla up must have realised that there was a fair chance that other manufacturers would jump on the band wagon once they started it so I suspect that they will have costed the Roadster as a stand alone project with an exit strategy of selling their IP to a major manufacture who hasn't got an internal electric car R&D program.