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The Tesla Motors executive team and a gaggle of reporters and celebrities were out en masse yesterday to witness the grand opening of the company’s flagship store in Los Angeles. Close to 9 months in the making, the store was the culmination of several years of hard work — at times fraught with delays and production troubles — for the San Carlos, Calif., company.

The mood at the event was certainly upbeat: All the executives I had the chance to chat up expressed confidence in Tesla’s plans moving forward — which, in addition to their next model, the WhiteStar sedan, could include a $250 million IPO within the next year. CTO JB Straubel told me they were on track to build 2,000 cars in the coming year, ramping up their production from 1 a week now to 20 a week over the next 6 months.

He blamed current production issues on the firm’s complex supply chain and distribution channels, which, as he explained, require hundreds of parts to be flown in from companies around the world. Though he was glib on the topic of the Whitestar, he did divulge that they were shooting for a late 2010 date to launch production and that his engineering teams were hard at work developing the powertrain and creating a static mockup.

Because the WhiteStar will be targeting a lower-end market than the Roadster, Tesla plans on eventually increasing its production volume to 10 - 20,000 vehicles a year. The company hopes to raise its profile and gain a wider share of the high-end vehicle market by focusing on optimizing customer experience. It was clear from the store’s chic, highly stylized layout that Tesla intends its service calls to be as easy and fun as possible.

Straubel and Malcolm Powell, the vice president for vehicle integration, conceded some of their critics’ arguments, explaining that the Roadster’s battery pack and transmission had given them more trouble than expected — causing them to delay production and switch out the original 2-speed version for a 1-speed one. Despite some lingering concerns in the investment community about Tesla’s scaling up plans, the team was confident and eager to move ahead with its plans to scale up production and open their next store, in Menlo Park, by June.

The Tesla store’s sleek decor

Tesla’s Roadster engineering prototype.

This was Tesla’s sixth built electric car engineering prototype

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the latest action:
1) Dan Farber takes the helm at CNET
2) Mozilla launches email-focused subsidiary
3) Scribd creates iPaper, an Acrobat competitor
4) Hewlett-Packard has great first quarter
5) Tesla Motors pulls in another $40M
6) Verizon, AT&T unveil new unlimited wireless plans
7) Oligarchs, proletariat run amok in Silicon Valley
8) Scientists suck up CO2 to make alternative fuel

Dan Farber takes the helm at CNET — One familiar figure is stepping aside for another at CNET, where long-time editor-in-chief Jai Singh is ending his long rule over the editorial arm of the media company. Farber, a veteran journalist and former EIC at some of the tech world’s most recognized publications, takes on the role at a time that CNET is struggling with activist investors including Spark Capital and Jana Partners. His own thoughts on the transition are here. (Image by Scott Beale of Laughing Squid.)

Mozilla launches new subsidiary to improve email — The Mozilla Foundation, which makes the Firefox browser, has launched a subsidiary called Mozilla Messaging that will work on improving the Thunderbird email client, another of the company’s products. In a painfully vague blog post, David Ascher, the CEO-to-be of Messaging, says that the new division will give Thunderbird the kind of attention Firefox has always gotten, adding new features and opening it to more contributions from outside developers. Despite the vagueness, as a major competitor to Microsoft Outlook, a next-generation version of Thunderbird may (eventually) be big news.

Scribd creates iPaper, an Acrobat competitor — Does clicking a link only to find it opening up a PDF file in a separate window bug the hell out of you? Scribd is hoping it can tap into that pain point to get a foothold over Adobe’s Acrobat, with a new document viewer called iPaper that will be embedded directly in web pages. The viewer will be able to display a variety of formats including normal text and Powerpoint presentations and, get this, advertisements powered by Google Adsense, without requiring a download. The app is quite similar to Macromedia’s FlashPaper, which Adobe effectively abandoned when it acquired that company. Ironically, iPaper is also made with Adobe Flash.

Hewlett-Packard has an excellent first quarter — Giant computer maker HP had an excellent first quarter, especially as compared to the recent earnings and stock performance of most of its compatriots on the NASDAQ. The company saw a small bump in North American revenue, accompanied by a jump in Asia and Europe. It’s often considered an indicator for the enterprise sector, so strong results coming now from HP suggest that the recession might not be so bad after all, at least for tech.

Tesla Motors pulls in another $40 million — Electric car maker Tesla has taken another $40 million, raising total investment in the company to date to $140 million, as we briefly mentioned yesterday. The lead investors were Valor Equity Partners and Elon Musk, the company’s chairman. Tesla is shooting for $250 million more over the next two years, and the launch of a new model; for more details, see yesterday’s article.

Two major carriers unveil new unlimited wireless plans — Verizon and AT&T now both offer unlimited-use wireless plans, starting at $99. Directed at the high-end market, the new packages are a significant step away from the set-minute “buckets” that the largest carriers have favored to date. They mark a further move toward using value-added services like applications and data as the major differentiator between wireless plans.

Oligarchs, proletariat run amok in Silicon Valley; middle class vanishing — Petit bourgeousie, where art thee? Recent employment figures for Silicon Valley show that overall employment levels are rising, but jobs in the $30,000 - $80,000 earning range are on the decline. Worse, the job growth for low-end earners  making less than $30,000 was at five percent, while growth for the $80,000-plus group was at only one percent. This might have something to do with an increasingly common business model: One well-paid CEO, one small army of interns.

Suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to make fuel — A couple of new schemes hope to pull carbon dioxide from the air to create an alternative fuel. The idea reported here by the New York Times involves using a nuclear plant as the power source for the electrochemical reaction that would produce the fuel, though, so don’t plan on seeing it any time soon.

Tesla Motors is planning to raise $250 million between a public offering and debt raise, according to a Financial Times interview with the company’s chairman, Elon Musk.

This marks the first time that a number has been attached to Tesla’s future fundraising plans. The company is already one of the most heavily funded cleantech startups, with $100 million raised to date plus an additional $40 million that it just closed.

Tesla will need the funds to accelerate the development and production of the White Star, the mass-market sedan it plans on rolling out now that its high-end sports car, the $98,000 Roadster, has finally begun shipping.

It took five years of development to produce the Roadster, and Tesla doesn’t even have control over the production lines that make it. To have any chance of growing past its current status as a boutique automaker, Tesla will need to be able to accelerate the process, and build its own manufacturing facility.

That will likely be in Albuquerque, New Mexico or in the East Bay of California, according to the FT. The White Star will come with a price tag of around $50,000, putting it in competition with BMW, Mercedes and other high-end carmakers.

The first production version of Tesla’s Roadster, an electric sports car, was unveiled at the company’s San Carlos, Calif. facility earlier today. In fact, board chairman and proud new owner Elon Musk may be taking it for a spin as you read this.

“This represents the first production electric car on the road since God knows when,” Musk said.

This is good news for the company, which has had a tumultuous couple of months. We’ve reported on recent layoffs and production delays, but on the bright side, Tesla won the Crunchie award in January for top cleantech startup. The company said now it’s on-track to start production on March 17. Jeremy Cleland, Tesla’s senior manager of accessories and apparel, told me Tesla will ramp up slowly, initially building one car per week. When full production starts this summer, Tesla hopes to produce 1,000 or 2,000 sports cars – which can go 225 miles or more before needing to recharge – annually.

The price is still being determined, Cleland said. Early estimates pegged the cost at $98,000, but it’s probably going to be higher. All 600 of the 2008 models are already sold-out, and you’ll need a $5,000 deposit to get on the waiting list for 2009.

The company is also closing on an $40 million internal round of funding, spokesman Darryl Siry said. That’s on top of the $105 million Tesla raised previously. The company will likely go out for at least one more round this summer before going public sometime in the next year.

To welcome the first production car, Tesla hosted a big media event at its workshop. (The photo to the left is from GigaOm’s Earth2Tech.) Cleland walked me around the site, and gave me a close look at the both production car and some models used for testing. I’m not a automobile aficionado myself, but I can say the Roadsters look like real, honest-to-goodness sports cars, and nice enough that I was terrified of scratching the paint. The performance – 0 to 60 miles per hour in 5.7 seconds in this “public beta”, 0 to 60 in 4 seconds when the “permanent solution” is perfected later this year – hits “all the same figures” as other sports cars in Tesla’s price range, Cleland said.

The production model was actually assembled in England, the lithium-ion battery was built in Taiwan and installation will take place in San Carlos. I watched as workers started installing the battery in Musk’s car, but the process takes an hour or two, so I didn’t see the whole process.

Tesla isn’t going to stop with the Roadster, Cleland said. The next step is a four-door, five-person sedan, codenamed Whitestar, which Tesla hopes to bring to market in 2010. The company plans to make 10,000 to 20,000 sedans per year, which will be more affordable than the Roadster.

“The Roadster is just the beginning of the beginning,” Musk said.

That seems like a good step as far as going green and reducing fuel consumption. But I don’t know, a sedan just isn’t as cool as a sports car. So how about that raise, Matt?

[UPDATE: In an interview with CNET, CEO Ze'ev Drori said Tesla will be making two models of the Whitestar sedan: an electric model and a range-extended model, in which a small gas motor will recharge the battery. Read more here.]

Following its ouster of founder Martin Eberhard and appointment of new chief executive Ze’ev Drori late last year, electric car maker Tesla Motors is going through a fresh round of layoffs, including several execs and members of its engineering team.

Eberhard revealed the news yesterday on his Tesla Founders blog in a post titled “Stealth Bloodbath,” listing 26 people (full list below) who have lost their jobs at Tesla through what he called “random firings on a daily basis,” and questioning the company’s motives.

Following Tesla’s production delays, the firings might seem like a good basis for concern, but a company spokesperson, Darryl Siry, told us there’s no reason to worry. “We’re letting go of people who are either not the best on the team, or are working on something that is not a priority,” he said in an interview.

The company’s new CEO is “holding people accountable at all levels, and that starts at the top,” Siry said of the executive departures. Three top execs were removed, including the vice presidents in charge of manufacturing and the White Star, Tesla’s upcoming mass-market model.

Supporters quoted by Eberhard on his blog disagree. “Everyone understands necessary, rational cost management actions in startups, but this was neither necessary nor rational,” writes one, with another stating that “The new management have slowly squeezed the life out of engineering.”

Siry, in turn, points out that the company has over 250 employees, and is growing out of its startup phase. “I think [the layoffs] are normal. It’s painful, it’s difficult, but it’s not unusual,” he said. And, he added, some of the layoffs were only contractors, or date back to October of last year.

It’s also worth noting that Tesla has already opened a wait list for the 2009 Roadster. The company also says it is still on track for a 2010 release of the White Star.

The full list of dismissals from Eberhard’s blog is below:

Update: We’ve removed the names following a polite request by someone on the list concerned about privacy. Also note that the employment terms of some people on this list are actually not scheduled to end until next month.

• writer – owner’s manuals
• VP Manufacturing
• Software development engineer
• firmware development engineer
• lead engineer on Tesla’s motor team; creator of Tesla’s motor
• CIO
• formerly VP of Service & Support, then demoted to Director
• manufacturing engineering manager
• software development engineer
• VP Whitestar
• the original, sassy moderator of the Tesla blog
• firmware engineer
• world famous motor expert
• systems engineer, working on service diagnositcs
• Communications director
• Transmission Team
• Buyer
• Vehicle Development Engineer
• Technical Writer
• Mechanical Engineer
• Motor Team
• Supply Manager
• Supply chain manager
• UK Logistics Manager
• Human resoures
• Web Developer

It’s official: Green car madness has taken over. After seeing more electric and hybrid vehicle startups than we could keep track of, we finally decided to start keeping count.

We’ve compiled a list, below, of 27 (update: the list has reached 30; thanks for the comments) startups, listed according to their release date, with additional information on fuel type, range, top speed and price. Most haven’t yet taken venture funding, but where applicable, we’ve listed financial backing.

While we’ve got some overall favorites (Miles, Tesla, Think) and a few favorite oddballs (Aptera, Commuter Cars, Eliica), we’ve for the most part withheld judgement. Still, if you have any of your own predictions about which companies will succeed or — far more likely — fail, we’d encourage you to make them known in the comments.

A note on our method: While most manufacturers are planning more than one model, we chose the one that seemed either most commercially viable or closest to release, depending on our own (discretionary) formula. We didn’t included well-known consumer models like the Toyota Prius or Chevy Volt, or startups like AC Propulsion that only do battery conversions for consumer vehicles. We also rounded the price to the nearest thousand.

All details are taken from the companies, so we haven’t independently confirmed things like range and top speed details. In case we missed any, mention them below and we’ll add them to the list.

American Electric Vehicle — Kurrent
Update: Defunct, according to a comment below, although they seem to still be for sale. We’re looking into it.
AEV advises its potential drivers to “Slow down,” which seems like wise advice, given the golf cart-inspired design. Still, it’s ridiculously cheap.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $10K
Range / top speed: 40 miles / 25mph
Release date: Available now

Commuter Cars — Tango T600
The Tango is even odder than three-wheeled designs, in some ways: It’s less than half the width of a normal car, and two can fit in a single lane. It also accelerates like a bat out of hell. Future versions are planned to be much cheaper, and have longer ranges.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $108K
Range / top speed: 80 miles / 150mph
Funding: Less than $1 million in angel backing; open to venture funding.
Release date: Available now

Dynasty Electric Car Corp. — IT Sedan
This Canadian company actually sells five different models, although they all look relatively identical, minus or plus a few pieces of frame.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $19,000
Range / top speed: 30 miles / 24mph
Release date: Available now

ElBil Norge — Kewet Buddy
Somewhat reminiscent of the Think (see below), the Buddy is currently only available in the same country, Norway.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $28K
Range / top speed: / 56mph
Release date: Available now

Fly Bo — 6000 / 2
This vehicle, which bears a strong resemblance to the Smart Car, is produced in China. Spark (see below) distributes it in the United States.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $10K
Range / top speed: 60 miles / 35mph (w/ limiter)
Release date: Available now

Global Electric Motorcars (GEM) — e2
GEM is actually a division of Chrysler, the company has the look and feel (not to mention, apparently, the limited funding) of a startup. Its vehicles resemble golf carts, and are likely used for many of the same functions.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $7K
Range / top speed: 35 miles / 25mph
Release date: Available now

Modec — Electric Van
These aren’t actually cars, or even consumer transportation. These electric van / trucks resemble the delivery vehicles you might see bringing vegetables to your local grocery.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $41K
Range / top speed: 100 miles / 50mph
Release date: Available now

Myers Motors — NmG (No more Gas)
Another three-wheeled design, with room for only one passenger. Odd-looking and doesn’t go far, but you can order one today, if you like.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $35K
Range / top speed: 30 miles / 75mph
Release date: Available now

Reva — G-Wiz
Despite its distinction as the most-produced electric vehicle around, having been in production since 2001, the Indian-produced Reva isn’t available yet in the United States. It’s considered extremely unsafe at high speeds, so it may never make it over.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: £8K ($16K in US dollars)
Range / top speed: 70 miles (for 2008 model) / 45mph
Release date: Available now

Smith Electric Vehicles — Edison
The Edison, a large van designed for local deliveries, is Smith’s smallest model, meaning drivers don’t need a special license to operate it. The company, based in the United Kingdom also makes several much larger delivery trucks.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: Unconfirmed
Range / top speed: 150 miles / 50mph
Release date: Available now

Twike — The Twike
Some effort seems to have been put towards making this vehicle look like an insect. Of course, the look worked for the Volkswagen Beetle, and it may be working for Twike; the company sold out its 2007 line last year. It’s based in Switzerland, but sells in several other countries, including the United States.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $27,500
Range / top speed: 80 miles / 53mph
Release date: Available now

Venturi — Fetish
Another high-end electric sports car, the Fetish is manufactured in Monaco. High labor costs, anyone? The company is also developing two more models, the Ecletic and Astrolab.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: €297K (about $435K dollars)
Range / top speed: 155 miles / 100mph
Release date: Available now

Zap! Electric Cars — Xebra Sedan
Update: While Zap! cars really do exist, the company appears to have made itself out to be much more than it is. Check out the Wired.com expose piece on Zap, and think twice before ordering one (or signing up to be a dealer).
We chose to list the Xebra because the two higher-powered versions Zap is working on, the Zap-X and the Alias, don’t have firm release dates. Zap also has numerous retail locations in the United States, and sells cars made by other manufacturers.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $11K
Range / top speed:
Release date: Available now

Zenn Motors — Zenn NEV (Neighborhood Electric Vehicle)
As with some other available electric vehicles currently available, this vehicle is strictly for short ranges and slow speeds.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $12K - $15K
Range / top speed: 35 miles / 25mph
Funding: This company is publicly traded on the TSX.
Release date: Available now

Lightning Car Company — Lightning GT
The United Kingdom’s answer to Tesla. This will likely remain a boutique vehicle, but the company has plans for cheaper mass-produced models later.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: £150K ($293K in US dollars)
Range / top speed: 250 miles / TBA (but fast)
Release date: First half 2008

Spark Electric Vehicles — Comet
Update: Like Zap (see above), it seems Spark is either a scam company or simply incapable of carrying out its plans. Michael Papp, the brain behind Spark, has been arrested and faces trial for taking payments for vehicles he failed to deliver.
Spark has nine models, most made by Fly Bo (listed above). Here, we list the one they designed and manufactured themselves in the United States (most of their vehicles are much slower and cheaper than this one). They distribute their vehicles in Colorado, Michigan, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $33K
Range / top speed: 200 miles / 90mph
Release date: First half of 2008

Tesla Motors — The Roadster
The most-publicized, most-hyped electric car company around. Tesla’s high-performance electric vehicle is reportedly a blast to drive, but various production problems have set the release date back.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $98K
Range / top speed: 221 miles / 125mph
Funding: Backed by Bay Area Equity Fund, Compass Venture Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Technology Partners, VantagePoint Cleantech Partners, and VantagePoint Venture Partners, as well as various angel investors (including Elon Musk).
Release date: First quarter 2008

Think — City
A pre-existing company whose older cars are still driven in Norway, this European manufacturer will release its new model in Europe this year, and in the United States a year or two after. Business 2.0 had an extensive story on the company.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $34K in Norway, $15K - $17K in US (projected)
Range / top speed: 112 miles / 62mph
Funding: Backed by DFJ Element, British Hazel Capital, Canica, Capricorn Investment Group, CG Holding, RockPort Capital Partners and Wintergreen Advisers, as well as various angels.
Release date: First half 2008 in Europe, but not until 2009 or later in the US

Phoenix Motorcars — Sport Utility Truck / SUV
No cars here, just trucks and SUVs. The company will have an extended-range battery option for 250 miles later in 2008.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $45K
Range / top speed: 130 miles / 95mph
Release date: Mid-2008

Moteur Developpment International — The Air Car
These tiny, odd little vehicles are powered entirely by compressed air. You won’t be likely to see one Stateside just yet, but India’s Tata Motors has plans to begin production on them this year.
Fuel type: Air!
Price: TBA
Range / top speed: 120 miles / 70mph
Release date: 2008 (month TBA)

Porteon — Porteon
Reportedly to be sold alongside houses in small Mexican communities. Like other companies, this one plans to roll out higher-speed models later, but they haven’t gotten back to us yet with more details, including the official name.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $7K - $9K
Range / top speed: TBA / 25mph
Release date: 2008 (month TBA)

Universal Electric Vehicles — Spyder
UEV’s Spyder has a sporty design, but the company itself doesn’t seem as slick and polished as some of the competitors. We’re not sure whether that means anything, though.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $70K
Range / top speed: 150 miles / 100+mph
Release date: 2008 (month TBA)

Aptera — Typ-1e / Type-1h
The Aptera Typ-1 is a three-wheeler (two front, one back) available in two configurations. We’ve covered the vehicle here.
Fuel type: All-electric or hybrid, depending on configuration
Price: $27K electric, $30K hybrid
Range / top speed: 120 miles electric, 600 miles hybrid; top speed TBA
Funding: Backed by Idealab and an angel investor, the CEO of Esenjay Petroleum, Michael Johnson.
Release date: Late 2008

Obvio — 828e
Sold in the United States by Zap, the diminutive but high-powered Obvio could almost race a Tesla. It’s designed and manufactured by a Brazilian company that is also working on a cheap combustion engine version.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $49k
Range / top speed: 240 miles / 120 mph
Release date: Late 2008 or early 2009

Fisker Automotive — “Eco-Chic” (Working name TBA)
Fisker will be showing off the first productions models of its cars on January 13th, at the Detroit Auto Show. Created by a world-renowned auto designer, these will compete in Tesla’s high-end market niche.
Fuel type: Hybrid
Price: $80K
Range / top speed: 620 miles / TBA
Backing: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has invested more than $10 million in Fisker.
Release date: Mid-2009

Venture Vehicles — VentureOne e50 / Q100 / EV
We previously suggested that some might call this vehicle a “glorified scooter.” The company does have supporters, though, who gave us plenty of heat — for a chuckle, check out the comment thread below our story. The three models listed are actually one car with different configurations.
Fuel type: Two hybrids, the e50 and Q100, and the all-electric EV
Price: $20K - 25K
Range / top speed: e50, Q100 and EV respectively: 350 miles / 100mph; 300 miles / 120mph; 120 miles / 75mph
Backing: Backed by NGEN Partners.
Release date: Second quarter 2009

Miles Electric Vehicles — XS500
Founded in 2004, this company already makes and sells two low-speed electric vehicles which are manufactured in China. We chose to list details for its upcoming highway-speed model, which should have a mass market appeal, if the price is low enough.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: TBA
Range / top speed: 120 miles / 80mph
Release date: 2009 (month TBA)

Bonus: Concept cars

We’ve picked out a few companies that represent next-generation thinking in EVs. As noted below, there are many more.

Eliica (The Electric Lithium-Ion Car)
A concept car created by Keio University in Japan, the Eliica has an odd eight-wheeled design and has come close to breaking speed records for combustion-engine cars. The team plans to sell a couple hundred eventually.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $255K
Range / top speed: TBA / 230mph

Velozzi
An X-Prize contestant, Velozzi is most notable for claiming that their car will have a 0-60mph acceleration of under 3 seconds. Other details are pretty thin, though.
Fuel type: Hybrid
Price: TBA
Range / top speed: TBA / 200mph

Wrightspeed — X-1
Wrightspeed admits that its scarily fast prototype is unsafe, and will never be mass-produced. The company is planning a commercial model with the same high performance, but hasn’t given any real details yet.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: Probably high
Range / top speed: <100 miles / 112mph w/ electronic limiter (but it’s still in first gear when it hits that speed)

There’s also the Automotive X-Prize competitor list, which had grown to 45 teams at last count — a few of which are included on this list, but many not. Most are concept cars.

Favorites? Least favorites? Think they’ll all fail horribly? Speak your piece.

If, like us, you took some time off during the past week, you’ve missed a few cleantech news items. To help out, we’ve assembled a quick catch-me-up on a few interesting or significant stories:

1) Martin Tobias out at Imperium Renewables
2) The grand plan for solar in 2050
3) Companies prove cleantech can stand alone
4) Ethos plans ethanol production in South America
5) Asphalt used as a cheap solar cell
6) New Tesla CEO posts open letter

Martin Tobias out as CEO of Imperium Renewables — As one of the nation’s most heavily-funded privately-funded biofuels company, Imperium Renewables has gotten plenty of press — both positive and negative — for its plans to produce ethanol in a struggling coastal town in Washington. However, nobody was expecting the company to suddenly announce the departure iCEO Martin Tobias. No reason has been given (or ferreted out by reporters). Tobias, a veteran of Ignition Capital and dotcom-era company Loudeye, was replaced by John Plaza, the company’s founder. We spotted one small clue that the company didn’t plan ahead for the departure: It still lists Tobias as its CEO.

The grand plan for solar in 2050 — Scientific American has a sprawling feature piece on the potential future of solar energy in the United States. A few soundbites: 69 percent of all electricity in the US could be supplied by solar by 2050. For this, a new DC (direct current) transmission network may need to be built; both photovoltaics and solar thermal will need to be used; and finally, the government may need to subsidize more than $400 billion of construction to get such a network off the ground.

German companies prove renewable energy can stand alone — Researchers at the University of Kassel teamed with several German power companies to study the potential of renewable energy sources — hydro, solar, wind and others — to power an entire country. A grid of 36 plants was connected to show, in miniature, that such sources can effectively work together. Now the problem for Germany (and other companies) is scaling the output to meet demand. Much more detail on the study is available at Biopact.

Ethos will produce its ethanol in South America — An ethanol production company backed by venture capitalists in the United States plans to head south to make its margins. Ethos, a Cambridge, Mass. company, is considering both Latin America and the Carribean for establishing biofuel facilities, and plans to use sugar as its feedstock, according to VentureWire. The company is funded by Khosla Ventures and GreatPoint Ventures.

Power from roadways to heat and cool buildings — A Dutch company called Ooms Avenhorn Holding has worked out a method of piping water underneath roads, which tend to get hot from the sun, then storing it in caverns to warm buildings in cooler months — in effect, turning roads into a low-efficiency but very cheap solar thermal generator. The system, which uses a lattice of pipes beneath asphalt, can also be used to de-ice roads. More details at the San Jose Mercury.

Tesla’s new CEO sends open letter to customers — Ze’ev Drori, the new CEO at Tesla Motors, sent an open letter to customers over the holidays via the company blog. Not everything in the letter is reassuring: Drori admits that, due to Tesla’s production strategy, “We don’t yet know when each car will be built or how many cars will be completed in calendar year 2008.” Drori’s predecessor, Martin Eberhard, was likely forced out due to internal disagreements centering around delays in production. Tesla also recently announced that it would be using a less-effective transmission for its initial production run. [Update: The company says this transmission will be used for only a portion of the initial production. See below]

Tesla Motors, the company making an electric sports car scheduled to hit the market next quarter, is now saying the first release of cars won’t have the promised performance.

Rather, they’ll come equipped with an interim transmissions that the company says should be considered “public betas,” or trial versions. Public beta is a software term that essentially means something is in a “testing” state, but can be publicly used while bugs or imperfections are ironed out. In other words, despite several delays already, Tesla is now saying the real deal won’t be ready in the first quarter after all, but will be ready in the second half of next year. GigaOm’s Earth2Tech has the news.

The company is also raising a $40 million round of capital from existing investors, in order to handle the extra costs caused by the transmission problem.

Chairman Elon Musk, the largest stakeholder, appears to be leading the round. It follows $105 million in previous funding from Musk and other well-known Silicon Valley investors, including Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. (See previous coverage here).

The Tesla’s transmission problems have been noted before, and have been cited as having caused earlier delays. However, this is the first time we’ve seen the company saying the final transmission won’t be ready until the second half of next year. The company hopes that it will move into “full production” at that time, it told Earth2Tech. Musk said the following of the first early, limited version: “…it won’t have the performance characteristics that we promised. And there may be some durability issues, not something that is made to last 10 years, but it should be fine for several months…”

He said the early transmissions will be swapped out for the tested ones once they’re ready.

There seems to be a bit of tension lingering after the appointment of Ze’ev Drori (pictured left, bottom) as the new CEO of Tesla Motors, the high profile Silicon valley electric car company.

Tesla released a statement last Friday at 6pm, apparently in an effort to avoid news attention, that Martin Eberhard (pictured top), co-founder of Tesla Motors, has transitioned from the board of directors to the advisory board. This came after Eberhard had already been replaced by interim CEO Michael Marks in August.

In an online post attributed to Eberhard on TeslaMotorsClub, Eberhard said: “I am not at all happy with the way I was treated, and I do not think this was the very best way to handle a transition — not the best for Tesla Motors, not the best for Tesla’s customers (to whom I still feel a strong sense of responsibility), and not for Tesla’s investors.”

It’s tough when you’ve founded a company to be suddenly booted out, looking at it from the outside after putting in some much work.

Greentech Media reports that Eberhard still wanted to be part of Tesla, and that it was purely the decision of Elon Musk, Chairman of Tesla, and Drori to have him out of the way. Tesla’s VP of marketing, Darryl Siry, however, told VentureBeat that it was a full board decision to have Eberhard out of the company in a formal manner. Aside from Musk, there are five other people on the board, mostly investors in the company.

There has been some tension between Musk and Eberhard over technical issues dealing with the car (most notably its transmission). Now it’s clear that these differences have resulted in Eberhard’s departure from the company. The company has delayed its first car offering a couple of times, but says it is still on track to deliver its first high-performance quarter next quarter.

It’s not clear how much of a role Eberhard will play in the future of Tesla given his significant equity stake in the company and advisory position. It will come down to how much advice Drori will seek from Eberhard’s experience with Tesla. Eberhard says now he is a free man and is going to take the next six months to reflect on his next venture. He is still concerned about global warming and hopes to help solve the problem with his next company, he says.

Tesla , the Silicon Valley company producing an all-electric sportscar with big-name backers including the Google co-founders, has pushed back its delivery schedule, saying the cars won’t hit the market until first quarter 2008.

Originally, Tesla said the Roadster would be ready by the end of this year. Darryl Siry, vice president of sales, marketing and service, said the delay results from a decision to do additional durability and reliability testing. “A car is an extremely complicated system of mechanical things, controlled by electronic things and managed by computer software,” he said. “It’s no one big issue that’s not resolved.”

On the good side, Tesla says it will ensure a travel range of 245 miles (EPA combined cycle) on a single charge, which is just short from the original 250 mile goal, but more than the “over 200 mile” qualification the company had made in March. The car has become heavier, with the addition of extra equipment to fulfill safety regulations, but apparently it hasn’t impacted the car’s performance and range significantly. Siry also confirmed with VentureBeat that the car will still go from zero to 60 mph in 4 seconds, meeting to its original pledge.

All in all, this is good news. The release schedule for the end of this year had always been aggressive in our view. If they can hold to first quarter next year, we’re assuming most pre-ordering customers should be ok with that.

Finally, the company it is closing its reservation list at 600 orders. It is starting a waiting list, Siry said, because the slip to 2008 means the company should first decide when it will start it 2009 model before taking new orders.

The announcement comes a month after the company announced a change in CEO. (scroll down)

Here’s the latest action, about 80 percent of it in Silicon Valley:

Introducing Twickr — This is Flickr photos on Twitter, the messaging service that lets you send one-liners to your friends. Web guru Dave Winer came up with it , and Twitter investor Fred Wilson writes more about how it works.

Introducing Yappd — Which is similar. It is a Twitter copycat, also with picture messaging.

VideoEgg unveils EggNetwork — ads for Facebook applications — VideoEgg, which lets publishers serve ads in videos on their Websites, has announced a new ad platform that lets partners place video ads in any Flash video player, widget or Web page. It offers a product designed specifically for Facebook applications. You can see a demo here. It shows an example of a normal text ad, with a video playing inside of it.

Facebook opens its feeds to RSS — The status updates and other posts of your friends are now retrievable by RSS. In other words, you don’t have to go to Facebook to see them. This may not seem like a big deal, but Facebook had been slow to open up this feature. David Winer pointed it out.

Apple launches My iTunes Widgets, a social version of iTunes — Details here. Niall Kennedy had an early look.

Apple’s new software: iMovie - iMovie lets you load video from a camera in a console, and then, as writer Dean Takahashi describes: …Here’s the magic. If you position your mouse arrow at the edge of the video’s cover photo, a vertical red line appears. Move the mouse and slide the red line from left to right. As you do so, the contents of the video are revealed to you on a larger video window. Move the red line to the left or right and you’re “skimming” through video at a high speed. Within a second or two, you can find the exact spot in the video clip that you want to use. Then you can snip it out and use it in your home movie. You can’t do this with a Windows Vista machine. When Jobs showed this at his press conference Tuesday, everyone let out their “oohs and ahhs.” “Isn’t this incredible,” Jobs said…

Classmates.com, the gaudy old school social network, files for IPO — Classmates.com, that site owned by Internet service provider United Online, is being spun off and wants to raise $125 million in an IPO. However, this one smells of desperation. Several social networks have emerged to overtake it in popularity, Facebook foremost among them. So perhaps Classmates sees this as a now or never, especially since markets are looking favorably on social networks right now. Look at its filing, and you’ll see it has been losing money for the last couple of years, including $250,000 on $42 million in revenue for the quarter ending March 30.

Something Simpler buys assets of PubSub — PubSub was the briefly popular service (among geeks, at least) that let you specify keywords of subjects you were interested in following, which directed it to send you news about those keywords via RSS. It was a perfect way to track blog content on subjects you cared about without having to visit the blogs. The service went defunct. Now telecom executive Ian Bell, president and founder of a quiet company Something Simpler, of Vancouver, has bought the technology, but isn’t saying much about his plans other than he’ll launch in about six months. (GigaOm has more).

VMware, the Palo Alto, Calif. virtualization company, surges to $51, or $22 above the initial IPO price of $29 — This makes it the hottest tech IPO since Google’s in 2004. The company raised $900 million in the offering. Early Mercury News story here.

Founders: Time is on your side! — Great post by venture capitalist Fred Wilson, counseling entrepreneurs that time is on your side. Hang in there, if you can.

Cerberus, the self-effacing private equity firm — Portfolio has the story about the firm of Stephen Feinberg, which has the following philosophy: Reveal as little as necessary; be anonymous; be invisible. “We try to hide religiously,” he says. “If anyone at Cerberus has his picture in the paper and a picture of his apartment, we will do more than fire that person. We will kill him. The jail sentence will be worth it.” There are a few nervous laughs…

The “Quant” funds doing terribly, amid liquidity crisis — The Dow keeps getting pummeled. It loses another 200 points Tuesday. It’s notable that the Quant funds are all doing poorly. Makes us wonder how FatKat is doing. Remember FatKat, the Quant fund backed with $2 million from Silicon Valley hotshot investor Vinod Khosla, and Nasdaq chairman Michael Brown, and built on the work of technology futurist, Ray Kurzweil? We wrote about it in March, before its launch. We’ve inquired, and will update if we get a response. Meanwhile, Goldman and others inject $3 billion into a faltering quant hedge fund backed by Goldman.

Tesla Motors replaces CEO — The Silicon Valley electric-car startup has seen number of exec changes over the months. It changed it PR/marketing team several months ago, and now it has replaced Martin Eberhard, its chief executive officer, with Michael Marks. Marks, an early investor in Tesla, is the former CEO of Flextronics. No reason was given.

General Motors’ electric car — GM is building a car that will travel 40 miles a day on a single electric charge, and has signed a contract with battery maker A123Systems to develop lithium ion batteries for the Volt plug-in hybrid vehicle.

(updated) Here’s the latest action:

Google’s Street View continued — More details from BoingBoing on the scary little 11-sided camera that Google and its partner are using for street-level photography shots — exposing peoples’ living rooms — including tabby cats — sunbathers in their bikinis, and some poor guy caught picking his nose.

Yahoo provides open access to its “Panama” search marketing APIs — Yahoo launches its “Commercial API,” so advertisers, developers and commercial partners will be able to build new applications and tools upon Yahoo’s search marketing technologies. Details here.

Agloco, the online pyramid scheme, launches Viewbar — We’ve written quite a bit about this company, which wants to let you make money, in the form of stock, by downloading its viewbar and surfing the Web with it. Until now, it hadn’t actually let you download the Viewbar. It has been so popular this morning we haven’t been able to get through despite multiple tries. Basically, the more you surf the Web, the more points you get, and the more stock you’ll get in Agloco. It is a pyramid because you also get more points the more your recruited friends use it, and their friends use it, and so on. Here’s our coverage of the Viewbar.

Cadence Design Systems in play — The San Jose, Calif. maker of software used to design computer chips has been in talks with buyout firms Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and the Blackstone Group, according to the NYT.

Glam strikes advertising deal with Google – Google will be the exclusive provider of search contextual ads for Glam Media, the network of online sites about woman’s fashion and lifestyle, Glam chief executive Samir Arora told VentureBeat last night. (Previous coverage of the fast-growing Glam here.)

SpaceTime3D offers 3D searching of the Web — A few companies have experimented with 3D browsing, and this is the latest effort. However, according to a review by the Mercury News’ Dean Takahashi, even this latest effort, eight years in the making, is not ready for prime time. It takes up to 30 seconds to load the feature-rich pages before you can continue scrolling, somewhat different from the company’s pitch when you arrive at its Web site: “Search at the speed of thought.” The start-up is based in New York City, and will be seeking venture capital soon, according to spokeswoman Amy Grenek.

Tesla Motors wins $561,000 – The state has awarded it money to help pay for charging stations for the electric car.

Cap and trade — California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger has started pushing the cap-and-trade program for pollution credits. The Merc has the story. It also has a piece looking at efforts by Silicon Valley leaders pushing solar power.

RockYou overtakes iLike as most popular on Facebook — On Friday, online photo widget company RockYou’s three applications — X Me, Horoscopes and Slideshows — dominated the most “recently popular” list of applications being downloaded on Facebook’s new platform. That came as RockYou paid for advertising on Facebook’s site (update: RockYou’s Lance Takuda clarifies that none of the growth came from the ads, because the ad erroneously pointed to a test version of an application not in the directory). Slide, meanwhile, promised Facebook users free beers if they added its application. Overall, though RockYou’s three main applications on Facebook now total more downloads (about 1.6 million) than that of any other company, including iLike.

Rout on Chinese market — The China stock market has fallen about 15 percent below peak over the past few days, after new tax reform was introduced.

Trivop, a video guide to hotels — Now, this is one of those obvious things. Finding decent hotel rooms is one of the most painful experiences of booking a vacation while on a budget. There’s also TVtrip, with more details here. [Update: Trivop said on June 18, 2007 it had raised 600,000 euros, from Mörten Lund, Steve and Jean-Emile Rosenblum, Oliver Jung and Lukäsz Gadowski.]

Acquisition of Feedburner confirmed — We reported this earlier. However, the official announcement is here. Mercury News story here.

Almost half of all companies going IPO are losing money — Of 84 companies having initial public offerings this year, more than 46 percent of the companies were unprofitable at the time of their listing, according to reports citing Sageworks data. That is the biggest percentage since 2000, when 71 percent were unprofitable. In part, this is because of life science companies going public, and life sciences companies tend to lose money. Jazz, for example, is the most recently, suffering from negative publicity around its drugs, as our own David Hamilton elaborated on last week.

Tesla Motors, the electric sports car start-up, has created a new division to sell its high-tech batteries, and that it has taken a $43 million order from a Norwegian car maker.

Chief executive Martin Eberhard has just blogged about the move.

The Norwegian electric car maker, Think (see image of the Think car, below), will buy the lithium-ion battery packs and will bring Tesla $3 million this year and $40 million in 2008, according to additional details in a Mercury News story to run tomorrow.

Tesla has developed a new division, the Tesla Energy Group, to develop and make battery packs for Tesla’s vehicles and the growing market for such high-end batteries elsewhere.

(Update: Turns out, Michael Kanellos first mentioned the strategy move back in January. The actual order amount is what is new.)

Tesla said Bernard Tse, a private investor, will head its Energy Group. Tse founded Wyse Technology, and is a former Tesla board member.

The state of California began investing in green technology companies three years ago, arguing this would support job creation.

Ironically, while green companies are sprouting up everywhere as a result, the state is now considering having to pay them to stay in California, now that the companies are actually about to create jobs. A group of California lawmakers is proposing legislation to create a $45 million clean-fuel technology fund, to keep companies like San Carlos, Calif.’s electric car company, Tesla Motors. Word is, they’re considering wooing Tesla with $20 million in subsidies.

Here’s the story behind Tesla: Led by then-treasurer Phil Angelides, the large public pension funds such as CalPERS and CalSTRS, together with CalCEF, began pumping money into venture capital firms three years ago, earmarking it for green technology start-ups. VantagePoint Venture Partners, one of the beneficiaries, is a backer of Tesla.

However, the electric car maker (which we first wrote about here), founded here, wants to expand and is considering building an electric car plant in Pittsburg.

Hat-tip to the Merc’s Vindu Goel, who has recently launched his own