Tesla Motors, Inc. is a Silicon Valley automobile company looking to create high performance and consumer oriented electric sports car headquartered in San Carlos, California, USA. Its operations started in the summer of 2003, spearheaded by engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. The company, named after inventor, electrical engineer and scientist Nikola Tesla, is backed by numerous high profile investors including Paypal founder Elon Musk and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
As to how the company came to be, Tesla had a total of 4 investment rounds for its financing. The very first one was for USD$7.5 million led by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk in April 2004 and included Compass Technology Partners. Mr. Musk became the company’s Chairman of the Board and was the one who led Tesla Motors’ second investment round for USD$13 million. At this point, Valor Equity Partners as a company was added to the funding team. In May 2006, Mr. Musk along with VantagePoint Venture Partners led the third investment round of USD$40 million. The company’s third investment round was a joint effort of different entrepreneurs including Google co-founders Sergey Brin & Larry Page, former eBay President Jeff Skoll, Hyatt heir Nick Pritzker and added the VC firms Draper, Fisher, Jurvetson, Capricorn Management and The Bay Area Equity Fund Managed by JP Morgan. The last funding round happened in May of 2007 and was for USD$45 million.
In total, the company’s investments was over $105 million USD through private financing, $37 million of which was from Elon Musk’s own pocket. Martin Eberhard was replaced by an interim CEO, Michael Marks in August 2007.After 4 months, Ze’ev Drori became the permanent CEO and President of Tesla Motors.
The young company is proud of its first production vehicle - the Tesla Roadster which was introduced in June 2006 to the public complete with a test drive by no other than California Governor himself Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Tesla Roadster was featured on the cover of Time Magazine in December 2006 and was recipient of the magazine’s "Best Inventions 2006 – Transportation Invention" award.
Currently, the company is working on its announced but unrevealed second model which is a sedan coming in 2010. Designed as an alternative to cars such as the BMW 5 Series and the Audi A6,Tesla’s second model codenamed "WhiteStar has an estimated price of $50,000-70,000.
Part of the startup sport scar company’s future plans is a more affordable third model. It will be called "BlueStar"and its funds will basically come from profits from the WhiteStar sedan. BlueStar will be released in 2012 and according to Tesla, this will only happen if everything goes according to plan. BlueStar will cost around $30,000.
Aside from its headquarters in Silicon Valley, San Carlos, California, the company has other facilities around the globe. It has one in Hethel, England and another in Taiwan. In the United States, the company has a facility opened last January 26, 2007. It is located at 1840 Enterprise Drive in Rochester Hills, Michigan and has a square footage of 19,240 (1,787 m²).
Tesla Roadster Service Centers are planned for the several United States Metropolitan Areas namely Los Angeles, California; San Francisco Bay Area, California; New York, New York; Miami, Florida; Chicago, Illinois and Seattle, Washington. Currently, there are no planned service center locations outside of the United States.
In order to support sales of its second model the sports sedan currently codenamed the Tesla WhiteStar, Tesla Motors will build additional service centers over the next few years.” To do 10,000 units for WhiteStar, we need to be in a lot more places," said Darryl Siry, Vice President of Marketing.
