Toyota’s ongoing recall and the safety concerns embroiling an automaker that climbed to the top of the global car market through a reputation for reliability, may offer an opportunity for competitors to seize market share, at least in the near term. But Toyota’s troubles, which most recently have spread to the automaker’s 2010 Prius hybrid model, could also offer something more lasting to companies ranging from General Motors to startups Fisker Automotive and Tesla Motors as they race to crank out plug-in vehicles: lessons in what works — and what doesn’t — when it comes to cultivation of rapid growth and a green halo.

In an automaker’s lineup, a “halo” car  is meant to cast a positive glow over a company or brand — showcasing technology, styling and smarts while also helping to define what the brand stands for and luring customers into showrooms to buy other models. The Prius did this to such remarkable effect for Toyota that the industry took notice. As GM-Volt tells it, the status Toyota acquired as “a media and environmental sweetheart” through the halo effect of the Prius helped inspire GM’s push for the plug-in Volt. But hanging so much of your reputation on one model also carries risk — and that can get lost in the green glow.

Continue reading this story

“Profitability” can be a squishy term for startups — until they file for an IPO and deliver, through the SEC, what’s often the first unfiltered snapshot of their financial situation: the S-1. That’s been the case for Tesla Motors, which filed on Friday to raise up to $100 million through an initial public offering.

Over the years the startup has highlighted specific units — the powertrain supply unit and the core Roadster business – within the company as they became cash-flow positive. Last year Tesla even trumpeted its first-ever “overall corporate profitability” for the month of July. But as Tesla’s filing makes all too clear — it’s generated just over $108.2 million in revenues and has a deficit of more than $236 million — the company as a whole remains far from turning a real sustainable profit and has never been profitable for a single quarter (a 3-month period).

Continue reading this story

Electric vehicle startup Tesla’s IPO-filing last Friday provided industry-watchers with the first real glimpse behind the company’s hip brand and high-profile PR. What they saw wasn’t as pretty as the image: a company that’s lost $236.4 million, sold less than 1,000 cars, and will lose many millions of dollars more as it retires its current generation Roadster next year and strives to produce the more mainstream and lower cost Model S.

If investors actually respond positively to Tesla’s public offering, to me, it will mean that in this media-saturated day and age, branding is truly everything. The hip silver (and green) brand, and the company’s claim to fame of being “the first, and currently only, company to commercially produce a federally-compliant highway-capable electric vehicle,” according to its S-1, will have completely outshown investor’s natural instincts to back companies that will be able to generate sustainable profits in the near term.

Continue reading this story

Tesla Motors, by filing on Friday for a long-awaited initial public offering, has unleashed a flood of facts and figures about its business, strategy, future plans and more than a few challenges.

In the hours after the 7-year-old startup first filed its prospectus with the SEC, we laid out the company’s financials, noted the significance of this IPO as a test for the VC model in the green car biz and pulled out some fun facts from the filing (including plans for a big gap in Roadster sales after 2011). Here’s 12 more things you should know about Tesla’s current and future business that are tucked into the S-1 filing — from what happens if the startup’s deal with Lotus doesn’t get extended to why Tesla thinks it has the lowest-cost battery pack on the market:

Continue reading this story

After reading over electric vehicle startup Tesla’s S-1 filing on Friday, after it filed for an IPO to raise up to $100 million, it’s clear that Tesla has a few things in spades: a stellar brand, lots of losses, and pretty much a single plan to generate profits in the coming years, the Model S. The company has only sold 937 Roadsters (as of the end of 2009), will have a large gap between selling its current generation Roadster (which it won’t sell after 2011) and its next generation Roadster (which won’t be sold at least until 2013) and has no other third-party deals beyond the limited Daimler supply deal.

Continue reading this story

Tesla Motors, the San Carlos, Calif.-based electric car startup, has just registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a $100 million initial public offering. This could be the biggest and possibly the first public offering for a U.S. car company since Ford Motor’s IPO more than 50 years ago.

The long-awaited IPO (rumors swirled last fall that the filing could come any day and the startup has discussed for years its intention to go public), if and when it goes through, will offer a test for whether the classic venture capital model (invest early and find a big exit in the form of an acquisition or an IPO) will be viable in the nascent green car market. Based on how the market responds to the offering from Tesla — a company with considerable buzz and funding from the Department of Energy, but so far not a single profitable year — will also serve as a gauge of public confidence in electric cars.

Continue reading this story

On the cusp of a new generation of electric vehicles and the buildout of a smart grid, connected cars — vehicles linked to the power grid as well as communication networks — have the potential to give us a transportation system for the digital age. Smart charging infrastructure, energy storage tech and devices, telematics, the vehicles themselves, and even smartphone apps for automotive platforms, all add up to a sizable market opportunity.

A web of key players is starting to take shape as entrepreneurs and global corporations race to carve out a piece of the nascent EV market, as government agencies dole out billions of dollars to jump-start that opportunity, as big thinkers churn out innovative ideas and business models based on the intersection of information technology and advanced vehicles, and as the pressure to reduce carbon emissions from vehicles grows. Listed alphabetically, not order of importance, here’s Earth2Tech’s top 15 most influential people in the connected car space.

Continue reading this story

The first day of the North American International Auto Show brought us the first glimpse of Toyota’s concept for a Prius family of hybrids, news of Ford’s plans for a major investment in electric vehicles and other goodies (highlighted for you with plenty of pics here). Today the annual event, taking place in Detroit, brings us a slew of fresh photos, promises, posturing and announcements (including one acquisition) from the likes of Tesla Motors, BYD Auto, Daimler, Dow Kokam and other companies. Below you’ll find highlights from Day 2 of the show.

Continue reading this story

Electric car startup Tesla Motors and battery cell giant Panasonic announced today that they will together develop nickel-based lithium-ion battery cells for electric vehicles. Panasonic has been rumored for months to be a battery cell supplier for Tesla’s planned Model S sedan, and today Naoto Noguchi, President of Panasonic’s Energy Company, said the Japanese firm’s cells will be used for Tesla’s “current and next-generation EV battery pack.”

According to today’s release, Panasonic is now around the halfway point in what it expects to be a $1 billion investment over three years in facilities for lithium-ion cell research, development and production. But Tesla is not putting all its chips on Panasonic’s supply. The startup notes today that the new cell resulting from its collaboration with Panasonic will allow Tesla to continue using cells from multiple suppliers.

Continue reading this story

What can General Motors do with five months, an empty warehouse and $43 million? We’re sure you’re ready with a witty answer, but what the automaker did with those ingredients is renovate and equip a plant to assemble battery packs for its upcoming Chevy Volt. Today in Brownstown, Mich., the automaker held a ceremonial startup of the plant and rolled its first battery pack off the manufacturing line.

While startup Tesla Motors has assembled battery packs for its high-end electric Roadster in California, Volt pack No. 1 rolling out of Brownstown represents the first time one of the country’s biggest automakers has begun operating a battery plant in the U.S. for plug-in vehicles. And with the finish line for GM’s long road to high volume production of the Volt now in sight, GM’s Jon Lauckner, chief of global product planning, hinted that the car may debut with a price tag lower than the expected $40,000.

Continue reading this story