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Tesla Motors Closes $40M Round; Funding to Support Launch of Electric Sportscar
1 June 2006
Tesla Motors announced the completion of its $40 million Series C financing led by VantagePoint Venture Partners, one of the largest CleanTech investors in Silicon Valley, and by Elon Musk, founder of Paypal and CEO of SpaceX.
The financing will be used to launch the company’s first product, a high performance electric sportscar, and to support final safety compliance testing and production. The company also announced that Jim Marver, managing partner and co-founder of VantagePoint Venture Partners, will join Tesla's Board of Directors.
Other institutional investors include Draper Fisher Jurveston and JP Morgan Bay Area Equity Fund. Several individuals with strong interest in CleanTech investment also participated, including Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Nick Pritzker (through his investment partnership, Tao LLC), and Jeff Skoll (through his investment company, Capricorn Management LLC).
By leading the technology change from gasoline to electric vehicles, I believe Tesla has the potential to be one of the great car companies of the 21st century. The starting point is a high performance sportscar, but the long term vision is to build cars of all kinds, including low-cost family vehicles. Tesla is one of those rare opportunities to change the world in a positive way and build a valuable company in the process.
—Elon Musk, Chairman of Tesla Motors
Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded Tesla Motors in June 2003 to create efficient electric cars for people who love to drive. Tesla Motors creates vehicles that conform to all US safety, environmental and durability standards. Tesla’s cars include modern safety equipment such as airbags, front crumple zones, side impact protection, 2-1/2 mph bumpers. Tesla will sell cars in the US only when they pass the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS).
Tesla says that it will reveal further details of its business and its cars in early July 2006.
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| The Wrightspeed X1 prototype. |
In its short life, Tesla has already spawned a competitor: Wrightspeed. Created by Ian Wright, who worked for Tesla for a short period, Wrightspeed is setting out to build “extreme performance electric supercars.”
Its X1 prototype car uses an AC Propulsion 3-phase AC induction motor and inverter and a lithium-ion battery as the power source. The car accelerates from 0 to 60 mph in about 3 seconds, has a top, electronically limited speed of 112 mph, and a range of about 100 miles in urban use.
June 1, 2006 in Electric (Battery) | Permalink | Comments (30) | TrackBack (0)
Comments
Posted by: SJC | June 02, 2006 at 02:59 PM
Anonymous:
The best of EV dragsters are still twice as slow as the best IC dragster. There is something about a 1000HP IC engine that EVs just can't muster.
Posted by: Tony Chilling | June 03, 2006 at 12:30 AM
Tony:
not all racecars are dragsters.
Posted by: Sunny Tai | June 05, 2006 at 06:53 AM
There is new battery technology on the way with europositron technology claiming to have achived 1330 wh/kg. They are said to be able to achieve about 3000 full charge/discharge cycles. These batteries are made from aluminum and fully recyclable and are going to be cheap. It gives an example on their website that if a GM EV1 had a 60 kg battery pack with europositron technology it would be able to achieve about 800 km on the highway on a single charge. That means that if you had a battery that weighed 120kg it would be able to travel about 1600 km on a single charge. Please note that the battery on an EV1 weighs in at about 750 kg and gives it a range of about 145 km max.
Posted by: Tim | July 25, 2006 at 01:27 PM
Tim:
You might want to do a web search to see what a *real engineer* said about speaking to one of the head guys with europositron at a Q&A - seems their top guy knows very little about batteries, but a lot about hype.
The EV1 may have gotten 145km with lead, but closer to 250km with NiMH, and RAV4 EVs are averaging 200km with the same chemistry, and they have quite a bit more aero drag! Currently-available Kokam cells (see ProEV.com) would get them more than twice as far.
Posted by: hempev | August 28, 2006 at 01:32 AM
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I don't know about racing, but I think that perhaps someday one of these EVs will become popular with the buying public. As a second car they can take care of a lot of needs in suburban use like picking up the kids and doing shopping.