Tesla Motors

Electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors Inc. says cheaper batteries will make its Model S sedan profitable with much lower sales than Nissan Motor Co. seeks for its Leaf car. The $57,000 electric Model S, which uses cells similar to those in laptops, is designed to make money for Palo Alto's Tesla at 20,000 annual deliveries, Chief Technology Officer J.B. Straubel said. Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn has said combined battery-car sales for Nissan and affiliate Renault SA may need to reach 500,000 vehicles a year to be profitable without government aid. Nissan's choice of a larger type of lithium-ion battery means "they will have a cost challenge that will be more difficult to solve," Straubel said Wednesday.

Groupon seeks new funding: $950 million After walking away from a $6 billion takeover offer from Google in early December, the Groupon daily-deal site is doing another round of venture funding. The new financing would amount to as much as $950 million, giving the company plenty of money to expand into more cities and add employees. (It already has a staff of more than 3,000 - enormous by tech startup standards - because it relies heavily on salespeople to set up the site's promotions.

It will take months for investigators to determine why a small plane veered off course just after taking off Wednesday from the fogged-in Palo Alto Airport, clipped power lines and plunged into an East Palo Alto neighborhood, killing all three people onboard and damaging four houses. The path of destruction left residents dazed and emergency officials stunned that no one on the ground was even injured. All those killed aboard the twin-engine plane worked at Tesla Motors Inc., and the plane was owned by a lead engineer at the Palo Alto electric car company, the firm said.

Electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors Inc. says cheaper batteries will make its Model S sedan profitable with much lower sales than Nissan Motor Co. seeks for its Leaf car. The $57,000 electric Model S, which uses cells similar to those in laptops, is designed to make money for Palo Alto's Tesla at 20,000 annual deliveries, Chief Technology Officer J.B. Straubel said. Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn has said combined battery-car sales for Nissan and affiliate Renault SA may need to reach 500,000 vehicles a year to be profitable without government aid. Nissan's choice of a larger type of lithium-ion battery means "they will have a cost challenge that will be more difficult to solve," Straubel said Wednesday.

Tesla Motors identified three of its employees Thursday as the victims of a plane crash in East Palo Alto, including an electrical engineer who lived just a few blocks from the scene. "Our thoughts and deepest condolences are with their families," Tesla chief executive Elon Musk said in a statement posted on the Palo Alto electric-car maker's Web site. "Tesla is a small, tightly knit company and this is a tragic loss for us." Musk said the victims were plane owner and pilot Doug Bourn, 56, a senior electrical engineer from Santa Clara; Brian Finn, a 42-year-old senior interactive electronics manager from East Palo Alto; and electrical engineer Andrew Ingram, who lived in Palo Alto and turned 31 on Monday.

Tesla Motors announced Thursday it will use a $50 million investment from Toyota Corp. to help it buy the recently closed Nummi auto plant in Fremont and reopen it to build electric cars. The project will bring badly needed jobs to the Bay Area and is a surprising win for the Bay Area's green economy just seven weeks after New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. laid off 4,700 unionized auto workers as its two owners, General Motors and Toyota, ended their 25-year partnership at California's last auto plant.

A Mexican company that makes electric trucks will move its headquarters and U.S. manufacturing operations to Stockton to be part of California's growing market for electric vehicles. Electric Vehicles International said Monday that it will open its Stockton office in September, moving into a vacant industrial building just south of the city's port. Based in Toluca, Mexico, EVI makes small, battery-powered trucks as well as electric drive trains. "California is the first state that's been really aggressive with electrics," said Steve Riley, the company's vice president of sales and marketing.

Toyota Motor Corp. and Tesla Motors Inc. will develop battery-powered test versions of the Japanese carmaker's RAV4 and Lexus RX in the first stage of a partnership in electric vehicles, a person familiar with the matter said. Tesla said Saturday that it will deliver two prototype vehicles to Toyota this month without identifying the models. While Toyota also aims to test an electric Corolla compact car, the RAV4 and RX light trucks are better suited to the weight of Tesla's battery pack, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the vehicles haven't been announced yet. Toyota's President Akio Toyoda said last week that the partnership with Tesla, maker of the $109,000 electric Roadster, is the first of several the Japanese company wants to pursue in advanced auto technologies.

The small plane that crashed in East Palo Alto last week, killing all three Tesla Motors employees onboard, clipped a transmission tower just 50 feet above the ground before slamming into a residential neighborhood, according to a preliminary report issued Thursday. But the report by the National Transportation Safety Board does not address potential causes of the Feb. 17 crash of the twin-engine Cessna 310. A final determination is not expected for up to a year. The plane had flown about a mile northwest after taking off in heavy fog from Palo Alto Airport at 7:54 a.m. when it veered sharply to the west.

The parents of one of three Tesla Motors employees who died in the crash of a small plane in East Palo Alto have filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the pilot's estate. The twin-engine Cessna 310 hit high-tension power lines and a 60-foot transmission tower shortly after taking off in heavy fog from the Palo Alto Airport at 8 a.m. Feb. 17. Pieces of the disintegrated plane hit a home where a day care center operated, as well as other houses and cars along a 1,200-foot stretch of Beech Street, but no one on the ground was hurt.

Shares of Palo Alto electric carmaker Tesla Motors Inc. fell the most since July after insiders were allowed to sell shares in the company. Tesla shares fell $4.54, or 15 percent, to $25.55 at the close of Nasdaq Stock Market trading Monday for the steepest drop since July 6. Capstone Investments Inc. initiated coverage Dec. 23 with a "sell" rating on the expectation that plug-ins and other hybrids will continue to outsell pure electric ...

New Mexico lures Tesla assembly plant Tesla Motors, a San Carlos company developing electric cars, will build its auto assembly facility in Albuquerque and not in Contra Costa County. Tesla had considered locating the plant, and its 400 jobs, in Pittsburg. But New Mexico offered the company a combination of tax credits and $7 million in state funding for local infrastructure improvements related to the new plant. Tesla expects to begin building its WhiteStar four-door sedan at the plant in 2009.

Shares of Palo Alto electric carmaker Tesla Motors Inc. fell the most since July after insiders were allowed to sell shares in the company. Tesla shares fell $4.54, or 15 percent, to $25.55 at the close of Nasdaq Stock Market trading Monday for the steepest drop since July 6. Capstone Investments Inc. initiated coverage Dec. 23 with a "sell" rating on the expectation that plug-ins and other hybrids will continue to outsell pure electric ...

(12-13) 10:47 PST LOS ANGELES (AP) -- An alliance of automakers, utility companies, regulators and clean-air advocates are touting an ambitious plan to make charging a car in California easier than fueling at a gas station within the next 10 years. The California Plug-In Electric Vehicle Collaborative released the plan Monday as the first mass-market, all-electric cars ? the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt ? hit California roads this month. The plan outlines steps to get charging stations easily installed at homes and then in high-traffic public areas and apartment buildings to encourage drivers to switch from gasoline-powered vehicles to plug-in electric vehicles.

Number of the day 81% That's how much Tesla Motors stock has gained since the Palo Alto electric-car company went public on June 28 at $17 per share. The stock rose 96 cents to a record $30.80 on Monday after jumping 22 percent last week - its biggest weekly gain ever. A bullish JPMorgan Chase analyst's report says Tesla is at the "vanguard of improving battery costs/durability. " Hear here "It's much easier to deal with somebody with six figures than Grandma or somebody in foreclosure.

Mind the Gap, China Gap Inc. opened its first stores in China last week and started taking Internet orders in the country, part of a plan to tap its growing middle class. China's more than 420 million Internet users exceed the combined populations of the United States and Germany, and the market for clothing and footwear retailers may expand to $51 billion this year, almost double its size five years ago. Gap, which has about 3,100 stores, aims to get a quarter of its revenue from online sales and stores outside North America by 2013.

The usually grim-faced Toyota President Akio Toyoda was all smiles Friday, trumpeting a newfound friendship with Tesla, the Palo Alto maker of luxury electric cars . Toyoda received as a gift from Tesla Motors Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk a red roadster that would sell for $232,000 - $49,000 more than usual because of a special paint job. Toyoda's appearance struck a contrast to others in the past year that were dominated by...

(11-09) 15:53 PST Palo Alto, Calif. (AP) -- Electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc. said Tuesday that its third-quarter loss widened to $34.9 million as it sold fewer cars than a year earlier and it spent significantly more on research and development for its upcoming Model S sedan. Tesla lost $34.9 million in the third quarter, compared to a loss of $4.6 million a year earlier. The company's loss per share fell to 38 cents from 66 cents because of higher share counts. Tesla conducted an initial public offering June 29. Tesla said its quarterly revenue fell 31 percent to $31.2 million as sales of its $101,500 Tesla Roadster electric sports car fell by nearly half to 19,457 vehicles.

Gil Elbaz recalls meeting with a prominent venture capitalist during the late 1990s to discuss his first startup, Applied Semantics. When Elbaz said the company could someday generate $100 billion in sales, the potential investor was dismissive. "He about threw me out of the room," said Elbaz. In 2003, Google bought Applied Semantics for $102 million. It became the foundation for the search giant's AdSense, which places relevant text ads on Web pages and in 2009 accounted for 30 percent of the company's $24 billion in revenue.