Tesla is an eco-friendly automaker that was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in Palto Alto, California.  The company is attempting to change the auto industry by making electric vehicles extremely innovative, current, efficient, high-performing, and accessible to the masses.  Tesla not only makes their own electric vehicles, but also produces electric auto components for other automakers (Daimler, Mercedes, Toyota, and more) that are transitioning to EVs.  Their goals are heavily based around elevating the reputation of electric cars to the level of “awesome” and to change the current norm of consumers buying gas-powered to buying electric-powered.  Tesla’s first production vehicle was the high-performance sports car, Tesla Roadster.  It became available to the public in 2008 and has given Tesla great success in earnings and reputation.  They are soon releasing their newest car, the Tesla Model S, a luxury family sedan which reached its reservation limit of 6500 cars as of October 2011.

 

Models 

Tesla Motors, Inc. is a Silicon Valley-based company that designs, manufactures and sells electric cars and electric vehiclepowertrain components. Tesla Motors is a public company that trades on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the symbol TSLA.

 

Tesla Motors gained widespread attention by producing the Tesla Roadster, the first fully electric sports car.[3] Its second model is the Model S, a fully electric luxury sedan. While still expensive, it is substantially cheaper than the Roadster.

 

Tesla also sells electric powertrain components, including lithium-ion battery packs, to other automakers, including Daimler and Toyota.[4] Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk, has said he envisions Tesla as an independent automaker,[5] aimed at eventually mass producing fully electric cars at a price affordable to the average consumer.

 

Overview

Tesla Motors is named after electrical engineer and physicistNikola Tesla.[6] The Tesla Roadster uses an AC motor descended directly from Tesla's original 1882 design.

 

The Tesla Roadster, the company's first vehicle, is the first production automobile to use lithium-ion battery cells and the first production EV with a range greater than 200 miles (320 km) per charge.[8] The base model accelerates 0 to 60 mph (97 km/h) in 3.7 seconds and, according to Tesla Motor's environmental analysis, is twice as energy efficient as the Toyota Prius. Since 2008 Tesla has sold more than 2,250 Roadsters in 31 countries through March 2012. Tesla began producing right-hand-drive Roadsters in early 2010 for the UK and Ireland markets, then expanded sales to right-hand-drive markets of Australia, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore.Tesla will sell the Roadster until early 2012, when its supply of Lotus Elisegliders is expected to run out, as its contract with Lotus Cars for 2,500 gliders expired at the end of 2011. Tesla stopped taking orders for the Roadster in the U.S. market in August 2011.

 

Tesla unveiled the Tesla Model S all-electric sedan on March 26, 2009 with an anticipated base price of US$57,400 before any government tax credit or subsidies. The Model S will have three battery pack options for a range of up to 265 miles (426 km) per charge. In October 2011, Tesla reached its limit of 6,500 reservations for the Model S and retail deliveries began June in 2012. Tesla currently employs almost 900 full-time employees and is aggressively recruiting employees for positions in the headquarters in Palo Alto, California, at its European headquarters in Maidenhead, UK, and at an increasing number of sales facilities throughout North America and Europe. Since 2012 the Model S is manufactured at the Tesla Factory in Fremont, California, an assembly plant formerly operated by NUMMI, a now defunct joint venture of Toyota and General Motors. Tesla purchased a stake in the site in May 2010 for US$42 million, and opened the facility in October 2010.

 

Corporate strategy

One of Tesla's stated goals is to increase the number and variety of EVs available to mainstream consumers in three ways; by

 

• selling its own vehicles in a growing number of company-owned showrooms and online;

 

• selling patented electric powertrain components to other automakers so that they may get their own EVs to customers sooner;

 

• serving as a catalyst and positive example to other automakers, demonstrating that there is pent-up consumer demand for vehicles that are both high-performance and efficient.

 

General Motors' then-Vice Chairman Robert Lutz said in 2007 that the Tesla Roadster inspired him to push GM to develop the Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in hybrid sedan that aims to reverse years of dwindling market share and massive financial losses for America's largest automaker. In an August 2009 edition of The New Yorker, Lutz was quoted as saying, "All the geniuses here at General Motors kept saying lithium-ion technology is 10 years away, and Toyota agreed with us -- and boom, along comes Tesla. So I said, 'How come some tiny little California startup, run by guys who know nothing about the car business, can do this, and we can't?' That was the crowbar that helped break up the log jam." Musk won the 2010 Automotive Executive of the Year Innovator Award for hastening the development of electric vehicles throughout the global automotive industry.

 

The Tesla Roadster has a base price of US$109,000, €84,000 or GB£86,950 (not including numerous tax incentives, credits and waivers). Tesla's goal is to sell EVs to mainstream consumers at more affordable prices—but Tesla purposely aimed its first production vehicle at "early adopters" so that the company could optimize the technology before cascading it down to less expensive vehicles. The company's subsequent car, the Model S sedan, began production for the 2012 model year with a base price of US$57,400 (or US$49,900[15][30] after a US federal tax credit), roughly half that of the Roadster.The company then plans to launch a US$30,000 vehicle, codenamed BlueStar.Tesla also builds electric powertrain components for more affordable cars including the lowest priced car from Daimler, the Smart urban commuter car; the lowest priced car to carry the Mercedes badge, the A-Class hatch back; and the lowest priced SUV from Toyota, the RAV4.

 

Aiming premium products at affluent "thought leaders" is a well known business strategy in Silicon Valley and the global technology industry, where prices for the first versions of cellular phones, laptop computers and flat-screen televisions start high but drop in subsequent product cycles.[33] However, this approach has been relatively rare in the global auto industry, where the prevailing business model has been one of mass production in assembly plants optimized to build hundreds of thousands of vehicles per year with comparatively low sticker prices. According to a blog post by Musk, "New technology in any field takes a few versions to optimize before reaching the mass market and in this case it is competing with 150 years and trillions of dollars spent on gasoline cars."

 

United States

Tesla was founded in San Carlos, California, a city in the region known as Silicon Valley. Tesla opened its first retail store in West Los Angeles, Calif., in April 2008. The company opened its second retail store in Menlo Park, Calif., in July 2008.The company opened a display showroom in New York City's Chelsea Art District in July 2009.It also opened a store in Seattle in July 2009. Tesla subsequently opened stores in Washington, DC; New York City; Chicago; Dania Beach, Florida; Boulder, Colorado; Orange County, California; San Jose, California and Denver, Colorado.

 

Tesla announced in August 2009 that it planned to move its corporate headquarters and build a powertrain development facility at 3500 Deer Creek Road, in the Stanford Research Park in Palo Alto, California. Tesla said it would finance the project in part through US$100 million of the federal low-interest loans. The facility, a 369,000-square-foot (34,300 m2) facility on a 23-acre (93,000 m2) parcel previously occupied by Agilent Technologies. Tesla completed the headquarters move in February 2010. The powertrain facility will produce electric vehicle components for Tesla and for other automakers, including Germany's Daimler, which is using Tesla's battery packs and chargers for an upcoming electric version of its Smart city car. About 350 employees are expected to be based at the Stanford site initially, potentially increasing to 650. Stanford Research Park is also home to Facebook, Hewlett Packard, Xerox PARC and other Silicon Valley companies.