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The White House granted General Motors and Chrysler a reprieve Friday when it authorized $17.4 billion in emergency loans. President Bush said the alternative – the collapse of two American icons – was “not a responsible course of action.”

It’s impossible to say whether loans from the Treasury Department’s $700 billion financial stabilization fund will revive Detroit. No one knows whether Chrysler – which paid off its 1979 bailout loan and handed a nice profit to the federal government – can return from the brink again.

After departing the frozen tundra of New York City, the Tesla Roadshow migrated south to Miami, Fla. We have more than 60 customers in Florida, including many people who had purchased a Roadster sight unseen, and it was high time they became intimately familiar with the car and Powertrain 1.5.

Chris Paine directed "Who Killed the Electric Car?” His new project is “Revenge of the Electric Car,” a documentary film and multimedia blog now in production. The film is slated for theaters in 2010.

Tesla engineers have been keenly focused for some time on the 1.5 powertrain, which we have been testing extensively both on roads and at closed facilities. We have our own data collection kit, but we wanted to see what sort of performance figures we would get from a public track.

Nine Tesla employees stormed Seattle last weekend on a four-day sales and marketing blitz. The trip was a great success – not only for 80 customers and media who got to drive the car but for those of us at Tesla scouting the perfect location for a Seattle-area store, which we are planning to open in the first half of 2009.

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is considering changes to the Zero Emission Vehicle Program (also commonly known as the “ZEV Mandate”). If you’ve seen Who Killed the Electric Car? you have an idea of what the ZEV Mandate is and how its implementation has been challenged and impeded by traditional auto manufacturers for more than a decade.

On March 27th, the Board met in Sacramento to consider CARB Staff recommendations for changes to the Mandate.  During the open hearing, the Board directed the staff to lower the minimum number of pure ZEV’s that the six largest automotive manufacturers are required to deliver in the period from 2012 to 2015 (known as Phase III) by 70% – from 25,000 to a mere 7,500! This is an absurdly low number given the emerging developments in the EV space, not to mention the progress we’ve demonstrated at Tesla Motors specifically.

Following the March 27th hearing, the Board directed the Staff to draft new regulatory language based on the Board’s decisions and then to open that draft language to a 15 day public comment period which opened on July 25th.Tesla Motors strongly disagrees with the Board’s decision, and with the Staff’s interpretation of that decision with regard to the Phase III minimum. We also object to other key provisions in the revised mandate as proposed by the staff. On August 11th, 2008, Ze’ev sent the letter below to outline Tesla’s position directly to CARB Chairperson Mary Nichols.

If you support Tesla’s position, you can help by calling Board Members or Staff,...

The following update was sent by Ze’ev Drori to Tesla customers yesterday.

Suite à l’annonce de la commission de Bruxelles de faciliter l’homologation pour l’Union Européenne des voitures produites en petite série en 2009, nous avons donc décidé d’accélérer la commercialisation de notre Roadster sur le Vieux Continent.

Pour se faire et vu la concordance de temps, nous avons donc choisi comme terrain de présentation de notre sportive d’un nouveau genre le Festival de Cannes et le Grand Prix de Formule 1 de Monaco.

The following is a letter that was sent to Tesla Roadster customers today to review key developments in the Roadster program.

Since we last provided a program update we have achieved an extraordinary milestone - on March 17th, the Tesla Roadster entered regular production. In this program update we will focus on a wide variety of topics that relate to the program now that we are in this new phase, including:

1. Production Schedule
2. “Powertrain 1.5”
3. Warranty
4. New “Out of Service Area” Policy

As I fly back from Brussels and think about the last 9 days in Europe I am very encouraged by what we learned. One of the advantages of a startup operation is the ability to change direction and make decisions very quickly to adjust to the opportunities and risks that present themselves. The flip side of that is that you often need to lead with your chin and accept the fact that you aren’t always entering the battle with your plans all in place. You become a master of rapid prototyping.

Last Wednesday the Financial Times ran a piece indicating that Tesla was now formally setting its sights on Europe. This is the first of what will be an increasing effort on our part to build the Tesla brand on the European continent with the anticipation of delivering cars to customers starting in the middle of 2009.

The idea that Tesla would expand internationally is nothing new – that has been our intention all along. There are many reasons why Europe is a very attractive market, outlined below. The thing that is new here is the timing of our expansion plans.

In my last posting on this blog I emphasized that my primary goal as the new CEO of Tesla Motors was to get the car on the road. The potential of this company is vast but it is dependent on meeting our commitments and that starts with delivering the 2008 Tesla Roadster to our customers.

One of the more common misconceptions about the Tesla Roadster is that it is an electrified Lotus Elise. This has been an interesting problem to deal with because the Tesla is vastly different from an Elise and it is important that people are aware of this. In fact, we recently counted how many parts the two cars shared and the total number was under 7% by parts count. If you were to analyze it by parts value, the number would be even smaller.

Two weeks ago, I highlighted how Tesla moved from waves to bits in our motor and charge controller in the PEM. You might have left with the impression that as of June 2007, when the DMC replaced the analog controller, our work as DMC firmware engineers was complete. Fortunately for us (this is fun, remember!), that was far from true.

Dr. Rob Wilder is Manager of the WilderHill Clean Energy Index, the first Index on Wall Street for renewable energy, better energy efficiency, and zero-carbon solutions. He was previously on faculty at U.C. Santa Barbara, and University of Massachusetts; he has been a AAAS/EPA Fellow in Environmental Science & Technology, Fulbright Fellow, and National Academy of Sciences Young Investigator.

On Friday, February 1, 2008 at 12:56 P.M., an email was sent to all San Carlos based employees of Tesla Motors: “P1 Arriving Now! :).”

This simple email signified the moment we had been working toward for the last few years. You see, “P1” is the internal designation for the first production unit to be produced by Tesla Motors. This is the anticipated ‘first car’ that was built for Chairman, Elon Musk. So what was it like to be a part of the arrival of P1?

Aaron 'p-nut' Wills is the bassist and youngest member of the band 311. Known for his “funk-slap” bass style p-nut has brought his own sound and entertaining style to the stage. Aaron had a recent opportunity to drive a Tesla Roadster around Santa Monica and through the hills of Malibu. Following are his impressions from the day: