Tesla Motors Shaken Up, Laying Off

tjstork writes "Tesla Motors, the darling of technorati for its high performance electric car, may be about to go belly up. Venture capital is cut off, layoffs are under way, and construction plans are being stretched out. Elon Musk has ousted the CEO and taken the reins, blaming the global credit crunch."

Like their namesake?

[that this is not und]

Maybe, like Nickolai Tesla, they were just destined to have a great beginning but go nuts toward mid life.

Tesla's been on the decline for some time

[bugeaterr]

By my reckoning, ever since "Five Man Acoustical Jam".

Re:Like their namesake?

[thermian]

Tesla was OK I guess, but those lightening towers he built for the Russians used to tear up my tanks something rotten, the barstard.

Re:The L.A. Times article has more detail.

[morgan_greywolf]

Correction: The car Tesla Motors has for sale now costs $109,000.

Oh, well, that's so much cheaper! Maybe I can afford one now. /me checks wallet

Nope. I seem to me about $108,999 short.

Damn.

Re:Like their namesake?

[morgan_greywolf]

As Oscar Levant once observed, there is a fine line between insanity and genius.

Now if I only I could convince my shrink that I'm actually a genius...

Re:Credit crunch my butt

[digitalsolo]

My company has free soda.

Luckily we have a Ping Pong table instead of foosball, or we'd be totally boned.

Re:Like their namesake?

[Kokuyo]

Good luck with that. Once you're a genius, the shrink will have trouble paying off his new pool so I doubt he's gonna be happy about this idea of yours.

Re:Like their namesake?

[Chris Burke]

Now if I only I could convince my shrink that I'm actually a genius...

I don't think that's a good idea until after the trial is over.

Just sayin, IANAL, this is not legal advice and so forth.

Re:Credit crunch my butt

[acklenx]

Wow, the first thing they do in a marketing class is market marketing....

Re:Credit crunch my butt

[RulerOf]

He forgot the "dozen" before "thousand."

Re:Credit crunch my butt

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey look! With this new fangled "HTML" thing we can make clickable words!

http://xkcd.com/125/ [xkcd.com]

Re:Credit crunch my butt

[machine321]

Those with marginal plans are probably taking the gas pipe as well.

You miss the point, the Tesla doesn't have a gas pipe.

Precedents ... hmmm

[fnj]

Tesla isn't going belly up. They are waiting with further developing their Sedan until they can get a cheaper loan. next year or so.

Ha ha ha. And the economy is basically sound. Elvis and Hoffa are alive. Oswald just came up with the idea to kill Kennedy out of the blue. Bush's advisers are competent. The Taliban are going to realize the error of their ways. Iraq as a muslim state is going to be so much more friendly and peaceful than the secular dictatorship was. The billionaire's bailout will make everything all better. Sending all of our industry overseas will improve our economy. Obama is the Messiah. Things are really going to change now. Duke Nukem Forever is almost ready. Vista was a great achievement and everybody loves it.

Re:Electric Cars

[BJZQ8]

Obviously we need massive government subsidies and laws that compel people to buy their products.

Bankruptcy and layoffs

[bigredradio]

Wow, with all this talk of layoffs, Tesla is really starting to look like a REAL American car company. Detroit would be proud!

Re:Who Fuckin' Cares

[mweather]

Elon Musk is going to get busted in a coke deal?

Re:Credit crunch my butt

[raddan]

Speaking of HTML. I spent a half hour the other day trying to convince a marketing person that HTML = good. She wanted to put some text up on the web, and her idea was to make a PDF from the Word file, and then convert that PDF into Flash so it could be viewed inline, and there was this great $3k program that would do this AND make it searchable. This is from a person who claims to have taken a course in HTML. I swear, the web is becoming totally perverse.

Re:Electric Cars

[russ1337]

Which, really, is why this crisis is such a disaster, especially for cleantech. Innovative cleantech companies are generally high risk, high reward. Right now, the market can only tolerate low risk.

Exactly the way Cheney and his oil company cronies want to keep it.

/tinfoil hat.