The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘tesla motors’

A small Cessna twin-engine plane crashed in East Palo Alto today, killing three Tesla Motors employees and taking out power in parts of the city. The plane took off from Palo Alto airport and reportedly hit some electrical lines. The names of those who were on board have not been released. The plane was registered to Doug Bourn, a senior engineer at Tesla. It is not clear if he was the “high ranking official at Tesla” piloting the plane or if he was even on it.

Nobody on the ground was injured, but two homes caught on fire, including one used as a day care center. Fortunately, the day care center was empty at the time of the crash.

Eric Savitz at Barron’s has been blogging updates about the accident all day. It appears to be responsible for a widespread power outage in Palo Alto, which affected Facebook’s offices and many startups. For example, power is still out at TechCrunch HQ in Palo Alto (although our site is still up because our servers are not there).

The plane was headed to Los Angeles and was an older Cessna 310 manufactured in 1976.

We had a brief chat with Opera Software product analyst Phillip Grønvold here at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona yesterday. We inquired about the company’s plans to submit an Opera Mini application for the iPhone / iPod touch in the near future, and also got a hands-on demo of the app in action. Unfortunately, Grønvold was unwilling to demo the app on video, but take our word for it: the browser really is very, very fast.

Grønvold also declined to provide an ETA for the submission of the app to the App Store, but said it is very close to completion so it shouldn’t take too long.

Location-based services are all the rage right now. Even everyone seems to agree that the controversial Google Buzz did at least one thing right in adding a location element to its mobile site. But as great as these services are for connecting social networking with actual social activity, there is a downside we’re all well aware of too: privacy.

A new site throws this issue back into the spotlight in a humorous way. Please Rob Me is a stream of updates from various location-based networks (though right now all I’m seeing is Foursquare) that shows when users check-in somewhere that is not their home. The idea, of course, is that if they’re not home, you can go rob them.

The site automatically scans Twitter feeds to find location check-ins that are being tweeted out. It then shows them in this stream, and also pings the person on Twitter with a message like:

Hi @NAME, did you know the whole world can see your location through Twitter? #pleaserobme.com

You can also use the filter on top of the site to show when specific people aren’t home (by their Twitter name), or sort by location.

Again, the point of the site, while funny, is to raise awareness about this potentially dangerous location-based issue. Here’s Please Rob Me’s basic mission statement:

The danger is publicly telling people where you are. This is because it leaves one place you’re definitely not… home. So here we are; on one end we’re leaving lights on when we’re going on a holiday, and on the other we’re telling everybody on the internet we’re not home. It gets even worse if you have “friends” who want to colonize your house. That means they have to enter your address, to tell everyone where they are. Your address.. on the internet.. Now you know what to do when people reach for their phone as soon as they enter your home. That’s right, slap them across the face.

The goal of this website is to raise some awareness on this issue and have people think about how they use services like Foursquare, Brightkite, Google Buzz etc.

Burglars, it seems, now have their own location-based social network too now.

Last month SecondMarket published data on private company stock sales that they helped complete in 2009. They’ve now released last month’s data as well.

A total of a little more than $13 million in sales occurred, with the average transaction size of around $2 million. There continues to be very strong demand for consumer products and services startups (which includes companies like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, etc.). But the sellers are spread out more evenly across all categories, particularly consumer, IT, Healthcare, energy and cleantech.

36% of the transactions were sales of Facebook stock, and we’ve heard from independent sources that sales are being completed for as high as $40 per share (or a $17.6 billion valuation). That’s a substantial price increase from less than a month ago. Tesla took 29% of the transactions, and sales of Solyndra stock were 28% of the total. Gridpoint rounded the group out with 7% of the total.

The complete report is below, and you can download the pdf here.

Right off the heels of filing for a $100 million IPO, electric car company Tesla Motors this morning announced that it has hired former Toyota production engineering GM Gilbert Passin to lead the company’s vehicle manufacturing operations as Vice President of Manufacturing.

Passin has 23 years of international automotive experience under his belt, most recently serving as general manager of production engineering for Toyota in North America.

Previously, Passin was vice president of manufacturing at Toyota’s plant in Cambridge, Ontario, which produces over 200,000 automobiles per year.

Passin regards his jump as a ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’.

In a statement, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Passin’s recruitment fits in the company’s plans to significantly ramp up its production capacity (at present, it has produced some 1,000 cars), particularly with respect to the planned Model S sedan. Musk added that his new VP will also help recruit new employees for Tesla’s California manufacturing team.

(Via press release)

Electric car company Tesla Motors has filed for a $100 million IPO. There were rumors recently floating around that the company, which is led by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, would go public “soon.” One interesting tidbit from the filing: Musk only takes $1 in yearly salary.

Another interesting factoid: In the filing, Tesla states that it has seen net losses in each quarter since inception. The company expects to continue on the same path until it starts to deliver larger quantities of its Model S sedan, which is not expected until 2010 or later. Tesla took a loss in the first three quarters of 2009 of $31.5 million which is less than its loss for the same period in 2008, which was $57.3 million. Gross profit for the first three quarters of 2009 was $7.8 million compared to $561K for the same period in 2008. Sales for the first three quarters of 2009 topped out at $93.4 million. As of last December Tesla had sold 937 Tesla Roadsters in 18 countries. The company also saw a total of $108.2 million in revenue since its inception in 2003 until September of last year.

Tesla claimed profitability in August of last year, reporting at the time that it made “approximately $1 million of earnings” on revenues of $20 million, and that it shipped 109 Roadsters, its $109,000 all-electric sports car. Although the company took a loss for the first three quarters of 2009, we are assuming that Tesla may have posted a profit in the fourth quarter, which is why the company claimed profitability last year. In June, Tesla was also awarded a $465 million loan from the Department of Energy, which will help it manufacture its more reasonably priced Modern S sedan.

The company went through a bit of a scandal with a scathing law suit filed against Tesla Motors and Elon Musk by co-founder and former CEO Martin Eberhard, which was eventually dropped. Last year, Daimler also took a 10% (or $50 million) stake in Tesla, putting the company’s then valuation at $500 million.

Silicon Valley’s electric car company, Tesla Motors, says that it hit profitability in July. The private company reports that it made “approximately $1 million of earnings” on revenues of $20 million, and that it shipped 109 Roadsters, its $109,000 all-electric sports car. The revenues reflect GAAP accounting standards and are only for the month of July.

Founder and CEO Elon Musk predicted in June that the company would soon hit profitability at the end of a lengthy blog post dealing primarily with a lawsuit brought on by Tesla’s ousted co-founder Martin Eberhard. In June, Tesla was also awarded a $465 million loan from the Department of Energy, which will help it manufacture its more reasonably priced Modern S sedan.

The $20 million in revenues and $1 million in profits do not reflect any proceeds from that loan, the company tells us.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Tesla, which has now delivered 500 Roadsters, will be opening several new sales showrooms this summer, the company says. Currently the company has showrooms only in California. Three of the new showrooms will be in Europe - London, Monaco and Munich. New York, Seattle, Chicago and Miami are also on the list.

The company says that the first Roadsters will be delivered to European buyers this summer. At least three Tesla buyers have exported their cars to Europe already, though (one each to Germany, Norway and Spain).

The company, which is now more valuable than General Motors, recently unveiled its second model, the Model S.

The company also says that it’s looking for showroom locations in Washington DC and Toronto.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Quite often when we write about something related to Twitter, it’s funny or stupid — or both. But it’s important to remember that Twitter at its core is a powerful medium for disseminating information. And sometimes that power can be used for good — like fighting cancer.

Drew Olanoff, a man fairly well known in web circles, recently got some horrible news: He has cancer. That’s just about the worst news anyone could ever want to hear. But rather than sit around and feel bad about it, Olanoff decided to be proactive and use the bad situation for some good. He teamed up with developer Mike Demers to create Blame Drew’s Cancer, a site that asks you to blame everything that goes wrong in your life, on Drew’s cancer.

What’s great about this is that people love to use Twitter to bitch about things. Hell, I do it just as much as anyone — it’s a great past time. But usually those tweets just come off as lame complaints to most of your followers. But now, using the #BlameDrewsCancer hash-tag, all of these tweets are pulled into the site, where they will be tallied to lead to what will hopefully be a large donation to the American Cancer Society and the Make a Wish Foundation.

As a person who’s been heavily involved in the web space for some time across a range of companies, Olanoff realized Twitter was a perfect medium for his message. And just a few days after the launch of the site, it’s working to great effect. This morning, the cause was a top trending topic on Twitter. And even Lance Armstrong, who has just under 1 million followers, tweeted it out.

Here are some other good ones:

betosando I #BlameDrewsCancer for the War in the Middle East

Farhoudi I blame the US’s 3-0 loss to Costa Rica on Drew’s cancer. http://blamedrewscancer.com

sneezymonica I #BlameDrewsCancer for my sore feet! http://blamedrewscancer.com/

rhonigwachs I #blamedrewscancer for proprietary linux drivers

Luckily, Olanoff’s Hodgkins Lymphoma has a good cure rate. And we wish him the best of luck as he undergoes months of treatment. But what he needs right now is for some companies to step up to the plate and pledge to donate $1 for every unique person that tweets out his #blamedrewscancer message.

Pretty much every company these days is talking about how it can use Twitter to futher its brand. I see no better opportunity than this, right here, right now.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

The allure of building a business around user-generated content is fading fast. SplashCast, a company which launched two years ago around the notion of helping consumers put together videos, text, graphics, and music in embeddable broadcast “channels,” is discontinuing its original product. “Most of us would rather consume than create. This is one of the big ticket findings of the Web 2.0 technology wave,” concludes CEO Michael Berkley.

And after failing to raise a B round of funding, he is now trying to sell the company. Instead of trying to make money off of user-generated broadcast channels, he is focusing on his newer Social TV product, which adds social features such as chat, commenting, and polling to professionally-produced videos.

The SplashCast product being discontinued was simply too complicated for most consumers. It was a full content-management system which allowed consumers to bring together videos with images, text, and sound. In a candid assessment of why it fell flat, Berkley says: “We were hoping to launch a publishing revolution. What we found, however, is that very few users are willing and able to make an ongoing commitment to publishing and distributing content. Lots of users test; few stick with it.”

While more than 100,000 SplashCast accounts have been created, “only a few thousand” use the product regularly, he tells me. Partly, this is the curse of building a business which relies on the creativity of users. “Like so many other Web 2.0 companies,” admits Berkley, “we simply haven’t found a way to meaningfully monetize user generated content. Users are loathe to pay meaningful subscription fees. Furthermore, advertising on user-generated video content hasn’t played out—just ask YouTube.” If only a tiny fraction of users create anything worthwhile, you either need a whole lot of users to make that work or you need to be able to attract the most creative people to your product.

But partly, SplashCast also suffered from the curse of not keeping things simple. Berkley is taking that to heart by shifting the company’s remaining resources to making Hulu-quality videos more social on Facebook and MySpace. Berkley says SplashCast videos reach 5.8 million unique viewers per month and it streams 7.2 million videos. A full 90 percent of those streams come from only 25 SplashCast channels, mostly centered around network TV shows like 24 and the Simpsons or major label music artists.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors