According to the numbers (we only know that it's "double digit millions"), Jalopnik speculates that Tesla's valuation is actually less than Twitter. [CNN Money via Jalopnik]

The current distance record, a 275-mile run completed by a Solectria Sunrise, is technically longer than the Tesla's 241-mile achievement. But the Tesla's battery showed about 38 miles worth of juice left in the battery, which, if verified, would top the Solectria's record. The Tesla roadster bested a modified Porsche 911 and several of Mitsubishi's new crop of electric vehicles.

We should note that the Tesla was driven by a company staffer, who surely knows every trick to getting the best mileage out of the Roadster. The course consists of windy mountain roads in addition to standard highway driving, so the average speed was only about 28 mph, with a high of about 56 mph. Still, a nearly 280-mile range is a serious achievement for an electric car in production. [Reg Hardware]

Tesla basically "unlocked" the prices of their electric vehicle options, forcing customers to re-select or lose their spot in line. All-in-all, the price of a fully loaded Roadster has increased by the aforementioned $9,300—so it is either pony up or deal with a car equipped with less features.

According to Tesla, the reason behind the price increase was to make the car's margins appear healthy to the next round of investors, and in order to do that, making the move now was unavoidable. With all of the negativity surrounding the company, you would think that investors and customers would shy away—but according to the company not one of the 600 people on the delivery list have requested a refund so far. [Saxton via Jalopnik]

CEO Elon 'Manly' Musk says the company either needs federal backing or capital market backing, which will take a year or two to recover from the current mess. They've just sold their 100th $109,000 Roadster this past week to that guy who Oprah leaned on during the Obama acceptance speech. Yeah, that guy. You get an electric roadster! You get an electric roadster! You get an electric roadster! You get an electric roadster! [Detroit News]

Then again, the economy is bad and Tesla isn't exactly raking in piles of cash. We understand downsizing if it keeps the business afloat. But sometimes it's not what you say but how you say it. Tesla fired notified the employees their office was closing down through a cryptic post on their blog, and fired them two days later in person.

There will also be some headcount reduction due to consolidation of operations. In anticipation of moving vehicle engineering to our new HQ in San Jose, we are ramping down and will close our Rochester Hills office near Detroit. Good communication, tightly knit engineering and a common company culture are of paramount importance as Tesla grows.

Many Detroit employees, failing to read between the lines, went to work and logged into their computers only to find themselves fired.

Keep it classy, Tesla!

UPDATE: Tesla writes to say that the employees weren't fired, but were only notified that their office was closing by the blog post. It stands to reason that if you don't have an office to work in anymore, there's a good chance that your job is also in questionable standing. They also admit that the blog post announcing the closing of the detroit office was a mistake. Best of luck to the company that's helping to bring back the EV. [jalopnik]

To fill the design gap and move things along, Tesla got some of the guys at Lotus to step in and massage the body design. Man, I thought people designing green tech were out there to help people and keep us from dying in crazy "Day After Tomorrow" freak weather. Not you know, actively undermining each other for their own selfish benefit. Capitalism at its finest. [NYT]

Automobile Mag:These guys start by doing a brake stand launch to 60, noticing the electric motor's instant torque of 211 foot-pounts straining the brakes from 0 RPMs. Sounds like a warranty buster to me. Clearly, we've known its fast. What's interesting is that Automobile puts away all concerns about the 1000-pound battery pack consisting of 6831 3.7 volt lithium ions affecting the handling of the lotus based chassis. There is a fair amount of oversteer in the system, but "with 65% of the weight at the rear and no stability control, this probably isn't a bad idea." It sticks, even if it can't touch the handling of an Elise. It's setup for grand touring: The car's circuit protection systems, suspension and overall weight make it better for long drives, although the range of the vehicle is only 200+ miles. (Even factoring in the car's regenerative braking.)

But its not all gravy. Telsa's powerful drive system is destroying transmissions and they've gone through two designs. The first was a single gear setup, which forced the 13.5K RPM car to choose between fast off the line times and top speed. The second had two gears to handle this, which caused an unmentioned problem, so they're onto a third design which will probably have to be shipped out and swapped into the cars of the first batch of customers. Also, the editor here couldn't tell whether or not the car was on at first start, but that ends once you drive. He found the high-pitched RPM, squeeks and rattles annoying.

Road and Track: The R&T guys found the same gentle understeer in handling, but commented on how precise the electric accelerator peddle felt underfoot. Another benefit of an all electric powertrain is that the traction control can be entirely motor based, eliminating the need for the traditional intervention of brake modulation. They also investigate the differences between the Lotus Elise the Tesla shares its space frame with, and realize its bigger in almost every dimension, including the now leather and carbon fiber adorned cockpit. Here's a video of the car, set to some terrible rock.

Motor Trend: MT gave an entire history lesson on Nikolai Tesla, glancing his beef with his old boss, a little known inventor by the name of Thomas Edison. As far as driving particulars go, they complained about the drive lash when you snap off the accelerator, like the kind of deceleration you get when you lift fast off a stick shift, but exaggerated to nasty heights. That's likely from the regen system aggressively scavenging kinetic energy. Brake feel is good and old-fashioned, they say. Oh, here MT discovers the reason why the second-gen two-gear tranny is being replaced: They're breaking after only a few thousand miles under the full-torque-at-a-standstill electric motor. No gas engine has ever tested a gearbox like this.

And those teeth-eating launches? Drama-free, too: "There's no wheelspin, axle tramp, shutter, jutter, smoke whiff, cowl shake, nothing. I'm being eerily teleported down the barrel of a rail gun, head pulled back by a hard steady acceleration. Bizarre." [Automobile Mag, Road and Track, Motor Trend, photos from these pubs as well]

Essentially, the new REVs will have a battery that is continually charged whilst the car is being driven. The range of the battery is usually around 40-50 miles, but this is charged by the gas motor's output during a journey, which extends the longevity, (hence the name.) The modification will be made to the Whitestar sedan, which will be able to achieve 150 - 200 miles on a single charge, using this technique. The Tesla Roadster will be capable of a similar distance, but it does cost the best part of $100, 000. The Whitestar REV will be expected to retail around $50,000 - $70,000, depending on customization options. [CNET]

Other winners included the Tongue Sucker — a cheap first-aid device that sucks the tongue into its maws and opens up a breathing passage for anyone who may be seizuring in your general area — and the Solar Bottle, a device that optimizes a method of disinfecting water using sunlight and plastic bottles. Life saving technology aside, we'd like to salute the Tesla Roadster and admit we're a little attracted to it. [Reuters]

Not a huge deal, but you've got to assume that some of those people who have agreed to drop $100,000 on a Roadster are feeling a little disappointed about this situation. Think anyone will ask for their deposit back?

Check the whole letter from Tesla after the jump.

Media Briefing - April 12, 2007 Darryl Siry VP Marketing Tesla Motors

Tesla Motors has achieved some significant milestones recently. The first of our Validation Prototypes (VPs) recently arrived in San Carlos. This car represents a significant step forward toward real production cars as it implements corrections to problems discovered in the Evaluation Prototypes (EPs), hard-tooled components for all body panels, production headlights and taillights, nearly-production interior components (including much more comfortable seats), and many other subtle changes.

We continue to test the Roadster prototypes, and recently performed our first actual driving range tests on an EPA-compliant dynamometer. Based on the results of these tests, we need to revise our initial range estimates downward. We now anticipate that the range of the Roadster will still be greater than 200 miles, but will not meet our original target of 250 miles.

Martin Eberhard, CEO, recently communicated this news to our customers, and we will continue to provide them with updates as we continue development of the Roadster. We think it is appropriate to always communicate to our customers first, and then more broadly to the media and the public.

These are the key factors for the revised expectation:
We made a significant number of design changes to maximize safety and durability of the Roadster, both in its chassis and in its battery pack. These changes added several hundred pounds to the weight to our original design.

We deliberately chose lithium ion cells with a slightly lower capacity because they have better long-term durability and higher tolerance for abuse.
I also think it is important to keep members of the media up to date on our progress to provide you with the context and background necessary for you to do your job. To that end, I am providing some additional context in this briefing.

It is important to note that at greater than 200 miles, the Tesla Roadster will still have the highest range of any production EV in history by a large margin, and we will be working hard to deliver even better range in the coming months.

The original premise of this groundbreaking car was that its range would be high enough that you would not have to worry about charging during a typical day, even if you have a long commute, take the car out for dinner and chores, or even take the scenic route home. Once home, you plug it in - just like you would your cell phone - and by the time you're ready for another day, your Tesla Roadster is fully charged and ready to go. We believe that this premise is still intact with a range above 200 miles.

Our communications strategy is intentionally conservative: we don't want to communicate any further revisions to range unless they are upward revisions. That's why we decided to say that the final EPA-certified range will be greater than 200, rather than try to communicate where we think it will actually land at the end of the day. When the final tests are performed by EPA just prior to start of production, we will communicate final numbers to customers, the press and to the public.

After extensive testing of our EPs, we are confident that we will achieve a final EPA-certified range above 200 miles. Now that we have completed cars and an understanding of the testing methodology, our future range estimates will be based on empirical testing, not simply modeled estimates. This is an important distinction that should be taken into account when comparing Tesla's estimates for range to other companies' claims. Since Tesla has undergone significant testing on our EP cars that have lead us to this revised expectation, I would suggest that these numbers cannot be compared apples to apples with range numbers that are expressed by other companies as aspirational goals or modeled estimates.

In the years that we have been working on the design and development of the Roadster, we have learned an enormous amount about the challenges of electric drivetrain development, including battery system management, power electronics and motor development. We have also learned a great deal about the challenges of developing a high quality electric vehicle for mass production. We expect that other companies in this emerging sector will also experience this steep learning curve when they move from concepts to prototypes or when they attempt to mass produce cars for the marketplace.

The original assumptions and models that lead to the claim of 250 miles were made in good faith based upon the knowledge available to us at the time and our anticipated design specifications for the Roadster (including a lower weight than what we have today.) Our customers who have reserved a car know that they are reserving a car that exists today in prototype form and that is subject to further development and validation. That is one reason that we chose to make the reservation payment fully refundable so that if customers decide to change their mind based upon how the program develops, they can give up their spot and receive a full refund.
As a leader in the field, we expect that we will often be the first to learn from experiences along the way. We plan to continue to be as transparent as we can about our progress (within reason for a company in a competitive marketplace.) That's why we have chosen to communicate this revised expectation as soon as was practical after the conclusion was known to us.

Bad news from Tesla: Original range target won't be met! [Autoblog Green]
Tesla Motors [Jalopnik]

If you live in NYC, Chicago, Florida, Northern California or Southern California, you're in luck. They hope to open more dealerships soon after, as they're able to pump out more product. Is this the start of the age of the mainstream electric car? We sure hope so. –Adam Frucci

CNET [via Mobile Mag]

People have already plunked down deposits for the company's first 100 cars, which are due out in 2007. Their money, all $100,000 of it, guarantees that they will get a car as soon as they silently roll off the lot. – Jason Chen

Electric sports car maker sells out its first round of cars [CNET]