This he said in an interview with Bloomberg of an e-mail sent in March to customers who’d only gone so far in reserving a Model S. The e-mail was said to be almost pushing them to complete the sale so Tesla could reach a “huge company milestone.”

The problem was, Musk said, Tesla Motors had not approved the letter, and this news comes just after Tesla has reported it first-ever profitable quarter this year.

“Some of our sales folks got a little overzealous and sent out the e-mail,” said Musk yesterday to Bloomberg. “As soon as I found out, I put an immediate stop to it. That is not how Tesla operates.”

Musk added that the e-mail did not affect the Palo Alto California-based company’s having exceeded its Q1 forecast.

Not one sale of the 4,750-plus Model S orders were counted until three things took place he said. These are that each counted delivery was paid for, delivered, and its paperwork was completed and filed.

“All three of those things must be true,” said Musk. “We had a clear, clean victory in Q1 and I don’t want to sully that with any sense that it was juiced in some way.”

On Monday Tesla’s stock crested 16 percent on the news it was in the black, and the last thing Musk wants is to sully the possibility that the books are being cooked, and he repeated the company has been fastidious in its accounting.

“The only thing that counts is if we’ve sent them the car,” he said. “We are literally bending over backwards and twisting ourselves into a pretzel to make sure that every sale is legitimate.”

Tesla’s latest “huge” announcement on Tuesday that actually was fully endorsed by Musk is the company will try to juice sales in a bona fide manner by offering a creative hybrid structure of a purchase with elements of a lease.

That news did nothing positive for the company’s stock, and it actually fell 2 percent before 10 the following morning in New York.

Ups and downs in the face of a fickle market notwithstanding, Tesla aims to sell 20,000 Model S cars this year and remains one of the top-three sellers of cars that plug in.

It’s a notable achievement given the price of its cars is far above those of the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf, the other two major players at this stage of the game.

Bloomberg

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And here it is: Tesla will offer the Model S electric sedan for purchase in the U.S. via a unique 66-month financing program with as low as 2.95 percent APR that has “the best elements of leasing and ownership,” said Musk.

After 36 months, a buyer may turn the car back in and be guaranteed payment for it by Tesla in an amount that’s no less than the residual value of a Mercedes-Benz S class. Musk said he would personally guaranty the car’s buy-back amount with his own funds, if needed.

His net worth is estimated in the billions, and he broached the notion others have suggested that Tesla could go out of business, or the electric car’s value could plummet, but these are being guaranteed against by the company, and its principle officer.

Presently, the residual value for a Mercedes S-Class is about 43 percent of the selling price, and Musk said Tesla expects the Model S to actually be worth more than that.

The way the program works is, assuming a customer’s credit approval, the arrangement through US Bank and Wells Fargo requires 10 percent down on the purchase price of a Model S.

Using a hypothetical $70,000 Model S, Musk estimated net out-of-pocket costs in the neighborhood of $500 per month. He said depending on the situation, it could be “quite a bit” less than that.

We’ll note it could also be quite a bit more, but individuals will have to determine this based on how they calculate ownership costs, and whether the more expensive models are chosen. An option-packed 85-kwh Model S can escalate to $120,000 including all taxes and fees, but Tesla accentuates the positive aspects of the proposition.

Note default cost per hour Tesla says one could save by not pumping gas into a conventional car.

“When considering the savings from using electricity instead of gasoline, depreciation benefits and other factors,” Tesla says, “the true net out-of-pocket cost to own a mid-range Model S drops to less than $500 per month.”

The way Tesla figures this is a bit abstruse. Tesla actually accounts for a buyer’s time in calculating net-net cost, and estimates, for example, the minutes you saved by not putting gas in your car or by being allowed into an HOV lane.

The default dollar value for “what’s your time worth” according to Tesla’s true cost of ownership calculator is $100 per hour to be potentially saved. So, if you can avoid using gas, and your time is worth $100 per hour – or some other amount – think of all the money you’ll save, or so goes the reasoning.

In short, the cost of the Model S is amortized over the term factoring in gas savings, guaranteed residual value, tax credit(s) and not having to pay for maintenance that one would have to with an internal combustion-powered car.

Regarding its cost estimate calculator online, Tesla says: “We also encourage you to think about Model S ownership in terms of true out of pocket cost. When considering the savings from using electricity instead of gasoline, depreciation benefits, and other factors, buyers will save hundreds of dollars per month compared to owning a gasoline powered car.”

Whether you fully follow Tesla’ s line of reasoning of valuing the opportunity cost of your time – or not – is up to you. Some have. And others have raised their eye brows at assertions made.

Less controversial are the program’s costs. Tesla notes that the 10-percent down payment is “covered or more than covered” by federal and state tax credits ranging from $7,500 to $15,000.

Potential lower-level cost of ownership according to Tesla’s calculator.

A buyer would have to pay the down payment out-of-pocket as the $7,500 federal tax credit is not a point-of-sale rebate, but the assumption is the buyer could recoup this at tax time. As for state incentives, it all depends on whether a state offers money for EV purchases. Some do, some do not. Buyers in states that do can apply this toward the down payment.

It was also pointed out that New Jersey, Washington state, and Washington, D.C. have no sales tax for electric vehicles and these advantages are not available when leasing.

One main motivation in doing this, said Musk, is he wanted to lower the barrier to entry to make the Model S affordable, and will personally guaranty the customer’s peace of mind.

“I’m essentially making myself fully liable for that,” Musk said and he added that he thinks the program to make the car available to a wider demographic “is the right thing to do.”

Under the program’s terms, after 36 months, the buyer has the right – but not the obligation – to sell back the Model S to Tesla for the same residual value percentage “as the iconic Mercedes S Class.”

Daimler is also a Tesla partner and investor, and Musk emphasized Tesla wants to eliminate any uncertainty among consumers in the prospect of buying a Model S.

The program is limited at this point to U.S. sales and is not to be confused with a lease. It is essentially a financing agreement in which the customer at 36 months can keep on paying for the five-and-a half year term, or not.

If the consumer wants out at 36 months, Musk said the buyer can “put” the car back to Tesla at a guaranteed number, or better.

Another possible “true” cost of ownership scenario according to Tesla.

“We will pay market rate,” Musk said, accounting for his belief that the Model S will be worth more than 43 percent in 36 months.

A buyer also has the right to privately sell or trade the car at any time, and pay off the principle and get out of the deal.

If a buyer wishes to keep the car for the whole term, the buyer need do nothing but keep paying on the car.

Since Tesla is an innovative company with new products pending, and promises more development on its evolving technology, the program is also there as a convenient exit clause to assure buyers they will not be stuck with an undervalued EV.

Musk said he was accounting also for concerns that exist that Tesla Motors could fail, although indicators are not suggesting that this is likely.

He said most opinion makers who have postulated Tesla could go belly up do so not looking at the fundamentals, but base conjecture around facts including that no American automotive start up since Chrysler has survived.

Musk said he thinks Tesla has “a bright future,” and anyone who does due diligence and comes and sees the operation first hand goes away more convinced.

By reducing the financial barrier to entry, and wrapping it with assurances, Musk said Tesla expects a broader customer base to find the Model S affordable. He said he expects “at least half or maybe more” to go for the new program.

The program is not available to current reservation holders, however, and Musk said it is on a “go-forward basis” for new buyers.

The company already “doesn’t have a demand problem,” he said, referring to Tesla’s long waiting list of Model S customers. But he reiterated he wished to open up the potential for more people to get the car than under previous limits of either paying cash or buying with a conventional loan.

As mentioned above, Tesla has a “true cost of cost ownership” calculator on its Web site, and Musk said it should help people figure whether financing the car will work for them. Naturally also, further details are available from Tesla.

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Other cars in the running for the acknowledgement were the Renault Zoe, a five-door electric car, and the Volvo V60 Plug-in Hybrid.

The decision was made by a jury of 66 motoring journalists from 23 countries. The Model S was described by them as the “car for everyone.”

Volvo had high hopes for its Euro market series/parallel plug-in wagon, had given a talk about it with words saying it was a top finalist for the award emblazoned across its door, but the Model S took the show without even being there.

This adds to the awards bestowed on the 85-kwh version Model S – the top-of-the-range in battery choices, and the one with the most impressive range and speed performance.

Its EPA-rated range is 265 miles, and it is able to sprint to 100 mph quicker than a 560-horsepower BMW M5 while using no gasoline.

The car was launched at a careful production pace on June 22, 2012, and has built up its legions of fans and well-wishers, not to mention new owners – now estimated at about 500 more each week.

Its story is as radical as the car itself. Tesla is making outsized waves as an American-based tech company in Silicon Valley and it continues to grow its brand and influence with what amounts to a single model. The Model S is available in configurations ranging from just over $57,000, and a fully loaded model out the door can cost upwards of $120,000.

In a few days we shall also see how the Model S is doing sales wise. It has been the second-best seller among cars that recharge by plugging in for January and February, and is believed to be in the running for a similar or better result in March.

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Yesterday the company said it saw its 3,000th Model S registered in California, and since December its Fremont, Calif. factory has been at full production capacity.

“During the past three weeks we have averaged more than 500 Model S deliveries per week,” wrote George Blankenship, vice president, worldwide sales and ownership experience, “and it looks like we’ll be setting another record this week.”

Blankenship said also the “Model S is now officially a world car,” Tesla has been giving test drives in Europe and Asia, aside from the U.S., and will be adding 40 new test drive cars in the next few weeks.

Aside from opening new retail stores in key areas such as Austin, Texas, Tesla is also dotting the map one location at a time with service centers in the U.S. and Europe.

Last week, Tesla’s service page went live to keep interested parties abreast of what is included in its pre-paid service plans.

More DC fast charging stations are on their way to covering the map, too, Blankenship said.

“We will be adding Supercharger coverage in many areas over the next three to four months, installing our first Superchargers in the Pacific Northwest, Texas, Illinois, and Florida with additional coverage in the Northeast and California,” he said. “We’re also expanding existing locations like Harris Ranch, where we’re adding five more Superchargers in the next month.”

The company says it is stoked by its large and enthusiastic fan base, promising “we’re just beginning,” while looking forward also to “hitting many new milestones this year.”

Inside Tesla

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The drive of the Tesla-supplied 85-kwh model ended on a flatbed truck with a Model S that had run out of juice and Elon Musk was none too pleased.

“NYTimes article about Tesla range in cold is fake. Vehicle logs tell true story that he didn’t actually charge to max & took a long detour,” Musk tweeted, and the Tweet was re-tweeted more than a thousand times.

New York Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy told Reuters that the article about Broder’s test drive “was completely factual, describing the trip in detail exactly as it occurred. Any suggestion that the account was ‘fake’ is, of course, flatly untrue.”

The report, which is required reading for both EV lovers and haters, is big on suspense. After an uneventful drive from Washington D C, it gets interesting after a 49 minute stop at the first Supercharger. Only after turning the heat to low, and later to off, Broder limps into the next Supercharger station with “Recharge Now” flashing in red.

Broder is going north, and it is getting cold. The Model S does not like it. After a night parked in Connecticut, two thirds of the available range is gone. Even after an emergency charge on the way, the battery is exhausted and the car shuts down. A tow truck is called. There are problems getting the car on the flatbed because an “electrically actuated parking brake would not release without battery power.”

Broder documents everything in great detail, along with many calls to Tesla, all the way up to Tesla’s chief technology officer, J.B. Straubel.

The New York Times spokeswoman said Broder “followed the instructions he was given in multiple conversations with Tesla personnel,” and “there was no unreported detour,” as Musk asserts.

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As competitive and fun-loving people are wont to do, owners of electrified cars are also turning up at local drag strips to see what their battery powered cars can accomplish.

That said, this quarter mile match-up video between a Tesla Model S that recently beat a Viper and set a world production EV record and a humble gas-electric Chevy Volt was anything but a fair contest.

It was recorded just the same by Drag Times and shows what a Volt – driven with a slow launch – is able to do. Because the Volt serves up 273 pound-feet torque from a standstill, some Volt owners report especially good acceleration from 0-30 mph, decent to 60. But a quarter mile needs more grunt than the Volt had to stay competitive.

In all, it’s not a bad performer, but not a rocketship like the Tesla is by comparison. A Model S also recently out-dragged a new BMW M5 to 100 mph when in the hands of Automobile Magazine, so any hopes of GM’s “Prius fighter” getting the upper hand were pretty slim.

As for the actual results, the Model S turned a respectable 12.562-second run at 108.34 mph compared to the Chevy’s time of 17.201 at 80.36 mph.

With a gap of nearly 4.7 seconds, we’d say it wasn’t really a race, and more like a demonstration run. Apparently it was all in good fun. The engine noise heard is of course from cars in proximity, not the two electric cars facing off.

Now, if someone can just post a drag race between the Rimac Concept One and a Model S, that could be entertaining indeed. The Model S was entered in the world record book by the National Electric Drag Racing Association (NEDRA) for its speed feat, but in existence in another part of the world is the fringe-lunatic Rimac. The Rimac is not yet in production, but is said to be pending a 2013 limited production launch and has also been called the fastest electric car in the world – estimated at north of 186 mph, not the 130 to which the Model S is limited.

Pitting the Rimac against a Tesla would of course be even more unfair, given the AWD Croation creation costs around 10-times more, and boasts 1,088 all-electric horsepower and 1,180 pound-feet of torque.

Even though it’s long-legged enough to top 300 kph, Rimac says the no-excuses Concept One will sprint from 0-62 mph in 2.8 seconds which ought to help it on its way to completing a quarter mile in a respectable amount of time.

The company also says lateral acceleration from the torque-vectoring supercar rolling on Vredestein Ultrac Vorti tires is an astonishing 1.4 g. (If you can believe it). All-electric range from the 4,300-pound car’s 91-kwh LiFePO4 pack is said to be a Model S-beating 373 miles (600 km) – (“realistic range” estimated at 310 miles (500 km). As for how they calculate “realistic,” we’ll have to see, but we’d expect using its speed potential overly much and achieving such range to be a case of one or the other, not both.

You can read more about that astonishing EV here, but coming back to the Volt, it does a great job for what it is, and is not as financially out of reach as the premier Model S costing 2-3 times more. The Volt is a step closer to a mass market vehicle leading away from oil, and GM wasn’t thinking of bragging rights for cruise night.

But Volt fans often say they’d love to see a high-performance Voltec model, and GM is actually bringing one out that has such a posture, this being the Cadillac ELR.

It’s one thing to race a $40,000 Volt against a $100,000 Tesla and excuse the Volt for not doing so great, but what about the aggressively positioned ELR? Its actual price is not known, and won’t likely be so close to six figures, but it does represent a high-performance image, for sure.

At its heart however is a powertrain remarkably close in configuration to the Volt’s. It puts out a bit more juice, but this is just to compensate for a couple extra hundred pounds or more.

So, how would it be if, a year from now, a video turns up of a Model S against an ELR, and the result – GM car gets creamed – is posted for its new tech halo?

Will this matter? Should GM have found a way to amp up its new ultimate extended-range EV to match the looks? Or will anyone pay the power deficit much attention?

Drag Times

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Qualified by Tesla as a key step toward beginning worldwide distribution of Model S, Tesla Motors announced that it will begin operations this month at this new European Distribution Center.

This new facility will serve as Tesla’s European service and parts headquarters, as well as the final assembly and distribution point for Model S vehicles sold in Europe.

Tesla confirmed general production of European left-hand drive Model S is still planned to begin in March 2013.

Tesla’s new European 62,000 square foot facility is centrally located to enable efficient, timely and cost effective operations throughout Europe.

Starting this month, the distribution center will begin stocking parts for both the Tesla Roadster and Model S. In addition to parts warehousing, Tesla plans to utilize this facility for vehicle importing operations, final vehicle assembly and distribution, service headquarters, technical training operations, parts remanufacturing, collision repair and more.

Tesla says its decision to locate the new European Distribution Center in Tilburg is the result of almost two years of on-going cooperation between Tesla, BOM Foreign Investments, NFIA (Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency), CBRE Group, Inc. and the City of Tilburg.

Worldwide, Tesla has received more than 13,000 reservations for its Model S.

Individuals interested in employment at the Tesla European Distribution Center in Tilburg should send resumes and inquiries to tilburgrecruitment@teslamotors.com.

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