The Tesla Roadster is one of the most important cars to be launched this so far this century. It is the latest project from PayPal founder Elon Musk, the 38 year- old South African-born serial entrepreneur who sold his first internet start-up for over US$300 million aged just 28, and three years later sold PayPal to eBay in a deal worth over $1.5 billion. Musk is a committed car-guy – he previously owned a $2 million McLaren F1 – but also a committed environmentalist. Convinced that the big car makers aren’t doing enough to develop new ways of powering our cars that don’t pollute and don’t rely on dwindling oil supplies, he decided to create his own.
But while his green intentions are admirable, Musk is also well aware that the financial rewards for the company that finds a viable replacement for petrol will be so vast as to dwarf the sums made at the height of the dot-com boom. In June, despite only having made 1200 Roadsters and heavy losses, Tesla became the first American car company since Ford in 1956 to go public. Its IPO raised $226m, and valued the company at over $1.6 billion.
