Sexy electric roadster for 2008

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Tesla Motors' all-electric Roadster sports car will start rolling out to nearly 600 buyers lined up for the $100 000 vehicle by October or November, after a slight delay, the company's chief said on Tuesday.

"We will definitely ship in that time frame," CEO and co-founder Martin Eberhard told Reuters at a meeting of the Motor Press Guild, noting that the company had originally expected to begin deliveries during the summer.

The shapely two-seaters are being assembled by Lotus Engineering in England, with motors manufactured by Tesla in Taiwan and battery packs made in Thailand with 6,831 individual lithium ion cells from Japan.

A late change in the transmission vendor "was a big thing for us to do in the program, very painful, and one of the things that has driven us into a little later this year release of the car," Eberhard said.

The Silicon Valley-based Tesla has pre-sold 570 cars to the likes of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, for his wife Maria Shriver, and actor George Clooney. The company will make 1 000 2008 model year cars.

The Roadster can go from 0 to 100 km/h in about 4 seconds and has a range of more than 300 km on a single charge on a household plug.

Investors beckoning

Eberhard and co-founder Marc Tarpenning launched Tesla in 2003 with the idea of making a high-performance electric vehicle and then branching out to more affordable cars later on.

Since then, Tesla has secured $105 million in funding, with PayPal founder and space industrialist Elon Musk leading the way and venture capital firms joining in recent funding rounds.

With delivery of the car approaching, Eberhard said: "We have a lot more interest in investing in this company recently."

Eberhard said that if they just limited production to the Roadster, Tesla would be making a profit in 2008.

"But Tesla's intention has always been to grow to be a full-fledged car company as quickly as we can do that," he said.

"We are taking everything we earn from the Roadster and everything we have raised from outside sources to build the next model car."

The next car will be the White Star, a five-passenger sedan with a price point of $50 000 to $65 000, to be manufactured in New Mexico.

"We are in the very early stages of it," said Eberhard, noting that he "would not place any bets" on a target of a 2010 model year.

That same year, General Motors Corp is supposed to launch the Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in electric vehicle with a small combustion "range extender" engine.

GM is shooting for a popular price, over $20 000, with a battery that costs around $3 000.

Tesla wants to keep moving down the chain to a more affordable car and could end up competing with the Volt. But Eberhard said he is skeptical GM's second attempt for an electric car will come to fruition, at least at that price point, mostly because of battery challenges.

"If I sell 10 000 White Stars, it will be a screaming success for me," he said. "But 10 000 Chevys sold would be a disaster."

Tesla plans to open two stores, in Los Angeles and in Menlo Park in Northern California, and will expand later to the US East Coast and Midwest.