TeslaModelS

It looks like Tesla Motors will finally be going public the week of June 28, if a report in the Wall Street Journal is correct. The long anticipated stock offering was originally planned for the fall of 2008, but the global financial melt-down made that impossible. Tesla is hoping to sell 11.1 million shares at a price of $14 to $16 a share for a total take of up to $178 million.

Tesla Motors announced last week that it was definitely going to build ist Model S at the former NUMMI factory in Fremont, California. Or it might not. This isn't the first announcement about where this car might be produced. That was way back in February 2007 when the car was still being referred to as Whitestar and it was planned to be built in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Along the way it was also going to be built in San Jose and most recently southern California.

You read that right. Tesla Motors will stop building the Roadster in 2011.

Wired's Autopia was digging through the papers filed by Tesla to the Securities and Exchange Commission for its IPO and came across with this nugget:

For the first time in more than fifty years, a U.S. automaker is holding a public offering. Henry Ford made shares of Ford Motor Company public back in 1956. Tesla, the Elon Musk-owned Silicon Valley electric car company, filed to do so today. There's no word as to when the shares will be available for public consumption, nor any word as to how much each share will cost.

Since it was announced that the highly quotable Bob Lutz would be departing from his General Motors management spotlight, automotive bloggers and reporters everywhere have been mourning the loss of an executive with such an exquisite way with words. Now it appears that the pining may have been premature, thanks to the emergence of another top management type with the brass, it seems, to freely speak his mind in public.

It's been barely a week since the curtain was lifted on the Tesla Model S, and not only has its design received positive reviews, those sensuous lines have seduced 520 people to fork over some deposit cash for the new all-electric sedan. Tesla won't say, however, how many people chose the standard version that requires a refundable deposit of $5,000 or one of the 2,000 Signature Edition models that requires a $40,000 deposit.

Tesla has a big media event planned today at 12PM PST to unveil the new Model S sedan. That plan has been blow out of the water a bit thanks to social media mogul Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg.com, who has uploaded what appear to be a few official images of the all-electric sedan on his Flickr page. We get two views of the car's backside, which looks to crib design cues from modern day Jaguars and Aston Martins. The new XF comes most readily to mind, and while the Model S may be charged with being too heavily influenced by the leaping cat brand, that doesn't take away from the fact that it still looks stunning.

When Tesla formally announced the Model S Sedan last June, the MSRP bandied was about $60,000 for the all-electric sedan. In its newsletter today, Tesla has confirmed that the "anticipated base price" for the Model S will be $57,400. With a federal tax credit of $7,500 available, however, the Model S should cost just $49,900. Details on what's included in the base version of the Model S should be available at the vehicle's official unveiling next week. Tesla says that even with a sub-$50,000 price tag (just barely), the Model S is really competing with cars that cost much less: