Actually, he’s been broke for since last October.

“About four months ago, I ran out of cash,” Musk wrote in a court filing with the Superior Court of Los Angeles on Feb. 23. “I had to obtain emergency loans from personal friends. These loans are the exclusive source of cash I have. If I did not take these loans, I would have no liquid assets left.” Tough when you make only 8 grand a month and have two high maintenance women. (Read More…)

Throughout the bailout bonanza, we were told that the car industry means million of jobs. True enough, before the money was doled out, we learned that auto-related industries employ 3.1 million people around the country. Now, the government is paying big bucks for electric car development.  From Tesla all the way to Nissan, the industry is getting $ 25 billions of DOE loans, conditional  on the development of advanced vehicle technologies. Which usually means electric cars.  What’s wrong with that picture? If successful, it could cost a big chunk of those 3.1 million jobs. (Read More…)

Jalopnik carries today the revelation that in the Tesla/Toyota agreement, there is no “formal deal with Toyota to build a new electric vehicle yet.” Let’s overlook for a second that the report is nearly verbatim lifted from Venturebeat. If Jalopnik would have read our story about Toyota and Tesla, they could have printed the above a week earlier. (Read More…)

Someone is in a big hurry: In March, Daimler and BYD signed an agreement to develop an all electric vehicle “specific to the requirements of the Chinese market.” Usually, it takes a while until something comes from these announcements, especially in China, where everything needs a lot of big red chops. Much to our surprise, we hear that BYD and Daimler signed the contract today to form a 50:50 joint venture for the aforementioned purpose. (Read More…)

You are probably going batty awaiting the American arrival of the all electric Made in China BYD e6. Fret no more: It’s coming! BYD will start selling the plug-in e6 in the U.S. “in 2010,” writes People’s Daily. The price? “Around 40,000 U.S. dollars.” (Read More…)

Germans are ready to buy an electric car. Under conditions: The car must come with a justifiable price, and with the performance one expects from a common ICE. In other words: Forget about it. Nein. (Read More…)

A week ago, we ran a story about China’s BYD scaling back – way back – plans to mass produce their E6 pure plug-in. We reported that all they’ll make will be 100 E6 electric cars to be used as taxis in the city of Shenzhen, where BYD is based. Further development of the vehicles will depend on how that test fleet will be doing. At the time, it was only a rumor. Now, the rumor has been confirmed by the BYD man himself, Chairman Wang Chuanfu. (Read More…)

Charging stations are okay, really. Battery swapping stations are even better, and I honestly have nothing against Lithium-ion batteries. But we love cars, not infrastructure, and that’s what has been missing from our Better Place coverage: real car related stuff. So here I am, in the front seat of Better Place’s actual electric car. Of course, when I say actual, what I mean is that this is actually a Renault Laguna, a rather bland French midsize car, and one car Renault doesn’t intend to electrify in its joint venture with Better Place. So what’s its business being green in the car park with stickers all around it reading ‘EV’ and flowers emitting from its exhaust?
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